Railroads & Industry
This massive engineering project connected the East and West coasts of the United States.
Transcontinental Railroad
This was the name for the unfenced grassland used by ranchers, and this invention ended it.
Open range; barbed wire
This 1862 law gave farmers 160 acres of free land if they agreed to live there and farm it.
Homestead Act
This is the term for a specific area of land where the U.S. government forced Native Americans to live.
Reservation
Farmers formed this political party in 1890 to fight for the rights of regular people against big businesses.
The Populist Party
This specific railroad company was built from East to West and used mostly Irish workers.
Union Pacific
This term describes a town that grows very fast almost overnight when gold or silver is discovered.
Boom town
Because there were very few trees on the Great Plains, settlers built their houses out of this material.
Sod (dirt and grass)
This animal was the most important resource for Plains tribes like the Sioux for food, clothing, and shelter.
The buffalo
This Populist candidate gave the famous "Cross of Gold" speech during the election of 1896.
William Jennings Bryan
Because trains traveled so far across the country, the railroads had to create these to keep their schedules consistent.
Standard Time Zones
This famous Kansas town was a major stop where cowboys put their cattle onto trains.
Dodge City
This was the name for African Americans who moved to Kansas to find freedom and start their own farms.
Exodusters
Sitting Bull and his warriors defeated Colonel Custer and his soldiers at this 1876 battle.
Battle of Little Big Horn
This economic goal involved using both gold and silver to back the nation's money.
Bimetallism
This location in Utah is where the two railroad tracks finally met in 1869.
Promontory Point
This was the name of the huge gold and silver discovery in Nevada worth over $600 million.
Comstock Lode
This farming method involves planting seeds deep in the ground to reach moisture; farmers needed it because the plains got very little rain.
Dry farming
This 1890 event involved the U.S. Army killing over 200 Sioux people and is seen as the end of Native American resistance.
Wounded Knee Massacre
Why did farmers want inflation (higher prices) instead of deflation (lower prices)?
Higher prices for crops would give them more money, making it easier to pay back their old bank loans.
Explain two ways the railroad changed life in the West for settlers or businesses.
It made travel/trade faster, connected the coasts, encouraged more settlement, and created time zones.
Explain one reason why cattle drives ended by the 1880s.
Barbed wire let farmers fence off the open range, railroads made long cattle drives unnecessary, and towns/settlements spread across the plains.
What were the requirements to keep land under the Homestead Act, and why did the government want to give land away for free?
Farmers had to stay for 5 years; the government wanted to encourage people to settle and develop the West.
Explain how the government's plan to kill off the buffalo population forced Native Americans to move onto reservations.
Without the buffalo for food and supplies, tribes could not survive on their own and were forced to rely on the government for food on reservations.
List at least 1 problem farmers faced in the late 1800s, and explain how the Populist Party tried to fix them.
Farmers faced debt, falling crop prices, railroad monopolies that charged high shipping rates, and bank foreclosures. The Populist Party pushed for bimetallism to cause inflation, railroad regulation, an income tax, and the direct election of Senators.