Questions 1-12
Why did people avoid farming in the great plains?
Plains are dry and treeless
The homestead act gave how many ___acres of public land to adult men over what age___? How much was this land___ and how long did they have to live there to have it paid for___?
160
21 years old
1.25
5 years
How many people claimed land under the homestead act for farms in the west?
400,000
What was scarce and a problem for building__? What did they use instead for building?__ This was cut into brick shaped slabs and put into ___ for walls and roofs?
Wood
Sod
Layers
In 1874 millions of these swarmed the plains? __
how high did they pile___?
What was this year known as? __
Grasshoppers
6 inches deep
The great grasshopper year
What act did president Lincoln sign in 1862
Homestead act
What were the people called that got land under the homestead act?
Homesteaders
What did the promise of building a better life for give them?
HOPE
A house made of sod was called?
Soddies
What was a new technology to make prairie life easier with constant winds to pump underground water to the surface?
Windmills
Who wanted to become homesteaders from the East?
African Americans
What immigrants from where wanted to become homesteaders?
Denmark, France, Norway, Russia, Sweden
DFNRS
Buffalo grass was tall and made the sod so tough that it broke what___?
Iron Plows
What did settlers face for hardships?
Prarie fires, unpredictable weather and insects
What was dug to water crops?
Irrigation ditches
How did homesteaders head for the prairie?
bouncing stage coaches, railroads and crowded Constoga wagons
Lydia Toothaker described Kansas terrain as...
grass and sky because there was nothing else and built houses out of sod
New settlers with the hard sod buffalo grass were called?
Sod busters
What did settlers do to stop the spread of a fire
dig trenches
in 1874 what settlers introduced a type of wheat that could survive the plains?
Russian
homesteaders found it was difficult to farm due to?
lack of trees and water and harsh climate
Where did most settlers go because it was dry and not a desert?
Kansas, Nebraska and Dakota territory
Who invented the steel plow that could bust through the hard sod? What was the plow named?
James Oliver
chilled-steel-plow
What happened in winter that began suddenly and people froze to death? ___
What happened in the summer that lifted the houses off the ground?___
Blizzard
Tornados
What did Joseph Glidden invent? what did this invention do?
Barbed wire to keep cattle out of their fields