Major territorial acquisition from Russian in 1867 for $7.2 million.
What is the Alaska Purchase?
100
This type of extraction features alluvial deposits easily accessible in rivers and streams.
What is placer mining?
100
James J. Hill’s transcontinental railroad that linked Duluth, Minnesota with Seattle, Washington in 1893.
What is the Great Northern?
100
Patented in 1874, this device helped protect crops and watering holes from large herds on long drives.
What is barbed wire?
100
Navajo removal from their homeland at Canyon de Chelley to Bosque Redondo.
What is the “Long Walk”?
200
The urban portion of the “Promised Land” built by loyal followers of Brigham Young starting in 1847.
What is Salt Lake City?
200
The biggest silver strike in the world in 1859.
What is the Comstock Lode?
200
Thomas C. Durant’s subsidiary corporation that allowed Union Pacific principal stockholders to charge double and triple rates for construction completed on the transcontinental line.
What is Crédit Mobilier?
200
Long drive route named after an old métis trader which led to the stockyards at Wichita and Abilene, Kansas.
What is the Chisholm Trail?
200
Short hand explanation used by Southerners leaving home and heading west in the 1830s.
What is GTT?
300
Land speculators in the 1820s who were given the authority to settle families in Mexican territory in exchange for thousands of acres for themselves.
Who are "empresarios"?
300
This unfair racial penalty in Idaho was challenged in court and left largely uncollected.
What is the China Tax?
300
Northeastern Colorado Union Pacific construction outpost notorious for its excessive drinking, wild gambling, numerous prostitutes, and deadly violence.
What is the Julesburg camp?
300
New Mexican vigilante group that protected common sheep pastures by cutting fences and burning cattle ranchers’ hay supplies.
Who are Las Gorras Blancas?
300
The lure that pulled Chinese to California in the Gold Rush Era and beyond.
What is Gam Saan?
400
Agreement negotiated by John Ridge and Elias Boudinot in 1835 that traded traditional Cherokee lands for five million dollars and permanent lands west of the Mississippi River.
What is the Treaty of New Echota?
400
Nickname for women left behind to tend the farm and raise the family as their husbands sought riches out West.
What are “gold rush widows”?
400
The first railroad company to receive federal land grants to finance its construction in 1850.
What is the Illinois Central?
400
The mostly tacit honoring of courage, competence, and self-reliance.
What is the cowboy ethic?
400
Name of the three-million-acre ranch spread over ten Texas panhandle counties.
What is XIT?
500
1819 international agreement in which Spain agreed to cede Florida to the U.S. and withdraw all claims in the West north of the forty-second parallel.
What is the Adams-Onís Treaty?
500
Sarcastic reference to the Bingham open-pit copper mine near Salt Lake City.
What is “The Richest Hole on Earth”?
500
Nickname for the railroad corporations started by the Big Four that dominated California transportation in the late nineteenth century.
What is the “Octopus”?
500
Wyoming conflict between large and small ranchers that revolved around the arbitrary enforcement of the Maverick Law.
What is the Johnson County War?
500
Two-wheeled, ox-drawn cart of the métis communities along the Red and Assiniboine Rivers.