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Kids learn about the Trail of Tears including when it took place, relocation of Native American tribes, the forced march of the Cherokee, the aftermath, and interesting facts.

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Early pioneers made houses out of sod, or bricks of dirt and prairie grass. Others lived in dugouts, or spaces dug out of a hillside or the ground. Still others made houses out of logs and mud. Most homes had dirt floors, a fireplace, and a chimney. The simple furniture was usually made of wood.

Towns developed only as more people settled in the area. This meant that pioneer families had to do everything on their own. They grew crops and raised farm animals for milk, eggs, and meat. In the winter they hunted and ate preserved food, including beans and grains. Pioneers also made their own clothes out of wool, flax, old cloth, and leather.

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Early pioneers made houses out of sod, or bricks of dirt and prairie grass. Others lived in dugouts, or spaces dug out of a hillside or the ground. Still others made houses out of logs and mud. Most homes had dirt floors, a fireplace, and a chimney.

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History: Westward Expansion and the Old West for Kids

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Kids learn about the history of the Westward Expansion and the Old West of the United States as pioneers settled the west as the country expanded. Educational articles for teachers, students, and schools including daily life on the frontier, gold rush, Pony Express, timeline, glossary, and people.

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Kids learn about the California Gold Rush from the Old West. Thousands of people move to the west to search for gold and strike it rich.

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First Transcontinental Railroad
History >>Westward Expansion

The First Transcontinental Railroad stretched from the East Coast of the United States to the West Coast. No longer would people travel in long wagon trains that took months to reachCalifornia. They could now travel faster, safer, and cheaper by train. In addition to people, things like mail, supplies, and trade goods could now be shipped across the country in just a few days. The railroad was built between 1863 and 1869.

Background

The first talk of a transcontinental railroad started around 1830. One of the first promoters of the railroad was a merchant named Asa Whitney. Asa tried hard for many years to get Congress to pass an act to build the railroad, but failed. However, in the 1860s Theodore Judah began to lobby for a railroad. He surveyed the Sierra Nevada Mountains and found a pass where the railroad could be built.

The Route

There were two main routes along which people wanted the first railroad to be built.

One route was called the "central route". It followed much the same route as the Oregon Trail. It would begin in Omaha, Nebraska and end up in Sacramento, California.

The other route was the "southern route". This route would stretch across Texas, New Mexico, and end up in Los Angeles, California.

The central route was eventually chosen by Congress.

Route of the First Transcontinental Railroad by Unknown

Pacific Railroad Act

In 1862President Abraham Lincoln signed the Pacific Railroad Act into law. The act said that there were two main railroad lines. The Central Pacific Railroad would come from California and the Union Pacific Railroad would come from the Midwest. The two railroads would meet somewhere in the middle.

The act gave the railroad companies land where they could build the railroad. It also paid them for each mile that they built. They were paid more money for miles of track built in themountains versus miles of track built on the flat plains.

Building the Railroad

Across the Continent
by Joseph Becker

Building the railroad was tough, hard work. Weather conditions were especially tough in the mountains during the winter. A lot of times the only way to travel over the mountains was to go through the mountains by blasting a tunnel. The Central Pacific Railroad had to blast a number of tunnels through the Sierra Nevada Mountains. The longest tunnel built was 1659 feet long. It took a long time to build the tunnels. They were able to blast around one foot per day on average.

While the Central Pacific Railroad had to deal with mountains and snow, the Union Pacific Railroad was challenged byNative Americans raids. As the Native Americans came to realize the threat to their way of life that the "Iron Horse" was going to bring, they began to raid the railroad work sites. Also, a lot of the land that was "granted" to the railroad by the government was actually Native American land.

The Workers

The majority of the workers on the Union Pacific Railroad were Irish laborers, many who had served in both the Union and the Confederate armies. In Utah, a lot of the track was built by Mormon workers. Most of the Central Pacific Railroad was built by Chinese immigrants.

The Golden Spike

The two railroads finally met at Promontory Summit, Utah on May 10, 1869. Leland Stanford, governor of California and president of the Central Pacific Railroad, drove in the last spike. This final spike was called the "Golden Spike" or "The Final Spike". You can see it today at Stanford University in California.

Driving the Golden Spike on 10th May, 1869
by American School

Interesting Facts about the First Transcontinental Railroad

The Pony Express traveled a similar route to the central route and helped to prove that the route was passable in winter.

The transcontinental railroad was also called the Pacific Railroad and the Overland Route.

The total length of the First Transcontinental Railroad was 1,776 miles.

The Central Pacific Railroad was controlled by four men called the "Big Four". They were Leland Stanford, Collis P. Huntington, Mark Hopkins, and Charles Crocker.

It was later, in November of 1869, when the Central Pacific connected San Francisco to Sacramento.

Activities

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Works Cited

History >>Westward Expansion

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Kids learn about the First Transcontinental Railroad. Fun facts about the route, the Union Pacific, and the Pacific Railroad Act.

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Oregon Trail

As settlers migrated to the west, they established specific routes that would allow them the best course to travel. The Oregon Trail was discovered by the famous exploration team of Lewis and Clark and started in Independence, Missouri, meandered through six states to end up in what is now the state of Oregon.

Families would load up all of their belongings in covered wagons and often go in wagon train groups for safety. They traveled through what is now the states of Missouri, Kansas, Nebraska, Wyoming, Idaho, and then Oregon.

Thousands of people took this hazardous 2,000-mile journey between 1841 and 1869, crossing the Rocky Mountains and the Sierra Nevada Mountains. The Oregon Trail was one of two routes to head westward. The other was the Santa Fe Trail that ended up in New Mexico.

The pioneers that decided to go west and settle into the new areas of the country were not only pioneers. They had a sense of adventure. Some have said that this attitude has remained in many of their descendants, as well as those that arrived in the future.

The most common way to travel was in "Prairie Schooners." These were covered wagons that looked a little bit like boats skimming over the vast prairies. These wagons were constructed from wood, with sturdy iron around the wheels.

They covered the top with a waterproof linen or cotton canvas. The average size of the wagons was 10 ft long and 4 ft wide and was pulled by oxen or mules.

The speed of traveling was slow, mainly because the wagons could weigh as much as 2,500 pounds, and the oxen or mules were slow at pulling such weights.

The terrain along the prairies was fairly easy, and in some cases, the pioneers would walk beside the wagons. However, once they got to the Rocky Mountains, there were steep hills, and the going got pretty rough.

It is difficult for us to imagine the kinds of dangers that the westward pioneers faced every day. They would often travel through areas where only Native Indians lived, and history shows that the Natives would help the pioneers.

Between bad weather, trying to get the heavy wagons over the hills and mountains, and the common disease of cholera, many of the settlers didn't make it to the final point of their journey.

Packing for this kind of trip meant that the pioneers took only what was absolutely necessary. The left many of their cherished things behind and instead had to focus on things like 1,000 lbs of food for a family of four and cooking utensils such as iron skillets, coffee pot, and a few buckets.

Food most often included coffee, bacon, rice, beans, hardtack, and flour. These were items that they could preserve and use for multiple purposes. Most of the pioneers could only take two to three sets of clothing, and these had to be durable to withstand the trip. They also took along candles and a rifle for protection and hunting.

All of the wagons had basic tools that might be needed, such as a shovel and ax, and for sleeping, they had bedding and tents.

As more and more wagons took the trip on the Oregon Trail, they would report that many before them had thrown out some of their wagon contents along the way.

This was often done to lighten the load of the wagon as they headed up and over hills and mountains. Those that arrived at their final destination said that they saw things like heavy trunks, stoves, and even books along the roadside.

What did you Learn?

Who discovered the Oregon Trail?
Lewis and Clark

What was the length of the Oregon Trail?
Around 2,000 miles

Where did the trip for the Oregon Trail begin?
Independence, Missouri

What were the five states that encompassed the Oregon Trail?
Missouri, Kansas, Nebraska, Wyoming, Idaho, and OregonAdvertisement

What was the name of the wagons that the pioneers traveled in over the Oregon Trail?
Prairie Schooners

What disease was common among the travelers of the Oregon Trail?
Cholera

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As settlers migrated to the west, they established specific routes that would allow them the best course to travel. The Oregon Trail was discovered by the famous exploration team of Lewis and Clark and started in Independence, Missouri, meandered through six states to end up in what is now the state of Oregon.

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Fun facts bout the Oregon Trail for Kids

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Imagine traveling in a small covered wagon . Between 1841 and 1845, more than 5,000 people traveled the Oregon Trail, from Missouri to Oregon.

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In the middle years of the 1800s many thousands of U.S. pioneers traveled west on the Oregon Trail. The trail ran from Independence, Missouri, to what is now northern Oregon, near the Columbia River. It was about 2,000 miles (3,200 kilometers) long. The Oregon Trail was one of two main routes to the Far West. The other was the Santa Fe Trail, which led to New Mexico.

Unlike a modern highway, the Oregon Trail was not a single clear path. In places it was 10 miles (16 kilometers) wide. There were also many shortcuts and side paths. Some people who used the trail were bound for Utah or California, not Oregon.

Pioneers traveled the Oregon Trail in covered wagons pulled by horses, mules, or oxen. For safety, many wagons joined together in lines called wagon trains. The trip to Oregon took about four to six months. A day's march was usually from 15 to 20 miles (24 to 32 kilometers). The pioneers brought some food with them and also hunted along the trail. They got water from rivers.

The Oregon Trail followed paths that had already been discovered. Between 1804 and 1806 the explorers Meriwether Lewis and William Clark traveled from Missouri to Oregon and back. Fur traders and missionaries later found other paths that became part of the trail. Wagon trains carrying hundreds of pioneers first used the trail in the early 1840s. In the 1860s railroads began replacing much of the travel by wagon train. However, people still used the trail until 1880.

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In the middle years of the 1800s many thousands of U.S. pioneers traveled west on the Oregon Trail. The trail ran from Independence, Missouri, to what is now northern Oregon, near the Columbia River. It was about 2,000 miles (3,200 kilometers) long. The Oregon Trail was one of two main routes to the Far West.

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The Oregon Trail was a 2,000-mile route to the West for thousands of settlers in 19th Century America. The Trail ran through what is now Missouri, Kansas, Nebraska, Wyoming, Idaho, and Oregon.

The idea of reaching the West Coast began soon after Thomas Jefferson announced the Louisiana Purchase, in 1803, and commissioned Meriwether Lewis and William Clark to chart the course of the territory through to the Pacific Ocean. Lewis and Clark and the Corps of Discovery spent the better part of the next three years getting there and back again, and their reports emboldened many others to travel westward, sometimes for good. An 1810 expedition financed by famed furrier John Jacob Astor mapped out a slightly different route west.

After the War of 1812, the British presence on what is now the western part of the Oregon Trail increased, mainly through the efforts of the Hudson's Bay Company. So did the number of Americans traveling west, if more gradually. The first large wave of settlers set out in 1836, and numbers increased during the next few decades, in nearly inverse proportion to the decline of fur trading, as markets for new goods found more favor. Among the first organized group of settlers were the Peoria Party, named after the city from which they set out, Peoria, Ill. Led by Thomas J. Farnham, they carried a flag with the motto "Oregon or the Grave" and traveled most of the Oregon Trail, finally reaching the West Coast. More than 100 pioneers, led by Elijah White, set out in 1842, from Elm Grove, Mo.; not all of this group made it. In 1843 alone, up to 1,000 settlers left their homes for new living quarters in Oregon. This came to be known as the "Great Migration of 1843."

The U.S. Government sponsored more than just Lewis & Clark. Explorers like Captain Benjamin Bonneville, John C. Frémont, and Kit Carson ranged far and wide and wrote about their experiences.

The Oregon Trail wasn't an unbroken dirt road running direct from one place to the next; rather, it was a series of paths, trails, and wagon roads. Technically, the Trail wound from Independence, Mo., to Oregon City. As traffic on the Trail increased, other towns on the route became starting points; among these were the Kansas towns of Atchison and Leavenworth, the Missouri towns of St. Joseph and Weston; and the Nebraska town of Omaha.

Other well-known settler trails were the Bozeman Trail, California Trail, Chisholm Trail, Mormon Trail, and Santa Fe Trail. The longest and most popular, however, was the Oregon Trail.

The trails generally followed the Platte River and other waterways, passing through river valleys to enable access to fresh water and to grass for the animals doing the heavy lifting. Travelers were often in need of fire-burning materials. These often included trees, brush, abandoned wagons, and even animal droppings (the ever-popular "buffalo chips").

Settlers traveled west along the Oregon Trail using combinations of walking or riding horses, and carrying supplies and necessities in covered wagons, known as prairie schooners, which were pulled by anywhere from 4 to 10 oxen or mules. (Horses were used to pull the wagons only in later years.) The well-known Conestoga wagons were, for the most part, too large and unwieldy for the arduous Oregon Trail, so settlers used prairie schooners instead. These wagons were typically 11 feet long, feet wide, and feet high and featured cotton covers treated with linseed oil, in an attempt to keep out dust, rain, and wind. Wheels were made of iron-rimmed wood and were 40-50 inches in diameter. The wagons were, for the most part, much too bumpy to ride in, despite popular artwork to the contrary.

Travelers did not go west in straight lines. They spread out along the prairies and through the valleys, mainly to cut down on dust inhalation. They did resort to single file through narrow passes, however.

Journeys to Oregon commonly took four or five months. Travelers took lots of food, stored in watertight containers or carried in packs. Some travelers traded what they carried for other types of food grown by people along the way. Some travelers took chickens, cows, and pigs with them, to use as food. Cooking was done over campfires. Not all meals were cooked. Travelers carried water, sometimes lots of it, but also depended on getting water along the way. (For this reason, a good part of the Oregon Trail was along waterways.)

Travelers generally brought several sets of clothes, most importantly multiple sets of boots, and spare leather and threads and a few hand tools, to repair or replace clothing. Among the possessions kits were soap, washboards, and tubs, for cleaning the clothes.

The common sleeping arrangement was on thin bedrolls, on the ground, inside tents (or under the night sky if the weather was good). Pregnant or infirm travelers or very young children sometimes slept on feather beds, inside wagons. Sleeping inside a wagon was not unheard of for otherwise healthy travelers as well.

Conditions could be rough, and travelers commonly carried all manner of tools, including axes, shovels, hoes, hammers, saws, hatchets, picks, and crow bars.

Sharing was essential for many travelers. Pooling of resources, including money, was quite common. Money was also essential to replace or obtain things broken or forgotten.

With lots of time on their hands, travelers on the Oregon Trail found comfort in books, not just trail guides but as well the Bible and other popular publications. They also wrote letters, to drop at forts or posts along the way.

For the most part, expendable items got left behind. Some travelers filled needs by picking up items discarded by previous travelers; others returned home with discards, selling them for a profit.

Dangers were not unknown on the Oregon Trail. travelers encountered unfamiliar wildlife and sometimes hostile humans. Weather could be capricious, and supplies often ran low. Some mothers died in childbirth. Some young children didn't survive the ardors of the trip. Many travelers died, although exact figures are still not known, primarily because those who died along the way were usually buried in unmarked graves, to prevent looting.

Disease was also common. Travelers' diets were sometimes low in fresh fruits and vegetables; and during the four-month trip, some travelers suffered from scurvy because of a lack of vitamin C. Other diseases, such as cholera, were familiar killers.

One of the last stops on the journey west was Fort Vancouver, on the Columbia River. For a time, John McLoughlin was in charge at this fort. He helped so many settlers reach new homesteads that he became known as the "Father of Oregon." Other Hudson's Bay Company outposts were Fort Boise and Fort Nez Perce, both of which were quite happy to sell supplies to Oregon Trail pioneers.

Travelers were still using the Oregon Trail while the Civil War was raging, but the advent of a railroad across Panama, allowing for ship-then-rail-then-ship-again travel, and then another, more famous railroad across the continental United States gave travelers much faster alternatives. The arrival of the automobile all but closed the Trail, with some state federal and state highways literally paving over parts of the Trail.

The Oregon Trail didn't just disappear one day. Its use declined gradually. Signs of it can still be seen today, as can some wagon wheel tracks. It is now a National Historic Trail, with designating markers in several states.

Many travelers didn't make it all the way to the West Coast, preferring to set up homestead along the way. This, in combination, with an influx of new settlers in Oregon and California, helped push the boundaries of the United States ever westward.

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report this ad The Oregon Trail was a 2,000-mile route to the West for thousands of settlers in 19th Century America. The Trail ran through what is now Missouri, Kansas, Nebraska, Wyoming, Idaho, and Oregon.

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Oregon Trail Facts: Lesson for Kids - Video & Lesson Transcript | Study.com

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Have you ever heard of the Oregon Trail? Back in the 1800s, thousands of brave people followed this route across the country, riding in rickety...

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The Oregon Trail became one of the key migration routes that pioneers crossed to the vast west. Spanning over half the continent, the trail proceeded 2,170 miles west through Missouri, Kansas, Nebraska, Wyoming, Idaho, and Oregon. The long journey through endless plains, rolling hills, and mountain passes began in Independence, Missouri, and ended at the Columbia River in Oregon.
Oregon Trail Historic Sites: Landmarks Along the Oregon Trail
Vieux Crossing, Kansas

Rock Creek Station, Nebraska

Fort McPherson, Nebraska

Fort Kearny - Kearney, Nebraska

Scotts Bluff, Nebraska

Fort Laramie, Wyoming

Register Cliff, Guernsey, Wyoming

South Pass City, Wyoming

Fort Hall, Idaho
Fort Dalles, Oregon
"When you start over these wide plains, let no one leave dependent on his best friend for anything, for if you do, you will certainly, have a blow-out before you get far."

The route of the Oregon Trail began to be scouted as early as 1823 by fur traders and explorers. By the 1830s, it was used regularly by mountain men, traders, missionaries, and military expeditions.

At the same time, small groups of individuals and the occasional family attempted to follow the trail, with some succeeding in arriving at Fort Vancouver, Washington.

On May 16, 1842, the first organized wagon train on the Oregon Trail set out from Elm Grove, Missouri, with more than 100 pioneers. On May 22, 1843, with up to 1,000 settlers, livestock, and more, the Great Migration departed to follow the same route from Independence, Missouri, arriving in the Willamette Valley in a massive wagon train. Hundreds of thousands more would follow, especially after gold was discovered in California in 1849.

While the first few parties organized and departed from Elm Grove, Missouri, the Oregon Trail's generally designated starting point was Independence or Westport, Missouri. The trail ended at Oregon City, Oregon, the proposed capital of the Oregon Territory at the time. However, many settlers branched off or grew exhausted short of this goal and settled at convenient or promising locations.

At many places along the trail, alternate routes called "cutoffs" were established to shorten the trail or get around rugged terrain. The Lander and Sublette cutoffs provided shorter routes through the mountains than the main route, bypassing Fort Bridger, Wyoming. The Salt Lake cutoff provided a route to Salt Lake City later.

The Oregon Trail was too long and arduous for the standard Conestoga wagons used in the eastern U.S. for most freight transport. These big wagons were known for killing their oxen teams approximately two-thirds along the trail and leaving their unfortunate owners stranded in the desolate, isolated territory. The only solution was to abandon all belongings and traipse onward with the supplies and tools that could be carried or dragged. In one case in 1846, the Donner Party, en route to California, was stranded in the Sierra Nevada in November and had to resort to cannibalism to survive.

This led to the rapid development of the prairie schooner. Though this wagon looked similar, it was approximately half the size of the big Conestogas and manufactured in quantity by the Conestoga Brothers. It was designed for the conditions and was a marvel of engineering in its time.

Pioneers on the Oregon Trail followed various rivers and used landmarks along the trail to guide their way and gauge their progress. Within Nebraska, the Oregon Trail followed the Platte River and the North Platte River into Wyoming. Along this part of the journey, the Great Plains started giving way to bluffs and hills that were the precursor of the Rocky Mountains. After crossing the Rockies through South Pass, the trail followed the Snake River to the Columbia River. From there, emigrants could raft down the Columbia River to Fort Vancouver or take the Barlow Road to the Willamette Valley and other destinations in Washington and Orego n.

Many rock formations became famous landmarks that Oregon Trail pioneers used to navigate and leave messages for pioneers following behind them.

The pioneers' first landmarks were in Western Nebraska, such as Court House Rock, Chimney Rock, and Scotts Bluff (where wagon ruts can still be seen today). Further west, in Wyoming, you can still read the names of pioneers carved into a landmark bluff called Register Cliff.

Other migration paths for early settlers before the transcontinental railroads involved taking passage on a ship rounding the Cape Horn of South America or to the Isthmus (now Panama) between North and South America. An arduous mule trek through treacherous swamps and rainforests awaited the traveler. A ship was typically then taken to San Francisco, California.

The trail was still used during the Civil War, but traffic declined after 1869 when the transcontinental railroad was completed.

However, in its more than 25 years of regular use, the trail carried an estimated 300,000 emigrants to the vast west, which took about five months to complete. The trail continued to be used into the 1890s, when modern highways began to take their place, eventually paralleling large portions of the trail. Today, U.S. Highway 26 follows the Oregon Trail for much of its length.

Some of the original routes from our nation's early days remain today as reminders of our historic past. The Oregon National Historic Trail is an extended trail that follows much of the original path of the Oregon Trail.

In 1968, Congress enacted the National Trails System Act, and in 1978, National Historic Trail designations were added. The National Historic Trails System commemorates these historic routes and promotes preservation, interpretation, and appreciation.

In 1995, the National Park Service established the National Trails System Office in Salt Lake City, Utah. The Salt Lake City Trails Office administers the Oregon, the California, the Mormon Pioneer Trail, and the Pony Express National Historic Trails.

The National Trails System does not manage trail resources on a day-to-day basis. The responsibility for managing trail resources remain in the hands of the current federal, state, local, and private trail managers.

National Historic Trails recognize diverse facets of history, such as significant exploration routes, migration, trade, communication, and military action. The historic trails generally consist of remnant sites and trail segments and thus are not necessarily contiguous.

Contact Information:

National Trails System Office
P.O. Box 45155
Salt Lake City, Utah 84145-0155
801- 741-1012

© Kathy Alexander/ Legends of America, updated March 2023.
Also See: California Trail The Mormon Trail Oregon Trail Photographs Overland Trails of Nebraska Westward Expansion & Manifest Destiny

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The Oregon Trail, one of the key migration routes to the American West, spanned over 2,170 miles.

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Find Places to Go!

Places to Go along the Trail

It highlights different sites that can be visited along the trail. You'll find museums, interpretive centers, and historic sites that provide information and interpretation.

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Maps - Oregon National Historic Trail (U.S. National Park Service)

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It highlights different sites that can be visited along the trail. You'll find museums, interpretive centers, and historic sites that provide information and interpretation.

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Learn about the Oregon Trail from the Old West. A roadway used by pioneers in covered wagons to travel west.

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What It Was Like to Be On the Oregon Trail

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Expanding the Transcontinental Railroad: History and Impact

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Introduction
The United States began building a transcontinental railroad in 1863 to connect the East Coast with the West Coast. Work began from both sides of the country, meeting at Promontory, Utah, in 1869. During those six years workers laid some 1,800 miles (2,900 kilometers) of track from Nebraska to California. Today various freight and passenger railroads still use sections of the line.

Up until the mid-1800s in the United States, people had few ways to get from the East Coast to the West Coast. They could travel by wagon train or stagecoach overland, by ship around South America, or by ship to Panama, where they took a railroad to that country's western coast and boarded a second ship to go back north to the United States. The journeys were long, expensive, and arduous. To ease the transportation difficulties, President Abraham Lincoln signed the Pacific Railway Act in 1862. This act set aside land and money to build a transcontinental railroad. It also appointed the Central Pacific and the Union Pacific railroads to perform the work.

From The Days of a Man, Being Memories of a Naturalist, Teacher, and Minor Prophet of Democracy, by David Starr Jordan, Vol. 1, 1922

Railroads already connected many of the larger cities in the east by the time the decision was made to link the East and West Coasts. The Union Pacific Railroad was tasked with building westward from Omaha, Nebraska. The Central Pacific Railroad started from Sacramento, California, and worked eastward. A group of California businessmen later called the "Big Four"- Leland Stanford, Charles Crocker, Collis P. Huntington, and Mark Hopkins -controlled the Central Pacific. Thomas C. Durant oversaw the Union Pacific at the time.

Financing the Railroad
Through the Pacific Railway Act of 1862, the U.S. government provided the companies with financial support for the major undertaking. Each company received long-term loans in the form of government bonds, with the amount of the bonds tied to the amount of track laid. The government also awarded the companies sizable parcels of land along the entire length of their route, making the endeavor a competition between the sides. Each company had an incentive to work quickly to secure a longer route and thus more land and bonds. In 1864 a second Pacific Railway Act increased the financial incentives.

During the project Durant almost forced the Union Pacific into bankruptcy by siphoning money from the railroad for his personal gain. The illegal manipulation of contracts by the Union Pacific's construction and finance company, Crédit Mobilier, became known as the Crédit Mobilier Scandal. Several U.S. Congressmen were implicated in the scandal.

Building the Railroad
Although the Central Pacific began laying tracks in 1863, the American Civil War disrupted the work of the Union Pacific in the Midwest. That company was not able to begin construction until the war ended in 1865. The Union Pacific subsequently hired hundreds of former soldiers, as well as numerous Irish immigrants; a large Mormon contingent helped with the tracks in Utah. The workers were able to lay tracks quickly through Nebraska and Wyoming, encountering little difficulty over the flat terrain. However, they met with resistance from several Native American peoples, including the Sioux, Cheyenne, and Arapaho. Angered that the railroad was being built through their lands, Native Americans raided the railroad camps and destroyed the tracks and equipment. Those actions often led to violent skirmishes with the railroad workers.

Meanwhile, Crocker was in charge of hiring for the Central Pacific. He had difficulty finding men willing to do the strenuous work, and in 1865 he began hiring Chinese laborers. Within a few years most of his workforce was made up of Chinese, to whom he paid lower wages than white workers. The track-laying advancement was slow as the workers battled the snow and cold of the Sierra Nevada mountain range. In addition, they faced the danger of using nitroglycerin and other explosives to blast tunnels through the granite; some workers were killed in the explosions. Once past the mountains, the Central Pacific workers picked up speed. They had crossed Nevada by 1868.

By early 1869 the two railroads came close to meeting up with each other. In April officials designated Promontory Summit in northern Utah as the connection spot. On May 10 the two railroads met, with Stanford and Durant driving in the last ceremonial gold-plated spikes to join the tracks. Telegraph messages were sent out to all parts of the country announcing the feat. In total, the Central Pacific laid about 700 miles (1,125 kilometers) of track, while the Union Pacific finished some 1,100 miles (1,775 kilometers). The completed transcontinental railroad was variously called the Pacific Railroad or the Overland Route.

Effects of the Railroad
The transcontinental railroad reduced the travel time between the East and West Coasts from as long as six months to under two weeks. It not only allowed more ease of movement for people but also for freight. As goods were distributed more quickly, demand increased and the U.S. economy expanded. However, the transcontinental railroad helped to bring about the end of the traditional way of life for many Native Americans. The railroad divided Indian lands and brought settlers, who encroached on the lands even further. It also carried hunters, who decimated the immense herds of bison, on which Native Americans relied for food and clothing. The unrest caused fighting between the Native Americans and the U.S. military. Within a few decades of the completion of the railroad, most Native American camps were destroyed and the survivors moved to reservations.

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Introduction The United States began building a transcontinental railroad in 1863 to connect the East Coast with the West Coast. Work began from both sides of the country, meeting at Promontory, Utah, in 1869. During those six years workers laid some 1,800 miles (2,900 kilometers) of track from Nebraska to California.

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The Transcontinental Railroad | The West | PBS LearningMedia

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After the Civil War ended in 1865, reuniting the North and South, Americans were determined to unify the United States from East to West by rail. With government investment, two corporations, the Union Pacific and the Central Pacific, engaged in a race to build the most track the fastest, one going East and one going West,and join the two lines together.

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Transcontinental Railroad Facts for Kids

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The Transcontinental Railroad was a railroad built across the United States of America. The building of it started when Abraham Lincoln signed the Pacific Railroad Act of 1862 into law. Much of it was built by the Central Pacific Railroad, building east from Sacramento, California, and the Union Pacific Railroad building West from Omaha, Nebraska.

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Western Expansion for Kids - The Transcontinental Railroad of 1862 - FREE American History Lesson Plans & Games for Kids

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What does the term “transcontinental” mean? Transcontinental means going across a continent. In the US that would mean from coast to coast.

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Transcontinental Railroad ‑ Construction, Competition & Impact

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In 1862, the Central Pacific and the Union Pacific Railroad Companies began building a transcontinental railroad that would link the United States from east to west. Over the next seven years, the two companies raced toward each other from Sacramento, California on the one side to Omaha, Nebraska on the other, struggling against great risks before they met at Promontory, Utah, on May 10, 1869.

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For Kids

Why did Americans want to travel 2,000 miles to settle in the West? Many went to escape the crowding and poverty of the cities of the East. Others went to escape from crimes or creditors. Some wanted land of their own to farm, and the Homestead Act made that possible. Some received letters from friends or family who had moved west, encouraging them to join them on the frontier. Whatever the reason, and in spite of the dangers from illness, exhaustion, bad weather, snake bites, dirt, dust, robbers and rough terrain, many thousands of Americans did go west. Wagons hauled goods, but people had to walk 2,000 miles. Faced with the hardships of the trail, some people gave up and went back home.

The Oregon Trail was an actual path. By 1843, when the first large wagon train was organized, a route existed across the continent from Independence, Missouri to the Pacific Ocean. It was an actual trail, mostly connected, created by Indians and trappers. The period 1843-1855 saw the heaviest traffic on the Oregon Trail. As wagons headed west, this trail became more defined. In places, the path became 6-10 feet deep and 50-100 feet wide. Oregon Trail Interactive Map

What was a wagon train? A wagon train was a group of covered wagons that traveled together, headed west, in a straight line. There was a wagon master, called a captain, who was in charge. At night, the captain would direct the wagons to form a circle for protection from bandits and other dangers. The captain decided when the wagon train would break for the night and where the train would cross a river. If disagreements between people broke out, the captain acted as judge. Wagon trains also had scouts who knew the routes and rode ahead on horseback to watch out for dangers. Scouts assisted the captain.

How did you find a wagon train to join? Most wagon trains left from Missouri or Iowa. Wagon trains were businesses. They took reservations. People booked passage, but had to purchase their own supplies including oxen and wagons. Many pioneers arrived in Missouri or Iowa in the fall, spent the winter preparing for the trip, and left with a wagon train in the spring. Some wagon trains were organized by people from the same town or area.

Wagons: Most pioneers purchased modified or manufactured wagons designed for the trip. Some had built-in features like sleeping berths and false floors over large storage areas. Some wagons were very simple. Some families had more than one wagon. Travelers were warned not to bring too much. But many people packed so much that oxen died and wagons broke from the weight. Possessions like cooking stoves, pianos, organs, rugs, grandfather clocks, and even tools had to be abandoned on the trail.

What did they take with them? A wagon held about 2,000 pounds of goods. People were advised to carry enough food to feed their individual families for at least 5 months. Wagons held dried food and staples like flour, sugar, a substance similar to baking soda, coffee, tea, cornmeal, bacon, crackers, dried meats, dried fruits, dried beans, split peas, oatmeal, vinegar, salt port, potatoes, rice, yeast, salt, and a barrel of water. They made their own clothes so they brought needles, thread, pins, scissors, and sometimes even cloth and leather. They had to make their own repairs so they brought saws, nails, knives, hammers, shovels and string. Tools were important but heavy, so they had to be carefully selected.

Food: The pioneers created recipes to cook over a campfire. Baking bread was a daily activity. Bacon was the second most popular food item on the trail. The most common meat was probably squirrel. Some pioneers took a cow with them, so they would have fresh milk. Coffee cake was invented on the trail. It was made with mostly dried fruit.

Clothes: Clothes had to last. The clothing the pioneers bought with them was all they had to wear, unless they could buy or trade for clothes along the trail. Between dust, dirt, sweat, rips and tears, clothing took quite a beating. As one piece of clothing wore out, it was used to patch other pieces, make quilts, or remake into children's clothing. After traveling 2,000 miles, everyday clothing was typically worn out. On the trail:

The pioneers wore sturdy thick boots, usually make of leather. Towards the end of trail, shoes that were worn out were replaced with rags.

Women and girls wore everyday dresses made of calico, a type of cotton print with an allover design. Dresses had narrow collars, fitted bodices that buttoned up the front, with attached full sleeves, and long attached full pleated skirts. Aprons were worn over dresses to protect their dresses and to carry items such as wood or buffalo chips.

Men and boys wore pants, vests over calico shirts, and coats of wool or leather.

Hats were part of every outfit to protect the pioneers from the weather and the dust. Men's hats were wide-brimmed and made of straw or leather. Women wore cotton sunbonnets.

Clothes that started out new or clean soon had ground in dirt and dust. It was hard to clean clothes on the trail.

School & Chores: There was little time for schooling. Everyone helped with chores.

Toys and Games: Kids had to leave their toys and friends behind. But they created new games. One of their favorites was buffalo turd toss. Kids tossed turds (dried buffalo poop) like frisbees. They soon learned that large flat turds broke apart too easily and burned too rapidly. When seeking turds for firewood or for their game, they looked for smaller, thicker, round turds. These turds burned longer, without odor, and were perfect for cooking dinner. Until they reached the Rocky Mountains, buffalo turds were everywhere.

How far did a wagon train travel in one day? They started before dawn, after breakfast. They stopped for an hour or two at lunchtime. They continued on until late afternoon. If it was muddy, they might spend the entire day to travel one mile. If the ground was dry or solid, they might move forward as many as 5 or 10 miles. (Today, by car, we would travel the same distance in about an hour.) At night, inside the circle, the women fixed dinner. The men took care of the livestock. Kids got a chance to play. After supper, they might sing songs or dance. It was important to keep their spirits up. But sometimes all they wanted to do was sleep. They slept inside the circle in good weather and under their wagons in bad weather. Some people even slept inside their wagon, especially as food supplies dwindled, leaving more room inside. In the morning, it all started over again. This continued day after day for months.

Stopovers: They did take a break now and then. Wagons trains would stop occasionally by a river or a spring for two days, to give people time to wash clothes and repair wagons, tents, and tools. These were very necessary stops. People needed time to regroup and recover, and to remember why they were risking their lives to head west.

Life on the Oregon Trail (pbs)
Fun with Buffalo dung - it's not just for firewood anymore All about the trail - hardships, Native Americans, and more, for kids
Oregon Trail for Kids (wartgames)

For Teachers
Wagon Trains, powerpoints
Oregon Trail, powerpoints
Oregon Trail - Free iPad apps Free Use Clip Art Western Expansion Index

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Why did Americans want to travel 2,000 miles to settle in the West? Many went to escape the crowding and poverty of the cities of the East. Others went to escape from crimes or creditors. Some wanted land of their own to farm, and the Homestead Act made that possible.

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The Transcontinental Railroad was a dream come true for many businesspeople and politicians in America, providing a link for goods and communication from the East Coast to the West Coast. The Golden Spike was struck in 1869, but planning for the coast-to-coast route began much earlier.

The exploration of the Louisiana Territory by Meriwether Lewis and William Clark had included a journey to the Pacific Coast. Not long after, a chance find of gold in California ushered in the Gold Rush. The American victory in the Mexican-American War had brought a large amount of new territory into the Union. Settlers ventured west, in search of fortune and new homesteads, traveling on the Oregon Trail, Santa Fe Trail, California Trail, and many other routes.

The advent of the railroad made possible a nationwide network of railroads, along the lines of the East Coast-to-Midwest network of canals that had sprung up in the early part of the 19th Century. The first railroad, the Baltimore & Ohio, made a name for itself by building on the success of the Tom Thumb and illustrating that a rail network was possible.

Other rail networks sprung up across the country. The main problem with joining up existing rail networks, though, was that not all tracks were the same. More precisely, many tracks used many different size tracks. It was not easy getting goods from one place to another if the transport had to include different rail networks.

The goal of a nationwide rail network was a special project for President Abraham Lincoln, elected in 1860 on the eve of the Civil War. California had become a state in 1850, and many in the North wanted to cement California's place in the Union by building a railroad to the Golden State. The inclusion in that rail line of other territories acquired in the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo would potentially solidify control of those territories as well.

The same year that Lincoln was elected, the Pony Express began. Although it lasted a short time, the Pony Express proved that a transportation network from the Midwest to the West Coast was possible.

Once talk of building a nationwide rail network grew serious, organizers began to lay plans for the route. Secretary of War Jefferson Davis oversaw the Pacific Railroad Surveys, a number of explorations by scientists and surveyors in search of possible routes, encompassing about 400,000 square miles in all.

One of the main surveys was done by Theodore Judah, a chief engineer for the Sacramento Valley Railroad, the first railroad west of the Mississippi River. Judah submitted a 13,000-word proposal for a Pacific railroad to members of Congress and the Cabinet, and he received the funding to conduct a survey to find a suitable route through the rugged Sierra Nevada Mountains.

Lewis & Clark had reached the West Coast by going through Montana and Oregon. Their route, rail organizers thought, would be too prone to snow in the winter. A more central route was sought. (Proponents of a southern route found their arguments overtaken by events, as the secession of the Southern States eliminated the southern route as a possibility, even though the Gadsden Purchase had made possible such a route.) One thing that the Pony Express also proved was that the central route, utilizing lower passes through the western mountains, could be used for railroads because the snow wasn't prohibitive. Horses could go up steeper grades than railroad engines, though.

Another champion of the central route was Asa Whitney, a cousin of Eli Whitney, the inventor of the cotton gin. Whitney, who traveled far and wide at his own expense to promote the central route, proposed that finances could be shared by settlers buying land along the route.

On June 20, 1862, the Senate approved a House of Representatives bill passed on May 6, authorizing funding for the Transcontinental Railroad. President Abraham Lincoln signed the bill into law, and contracts were awarded to two companies, Central Pacific and Union Pacific. The law wasn't exactly designed to protect the U.S. Treasury, as government officials discovered when the railroad companies took advantage of the rather generous terms that guaranteed payment of $16,000 a mile for flat land, $32,000 a mile for the high plains, and $48,000 a mile for mountainous terrain. Payment was made by the mile, and the two rail companies went out of their way (literally) to tack on extraneous miles to the route. (This led eventually to the bankruptcy of Union Pacific, mainly because of the efforts of the company's vice president, Thomas Durant, and to the Credit Mobilier scandal.)

Central Pacific was run by four directors: James Bailey, a jeweler; Charles Crocker, a seller of dry goods; Mark Hopkins, a hardware merchant and business partner of Asa Whitney; and Leland Stanford, a grocer. Each of these men posted $1,500 to create the company.

Sacramento was chosen as the western terminus, and Central Pacific was tasked with building track east from Sacramento. After much discussion, Lincoln himself selected the eastern terminus to be Council Bluffs, Iowa, and Union Pacific began laying track westward from there.

Central Pacific began its efforts on January 8, 1863, with Leland Stanford, who by then had been elected governor of California, attending the ceremony. To facilitate the building beginning on the West Coast, Central Pacific had shipped many parts from the East Coast, aboard ships. Some engines and cars had to be dismantled for boat transport and then reassembled in the Sacramento shipyards.

Because of a few difficulties, including funding and (most prominently) the Civil War, Union Pacific started two years later, in July of 1865.

Both railroads used the same gauge (distance between the wheels), 4 feet, 8.5 inches. Tracks were laid to accommodate that gauge.

Survey teams set out to find the most suitable routes, indicating which waterways would have to be crossed, which hills would have to be cut, and which mountains would require tunnels to get through. Engineers provided advice on how to make the most of the terrain and the available technology.

Laying track was not the easiest job in the world, and thousands of Americans, Chinese, and Irish workers labored to build the railroad. Workers had to dig the rail bed, then lay in wood and the rails and surrounding materials. Workers had to blast tunnels through the mountains, eventually using dynamite, invented by Alfred Nobel in 1867. Central Pacific built 15 tunnels on its route, the longest 1659 feet in length. Construction was especially slow going in the mountains. The route wound through a low pass, but the route still went through the Sierra Nevada Mountains. To keep work going through the winter, workers built dozens of miles of huge wooden show sheds to cover the tracks; as a result, avalanches and snow drifts blew over the wooden "rooves" and didn't cover the tracks or the workers laying them down underneath.

Laying track across flatter ground was less time-consuming. One Central Pacific crew laid 10 miles of track in one day.

Many other jobs were required as well. Cooks were needed to prepare food for the laborers, who also needed somewhere to live and acquire provisions. Blacksmiths were needed, as were carpenters and clothing manufacturers and repairers. Also necessary were medical teams: accidents were not uncommon.

One prime obstacle to the building of the Transcontinental Railroad was the wildlife living on the Great Plains. Cows and bison were two of the prime animal constraints, so much so that early train engines were fitted with a pointed wedge of iron bars called a "cow catcher," which helped move a cow (or a bison or any other kind of large animal) off the tracks without causing harm.

Rail crews found resistance from Native Americans, as well. In the same way that the Westward Movement disrupted Native American tribes and lands, the building of the Transcontinental Railroad solidified the European settlers' growing sway over the Great Plains. Frustrated Native Americans robbed rail crews of their livestock, time and again. Raids on rail-building crews were not uncommon. More frequent were raids on surveyors, who went out in advance of the track-laying crews and were more vulnerable as a result. In 1867, a Cheyenne tribe sabotaged part of the rail line, resulting in the deaths of several workers aboard a handcar. A year later, Sioux raiders dismantled rail lines, resulting in a derailment and several deaths.

Not all Native American tribes were hostile to the coming of the railroad, however. Pawnee welcomed the railroad (not the least because they wanted support against their enemy the Sioux). Relations between members of the Pawnee tribe and Union Pacific crews were so good that the Native Americans provided a security patrol as the rail line was built through Sioux land.

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The Transcontinental Railroad was a dream come true for many businesspeople and politicians in America, providing a link for goods and communication from the East Coast to the West Coast. The Golden Spike was struck in 1869, but planning for the coast-to-coast route began much earlier.

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THE CALIFORNIA GOLD RUSH
In 1848, gold was discovered in California, bringing a flood of fortune seekers. Thousands were Chinese. Many of them-or their sons-would work on the Central Pacific Railroad.

THE IRISH POTATO FAMINE
Ireland's potato crop was destroyed by a disease in the 1840s, causing a great famine. Millions of Irish fled to the U.S. They became the backbone of the Union Pacific workforce.

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THE CALIFORNIA GOLD RUSH In 1848, gold was discovered in California, bringing a flood of fortune seekers. Thousands were Chinese. Many of them-or their sons-would work on the Central Pacific Railroad. THE IRISH POTATO FAMINE Ireland's potato crop was destroyed by a disease in the 1840s, causing a great famine.

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The California Gold Rush cartoon 1849 (The Wild West)

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From California Gold Book: First Nugget, Its Discovery and Discoverers, by W.W. Allen and R.B. Avery, 1893

Early in 1848 James W. Marshall, a carpenter from New Jersey, picked up some glittering flakes from the American River at the site of a sawmill he was building near Coloma, California. He gathered up the pieces and sped to the office of the mill's owner, John Sutter. Urging Sutter to secrecy, Marshall showed him his findings. Sutter tested the flakes and confirmed Marshall's suspicion: gold had been found in California. Within months, Marshall's discovery was made public, bringing a flood of fortune seekers to the region. The California Gold Rush would transform California and fuel the westward push of the United States.

In the years that followed Marshall's discovery, California's population exploded. The promise of wealth and a new life lured people from around the world to California. American gold seekers traveled west from the Eastern states, migrating in such vast numbers that their passage stimulated advancements in transcontinental travel. People of diverse backgrounds and ethnicities came to California, selling their property and getting loans to afford the journey. Along the way, they risked danger and disease for a chance at gaining riches.

In 1849 alone, $10 million worth of gold was pulled from the ground, and over the next few years this number grew. In view of the huge amounts of money that could be made, and the rising lawlessness in mining settlements, politicians pushed to speed up the process of statehood. In 1850 California became the 31st state. The Gold Rush peaked in 1852, when $81 million worth of gold was extracted in California. Afterward, the number slowly declined. By the end of the 1850s the Gold Rush was over, but its legacy would continue to influence California-and the country-in the years to come.

Word of Marshall's find was carried by overland travelers and by ships that stopped at the California coast. The earliest gold seekers came from Oregon, Mexico, and South America, especially Chile and Peru. Then news spread across the Pacific, drawing hopeful miners from the Sandwich Islands (now Hawaii), China, and Australia. Later they were joined by Europeans, particularly from Germany, Ireland, and France.

Back in the United States, the first accounts of California gold in East Coast newspapers were skeptical. It was not until President James K. Polk confirmed the early discoveries in late 1848 that the Gold Rush ignited in the United States. The tens of thousands who rushed to California in 1849 came to be called the Forty-niners. Altogether, they numbered about 80,000. By 1853 the number of fortune seekers would rise to 250,000.

Women on the Goldfields
About 95 percent of the Forty-niners were men, typically white men from the Eastern states. Married men usually left their families at home in the East, with the promise of returning with riches. In 1850 women made up less than 10 percent of California's population.

Despite their small numbers, women participated in the Gold Rush in many ways. Because many of the men who came west were accustomed to having their wives clean and cook for them, they paid women to perform these tasks. Some women made a living by running boardinghouses, where they housed and cooked for miners. With so few women in California, those who did live there found their skills and company to be in high demand.

Gold Rush women were divided socially and labeled as either "bad" or "good." They were held to a different moral standard than men. Women who had nontraditional lifestyles or jobs were thought of as immoral and labeled "bad." One of the most famous "bad" women of the Gold Rush was Miss Ah Toy, a Chinese prostitute and businesswoman who lived in San Francisco.

American Indians
The influx of gold seekers had serious consequences for the many Native American peoples of California. The people whose ancestors had lived on the land for thousands of years shared little of the prosperity brought to California by the Gold Rush. Many American Indians were involved in the Gold Rush from its earliest days but were mistreated by white settlers and forced to work for them.

California's Indians were devastated by the many diseases that were brought by migrants during the late 1840s and throughout the 1850s. Smallpox, measles, and cholera spread quickly because the Indians had no immunity to them. Before the Gold Rush, Indians made up most of California's population, numbering about 150,000. By 1870, however, only 30,000 Indians remained. It has been estimated that disease was responsible for 60 percent of the American Indian population losses during the mid-1800s. Those who survived still felt the impact of the Gold Rush. The settlements that arose and the environmental impact of gold mining made traditional Native American lifestyles very difficult or impossible to maintain.

Whether coming from within the United States or from abroad, those who made the journey to California faced many risks. There were a number of routes to take to California. Chinese miners sailed across the Pacific Ocean, spending up to two months making the trip in small boats. The three main routes used by American gold seekers were the Oregon-California Trail, the Cape Horn route, and the Panama shortcut.

None of the routes to California was free from challenges or expense. Trips could cost $400 or more (a substantial sum at the time) and lasted several months. Each of the routes attracted a different demographic of gold seekers. Those traveling with families usually made the journey overland because it was too expensive or too cramped to do so on a ship. People traveling overland could expect six months of hardship and many unpredictable accidents along the way. Thousands of people died before reaching their destination. The sea voyage around Cape Horn could last up to eight months. Although the route through Panama offered the shortest travel time (as little as a month), it required braving the many threats of the Panama jungle.

The Oregon-California Trail
The Oregon-California Trail stretched more than 2,000 miles (3,200 kilometers) from Missouri to Oregon and California. By wagon, the journey could take upwards of six months to complete. The starting point of the trail was Independence, Missouri. Heavy wagons pulled by oxen, mules, or horses usually set off in wagon trains. These were groups of wagons that made the long, hard journey together. Banding together as a team offered advantages in terms of safety along the trail. A large wagon train could intimidate bandits or hostile American Indians who might consider attacking a lone wagon.

People in wagon trains also relied on each other for support when problems arose. The varied terrain across the country was a constant challenge for travelers. In wagon trains people could share supplies or lend a hand pushing the wagon or carrying loads across tough passes. In good conditions, a wagon could cover 12 to 20 miles (19 to 32 kilometers) in a day. However, if the roads were muddy or there were rivers to cross, they were lucky to cover 5 miles (8 kilometers). Other difficulties of the journey included accidents and illness. Among the common trail diseases were cholera, smallpox, tuberculosis, diphtheria, typhoid fever, and scurvy.

Despite the many dangers along the way, by the end of 1849 more than 6,000 wagons carrying 40,000 people had traveled to California across the Oregon-California Trail.

The Cape Horn Route
The longest route to California was the sea voyage around Cape Horn, at the southern tip of South America. Gold seekers first boarded a ship on the East Coast of the United States, in New York City or Boston, Massachusetts. The ship traveled south around Cape Horn and then north to California, where passengers would get off at San Francisco. The voyage took about six months. The Cape Horn route covered 18,000 nautical miles (33,000 kilometers). During this lengthy trip, passengers faced illness, hunger, and poor nutrition. Ships traveling the Cape Horn route were often very crowded, which caused sickness to spread quickly.

The Panama Shortcut
A third route involved both sea and overland travel. The first step of the journey was to board a ship departing from the East Coast of the United States and sailing to the Atlantic coast of Panama, in Central America. Then travelers crossed the Isthmus of Panama, the strip of land that connects North America and South America. They canoed up the Chagres River, in central Panama. Then they rode a mule through the jungle to reach Panama City on the Pacific coast. There they boarded a ship to San Francisco.

By taking the Panama shortcut, gold seekers could cut about 8,000 miles (13,000 kilometers) and a few months off the Cape Horn route. Unfortunately, the advantages of the Panama shortcut came at a very steep price. Diseases such as yellow fever and malaria were a huge threat to travelers through Panama.

Transcontinental Travel
The huge demand for transportation to California gave rise to important developments in transcontinental travel. The influx of travelers through Panama inspired the creation of the Panama Railroad. Stretching from the Atlantic coast to the Pacific, it was the world's first transcontinental railroad. Construction began in 1850 and was completed five years later. In 1863, a few years after the end of the Gold Rush, workers began building the first transcontinental railroad in the United States. It was completed in 1869. When the Panama Canal was built in the early 20th century, it closely followed the route of the Panama Railroad. Though only about 51 miles (82 kilometers) long, the canal had a huge impact on world trade.

The drive to get to California as quickly as possible was spurred by the fact that people were claiming mining territories on a first-come-first-served basis. Before it achieved statehood, California had no laws or government. In 1848 there was also no federal law to regulate mining. People came to California thinking that gold was free for the taking.

Rules about rights to property and how miners interacted were governed by a miners' code. This code was a system for managing property rights through the staking of claims. Miners did not own the property they claimed. However, the first person to get to a site, discover gold, and mine it was entitled to the gold he found. A person could maintain his claim to a site only if he notified other miners that it belonged to him. A miner's claim to a site lasted only as long as the miner continued to work it. If a person left his mining site, he lost his claim to it. The site was considered free to be claimed by a new miner. Taking over a marked site that was not being worked was called "claim jumping."

Miners usually claimed a site and left within a short period of time. The California Gold Rush was truly a race to find the site that would yield the most gold. Since no one knew exactly where the gold was or how much could be found, a miner would typically abandon an unproductive site quickly and then claim another.

Mining Towns
As mining camps began to form, each district established a set of rules. Without a government or other authority to enforce these rules, however, property claims were not very secure. The miners' code worked only if people were willing to follow it. Many property rights were maintained only with the threat of violence, and disputes over claims were frequently settled with weapons rather than diplomacy. California's mining districts were thought of as lawless, violent, and immoral places.

Many men came to California with the attitude that the laws that governed their behavior at home did not apply to them out west. Miners could spend 12 to 16 hours a day, six days a week doing hard physical labor at their claim sites. They spent their Sundays off in mining towns, playing as hard as they worked. Alcohol was readily available in mining towns and so was opium. Without authorities to keep people in check, drunken bar brawls and petty fights could end in murder. Mining towns also presented men with plenty of opportunities to gamble.

Men in mining towns outnumbered women nine to one. The lack of women meant that mining town society was rougher and rowdier than in the East. Mining towns were, however, far more ethnically diverse than most towns in the United States during the mid-1800s. Chinese, Mexican, African American, and American Indian people interacted with each other and with white Americans to a degree that was unmatched in the East. Prejudice and racism were common, however, and some of the violence that occurred in mining towns was racially driven.

Racial Discrimination and Violence
By early 1849 an estimated 6,000 Mexicans had come to California seeking gold. California had been part of Mexico until the United States took control at the end of the Mexican-American War just a year earlier. Nevertheless, Mexican miners were treated as outsiders and often suffered discrimination. The tension between Mexican and American miners was heightened by the fact that many Mexican miners were more experienced and successful than the Americans. In 1850 California passed a Foreign Miners Tax, which forced non-American miners to pay $20 a month to the state. This tax targeted Mexican miners in an effort to drive them out of California.

In 1852 the government imposed a new Foreign Miners Tax, this time aimed at removing the Chinese. Many people had left China because of the poor economic conditions that followed the first Opium War (1839-42). The number of Chinese immigrants grew so much during the 1850s that they made up a fifth of the population in California's mining towns.

Some African American Forty-niners arrived in California as free people looking to make their own fortunes. Others were slaves brought by their owners. Free African American miners did not have full rights as American citizens and were often mistreated by white American miners. In 1850 California joined the Union as a free state, and many slaves gained their freedom. Nevertheless, slavery continued in some areas.

In 1848 American Indians made up about half of the gold diggers in California. They were expected to perform the hardest labor for the lowest price. In 1850 the California legislature passed the Act for the Government and Protection of Indians. The act created a list of American Indian crimes and punishments and denied Indians the right to testify in court. Under the terms of the act, American Indians could be seized and forced to do involuntary labor. In effect, the act allowed white people to enslave Indians. An amendment to the act in 1860 allowed whites to take orphaned Indian children as slaves and force them to serve until they reached 35 to 40 years of age.

The Indians suffered the worst of the racial violence that occurred during the Gold Rush. When the Forty-niners flooded California, they overran Indian lands. Most white Americans felt that the Indians stood in the way of progress. They believed in Manifest Destiny-the idea that it was their divine right and duty to spread Protestant and democratic ideals across the continent. Indian communities were attacked by groups of miners who wanted to stake claims on their land. In some instances, entire villages were murdered. Many Indians were forced to march to reservations, where conditions were dismal and many people starved.

Tragically, the abuse of American Indians was widely accepted and even encouraged. In certain California districts, miners were paid for Indians' body parts and scalps. The popular attitude among whites was that Indian lives were worthless. Gold Rush miners did not just deny American Indians their right to land, they denied their right to life. The belief in white superiority and Manifest Destiny was supported by the U.S. government's brutal treatment of American Indians across the country.

Immigrants and American settlers were lured west by newspaper advertisements claiming that California was a land of "inexhaustible gold mines" where anybody could strike it rich. These ads often made light of the challenges that miners would face when they arrived. Few of the people who came to California were prepared for the grueling realities of gold mining. Some men spent hours standing knee-deep in frigid creeks as they hopefully panned for gold. Others faced extreme risks digging and blasting for gold. Most of the Forty-niners had no mining experience or skills and had to learn through trial and error. Even with very hard work, few miners actually achieved the success they dreamed of.

During the 1850s the amount of available gold began to decline. New mining techniques evolved to reach the gold that remained further below the surface. As mining technology advanced, the character of gold mining in California changed. Mining by individuals who worked their own claims was replaced by large-scale industrial mining. Rather than seeking their own fortunes, miners were hired to work in mines owned by corporations. The new mining techniques employed by these companies had a devastating impact on California's environment and landscape.

Early Techniques
Panning was the simplest way of collecting gold. It involved scooping soil or gravel from the bottom of a stream into a shallow pan. The miner would then swirl the water in the pan so that the heavier pieces of gold would sink to the bottom while the lighter material-dirt and gravel-would come to the surface. The miner tilted the pan to allow the dirt and gravel to wash away, leaving only the gold behind. Panning was the slowest and least effective method of collecting gold. Miners could typically get through 50 pans in a day and collect only a small amount of gold.

The rocker, or cradle, was a machine developed to speed up this process. A rocker was a long wooden box mounted on two curved pieces of wood similar to the curved runners of a rocking chair or baby's cradle. The box was set at a downward angle. The miner shoveled dirt into the box and then poured water over it. The material was sifted by rocking the box from side to side. As the material was washed along, barriers called riffles captured pieces of gold, which were then collected by hand.

Later devices used the same concept as the rocker but improved on it. The long tom was bigger than the rocker and therefore could handle more material. It also contained a sheet of metal with holes in it to aid the sifting process. The long tom evolved into the sluice box, an even longer version of the same device. A sluice box was placed in a running stream, making it more efficient than devices in which water had to be supplied by hand.

Hydraulic Mining
Hydraulic mining involved using jets of water to break apart hard rock to reach the gold ore inside. The water was piped through a hose and blasted out through a nozzle. The powerful stream was shot at a hillside, breaking the hard rock into pieces. The water and blasted rock flowed through sluice boxes to collect the gold. The unwanted material was washed or dumped into nearby streams and rivers.

Hydraulic mining permanently changed the landscape of northern California. The debris left behind from blasting the Sierra Nevada mountains clogged rivers and streams flowing toward San Francisco Bay. Along with blocking navigation on these rivers, the debris caused them to frequently overflow their banks. Flooding spread silt and sand over farmland in the Sacramento Valley, which was disastrous for many farmers. Mining debris also killed wildlife in the rivers and upset the natural balance of ecosystems.

Hydraulic mining was very profitable, and for some time the environmental damage it caused was overlooked because of the gold that it yielded. In time, however, the mounting issues it created led to an outcry against its use. Hydraulic mining was eventually ended as it became too problematic and too expensive.

The Gold Rush transformed the people, culture, economy, and landscape of California in profound ways. California was rapidly converted from a rural, inaccessible region to a populous territory filled with booming towns and cities. The Gold Rush spurred advancements in transportation, which made transcontinental travel in the United States easier than ever before. The influx of immigrants to California made it a place of multiculturalism and ethnic diversity.

In the years that followed the Gold Rush, the period and the changes it brought about were somewhat romanticized by white Americans. This chapter of U.S. history was often told as the story of single, white, American men risking everything to go west and claim their fortunes. The American miners were portrayed as daring, hardworking, and admirable symbols of Manifest Destiny. However, white American miners represented only one version of the Gold Rush story.

Alternative Perspectives
For many white Americans, the Gold Rush represented the fulfillment of Manifest Destiny. The West was "civilized" according to the common ideals of their society at the time: the American Indians were almost entirely removed, the environment was dominated and its resources plundered, and the American way of life was spread from coast to coast.

To understand the Gold Rush more fully, however, it is necessary to acknowledge alternative perspectives on the era. The discovery of gold in California fueled the region's growth and economy. However, destructive mining techniques permanently damaged the environment. The Gold Rush drew enormous numbers of immigrants from around the world, making California one of the most culturally diverse places in the United States. However, competition between ethnic groups gave rise to oppression and violence.

Government-sanctioned discrimination against Mexican and Chinese miners and the exploitation of American Indians are clear evidence that the period was not a golden age for everyone involved. Discriminatory laws against immigrant miners and the taxes that were demanded of them illustrate how minority groups were denied social, political, and economic equality. For California's Indians in particular, the Gold Rush was a tragedy. In the stampede to stake claims, Indians were systematically murdered and driven off their lands. Diseases wreaked havoc on their populations, and laws allowed white Americans to enslave them. The romanticized picture of the era has to be balanced with the viewpoints of the Indians and other groups who suffered because of the miners' lust for gold.

The Slavery Question and the Civil War
The Gold Rush, and the growth it brought, thrust California into the heated national debate over slavery. At the start of the 1850s, the African American population in California numbered fewer than 1,000. Nevertheless, California's position regarding slavery would weigh heavily in the tense relationship between the Northern and Southern states.

On September 9, 1850, California joined the United States as the 31st state. The process of granting statehood to California had been accelerated in light of the population explosion brought on by the Gold Rush. Another factor was the lawlessness that was growing there in the absence of an official state government. Although there was much momentum to bring California into the Union, there was also much controversy over its status in regard to slavery. At the time, the country had equal numbers of free states, where slavery was illegal, and slave states, where slavery was allowed. California petitioned Congress to enter the Union as a free state, which would have upset the balance of free and slave states. The dispute threatened to break up the Union.

After months of debate, Congress finally passed the Compromise of 1850. The South agreed to allow California to enter the Union as a free state and accepted the prohibition of the slave trade in the District of Columbia. In return, the North allowed New Mexico and Utah to organize as territories with no mention of slavery and gave the South a stronger fugitive slave law.

The Compromise of 1850 postponed but could not prevent war between the North and the South. After the American Civil War began in 1861, California's gold proved to be an important resource for the Union. In that time of crisis, gold shipments from the Sierra Nevada funded the U.S. government and its war effort. This contribution to the Union victory was yet another legacy of the Gold Rush.

Benoit, Peter. The California Gold Rush. New York, NY: Children's Press, 2013.Collins, Terry. Stake a Claim!: Nickolas Flux and the California Gold Rush. Mankato, MN: Capstone Press, 2014.Hall, Brianna. Strike It Rich! The Story of the California Gold Rush. Mankato, MN: Capstone Press, 2015.Maxwell-Long, Thomas. Daily Life During the California Gold Rush. Santa Barbara, CA: Greenwood Publishing Group, Inc., 2014.Micklos, John, Jr. A Primary Source History of the Gold Rush. Mankato, MN: Capstone Press, 2016.Onsgard, Bethany. Life During the California Gold Rush. Minneapolis, MN: Core Library, 2015.Raum, Elizabeth. The California Gold Rush: An Interactive History Adventure. Mankato, MN: Capstone Press, 2016.

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Early in 1848 James W. Marshall, a carpenter from New Jersey, picked up some glittering flakes from the American River at the site of a sawmill he was building near Coloma,...

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The Gold Rush | The West | PBS LearningMedia

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In 1848, pioneer John Sutter uncovered America's first "motherlode" of gold in California, a discovery that transformed the landscape, the locals, and the lives of those who went West to seek their fortunes. In this activity, students will learn about the environmental and social changes brought about by the Gold Rush, and the experiences of white, African-American, Chinese, and Cherokee gold-seekers.

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Gold Rush Lesson for Kids: History & Facts - Video & Lesson Transcript | Study.com

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The Gold Rush in the mid-1800s brought many people to California who thought they could find gold and get rich. Discover how the California Gold...

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In 1848, James Wilson Marshall, a carpenter from New Jersey, found flakes of gold in a river near Sacramento, California. He was building a saw mill for John Sutter. Although Sutter and Marshall tried to keep the find a secret, word quickly got out when Sam Brannon, a local shopkeeper, marched through town carrying a vial filled with gold flakes from Sutter's Mill.

Within a year, thousands of men poured into the area. Initially, they arrived from other places in the west, including Oregon and Hawaii. Over time, word spread to the eastern United States. Men left their homes and families to seek their fortunes.
Fun Facts

Between 1848 and 1849, the population of California grew by over 100,000.

Gold mining towns sprang up to take care of the miners. The towns had stores, saloons, and hotels. Few women and children lived here. The towns were often rough and lawless.

Over 750 pounds of gold were taken out of the ground during the California Gold Rush - more than $2 billion worth.

By the mid-1850s, the Gold Rush was over, but people still came to California. In 1850, California became the 31st

California wasn't the only place where people went looking for gold. Gold was discovered in Colorado in 1859, almost 10 years after the Colorado Gold Rush. Thousands of miners flocked to Colorado, creating the cities of Denver and Boulder, as well as smaller mining towns in the mountains. Some of these towns, like Idaho Springs and Central City, are still around. Others are ghost towns.

In 1896, three men discovered gold in a creek in Dawson, Canada, a remote area near Alaska. Few people knew about the discovery until a steamer ship arrived in Seattle carrying more than a ton of gold. Then, the Klondike Gold Rush started! More than 100,000 men began the journey to the Yukon, but only 30,000 made it. The journey was very difficult. Many died from starvation, illness, or injury along the way. Those that did make it found that most of the gold mines had been claimed.

Vocabulary

1. Saw mill: a factory capable of turning raw lumber into boards for building

2. Vial: a small tube or container, usually made of glass

3. Lawless: uncivilized, violent, without order

Questions and Answers
Question: Did a lot of people become rich looking for gold?

Answer: No. Most of the men who traveled to find gold ended up working for the men who owned the mines. Mining was hard, dangerous work and while these workers received fair wages, they certainly didn't become wealthy. Both men and women became wealthy by being savvy business owners. Instead of looking for gold, they set up hotels, dance halls, and other businesses needed by the miners.
Learn More
Visit Scholastic for a printable mini-book about the California Gold Rush.

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Fun Gold Rush Facts for Kids - American History

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In 1848, James Wilson Marshall, a carpenter from New Jersey, found flakes of gold in a river near Sacramento, California. He was building a saw mill for John Sutter. Although Sutter and Marshall tried to keep the find a secret, word quickly got out when Sam Brannon, a local shopkeeper, marched through town carrying a vial filled with gold flakes from Sutter's Mill.

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Close your eyes and imagine you are standing up to your knees in a cold river. The water is rushing around you. You see a fish swim by. Your feet crunch in the rocks as you walk around. Above you the sky is clear and blue. You are holding a metal panel. You dip it down into the water and scrape it along the bottom, picking up rocks and small gravel. After lifting it out of the water, you sift out the larger rocks and swirl it around, looking very closely at the minerals in the water. You swirl it again and then you see it, a glint of something shiny. You reach down in the water and pick it up. Sure enough, it's a gold nugget! You hold it up in the air and shout "I found one, I found one." Your friends nearby see it and congratulate you. You've found gold!

In 1848 in California in the United States a man named John Sutter was building a sawmill. Sutter had hired several workers to help him build the sawmill along the American River in the foothills of the Sierra Nevada mountains. One of the workers, James Marshall, was looking into the water when suddenly he saw something shiny. He got down into the water to look closer and noticed a small gold rock. He showed it to the other workers. Could it be real gold or was it just fools gold, also known as pyrite? James and the others spent the rest of the day testing the rock to see if it was real gold. To their surprise, the rock he found was actual gold!

Gold is special for many reasons. First, it's not like most metals, which are gray. It's a shiny, beautiful color that is perfect for making jewelry. It is also soft, but doesn't break apart when shaped by tools. Gold also lasts a very long time and does not rust in water.

When John Sutter realized it was real gold he was worried for a couple reasons. One was that he didn't own the land he was building the sawmill on, so he needed to find a way to buy it quickly so he could own the gold on it, too. The second reason was that once others found out gold was near his land, everyone would rush there to try and mine it, too.

Sutter made deals with the local Native Americans until he owned the land, but the way he went about it wasn't fair. And even though he tried to keep it a secret, his workers started telling their friends. Before long word spread about gold in California. A newspaper headline in San Francisco read: "Gold Mine Found." At this time not very many people lived in California, but with news spreading about gold that would change very quickly. This is called a gold rush. This wasn't the first time a gold rush happened in the United States or other places in the world. In North Carolina in 1799 a young boy found a 17-pound gold nugget near his home. This led to a gold rush there. Later there was a gold rush in the Appalachian Mountains and after the Caifornia gold rush there would be one in Alaska.

As word about gold in California spread across the United States, people started travelling from all around eager to become rich. Someone searching for gold is called a "prospector." Prospectors travelled to California by land and by sea. Going by land was the cheapest way to go, but was also the longest trip, taking 7 months. Prospectors joined groups of wagons called wagon trains and used the Oregon, California and Santa Fe Trails to get there. Going by land was very dangerous. They often ran out of water, got diseases, or ran into trouble with Native Americans who didn't want them on their land.

The more expensive, but faster way to travel to California, was by sea. Prospectors usually left from New York or Boston and either went all the way around the tip of South America at Cape Horn, which took five or six months, or they took a ship to the Isthmus of Panama. From there they crossed the land at the isthmus (a narrow neck of land) in a wagon, then they boarded a second ship and took it north to California. This was the fastest way to go, but was also dangerous. Prospectors travelling through the jungles of Panama often caught malaria or Yellow Fever along the way.

Once prospectors reached San Francisco, California they usually bought mining supplies and all of the other gear they needed to mine gold. These tools included a knife, a pick to break rocks, a shovel, a round tin pan for panning for gold, a rocker, a tent, and food needed to survive. As more miners came through San Francisco, the town began to grow. More people build stores there to sell tools and other supplies. They also built hotels and places for entertainment to accommodate the prospectors passing through.

From San Francisco, prospectors travelled another 140 miles into California before they started searching for gold. They usually looked in streams first, using pans to dig up the loose rock and sift through it for flakes of gold. This is called panning for gold. Once the prospector found a spot worth mining they would "stake their claim," which means reserve it for themselves. Panning for gold was very hard work. Their beards grew long, they became very dirty doing the work, and often the food didn't give them good nutrition. Many prospectors who travelled all the way to California, and spent all of their money to get there, never found any gold.

The other name for prospectors in California was a "49er," because the year was 1849. You may have also heard of the team the San Francisco 49ers, which comes from the prospectors who brought fame and more people to California.

The 49ers who did discover gold took it to cities like Stockton or Sacramento or all the way back to San Francisco to have their gold weighed and sold to the bank. These towns began to grow because prospectors wanted a comfortable place to stay, good food to eat, and entertainment after living out in the wild for so long. In 1849 San Francisco went from having 150 people living there to 6,000! Five years later 50,000 people lived there! It also became known as the Golden Gate, which the Golden Gate Bridge is named after.

Towns nearby the gold became known as "boomtowns." They were wild, rowdy places where prospectors went for entertainment and to spend the money they earned from mining gold.

Many miners were unlucky and never became rich during the gold rush, but some did. One of those was John Bidwell. He eventually found $2.5 million dollars worth of gold in today's money and 600 miners worked there in what became known as Bidwell's Bar. Brothers John and Daniel Murthy also became very wealthy along with John Fremont. Most people never found large amounts of gold, but instead just small amounts in rivers. But some people became very wealthy not by mining gold, but by building stores and hotels and other businesses to support all of the prospectors coming into San Francisco.

If you've ever worn jeans, they became very popular in San Francisco at this time. In 1850 a German businessman named Levi Strauss moved there to start selling his pants. They were made of denim and had pockets and lasted longer than cotton pants. They later became known as Levis and are still a popular jean company today.

Ghihardelli Chocolate Company also started in San Francisco during the gold rush and has been in business for more than 160 years. Our family loves their chocolate chips and if you ever visit San Francisco today be sure to get ice cream with their chocolate topping there.

Once most of the gold nuggets and flakes in rivers had been discovered, miners had to start digging down into the earth to get it. These are called gold deposits. Miners had to tunnel down to get the ore, which is the hard rock with veins of gold inside it. Tunnels were dug and dynamite was used to break up the rock. Mining was very dangerous. Workers went deep into the ground using elevators, which often broke. The air was poor underground and sometimes there were cave-ins. The mining was also bad for the land and water in many of these places. A chemical called mercury was used to separate gold from rock dust. The mercury was poisonous to the miners and much of it got washed into the rivers and killed fish and other animals. Farmland was also destroyed as miners chipped away at the earth. Laws had to be passed to protect the land. The gold rush also caused people to leave other work such as farming and shipping. The other problem was more people moved into California and Native Americans who had lived there for generations were forced off their land onto reservations.

Over time it became harder to find gold, so prospectors left California for other places. Silver had been discovered in Nevada, so many of them moved there or just decided to do something else with their life. With this, many of the boomtowns turned into what became known as "ghost towns." This just means that people no longer needed the town, so the buildings were left unmaintained and grew old and fell apart.

But even though the gold rush was over, the United States would forever be changed. San Franscico became a big city with over 50,000 people living there. While the United States had mostly been populated in the East, it now reached from East to West, from the Atlantic Ocean to the Pacific Ocean. Today almost a million people live in San Francisco and since the advent of the Internet it has seen its success in software as people move to the Bay Area and Silicon Valley to work for large tech companies such as Google, Apple and Facebook.

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California Gold Rush For Kids - Bedtime History Podcast

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Close your eyes and imagine you are standing up to your knees in a cold river. The water is rushing around you. You see a fish swim by. Your feet crunch in the rocks as you walk around. Above you the sky is clear and blue. You are holding a metal panel. You dip it … Continue reading “California Gold…

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In 1848, people found gold in the Sacramento Valley.

The California Gold Rush was started by the discovery of gold in 1848.

Thousands of people came to this area looking for money.

In total, $2 billion in precious metal was extracted from the area by 1849.

Before gold was found, the US had been fighting for two years with Mexico. In 1848, the US won, and they got control of California. People didn't know that gold had been found in a sawmill near Coloma. Keep reading to learn more California Gold Rush facts.

California Gold Rush: The Discovery of Gold

John Sutter was a Swiss immigrant. He had come to California back in 1839. He had a dream about starting an agricultural empire. In 1848, he needed lumber, so he asked James Marshall to build a sawmill on the river's South Fork.

Marshall found gold while at the sawmill and told his boss, John Sutter. They both tried to keep it quiet, but word leaked out quickly about gold being found nearby.

People wanted this golden metal for themselves and started looking for it everywhere they could think of, which led to many discoveries that made them very happy!

Sam Brannan

Nearly everyone went to the sawmill. But one enterprising merchant had a better idea.

Sam Brannan was a Mormon. He came to California, and he found mining supplies. He put them in his store at Sutter's Fort. He also filled the store with buckets, pans, heavy clothing, foodstuffs, and other provisions for mining people.

John Brannan took a gold bottle full of flakes and went to the city, San Francisco. He walked up and down the streets with the gold floating above his head. He shouted, "Gold! Gold! Gold in the American River!"

The next day, San Francisco was deserted. The town's newspaper wrote about San Francisco as a "ghost town." Sam Brannan became California's first millionaire by selling supplies to the miners as they passed by Sutter's Fort. The Gold Rush was growing!

News Spread

Colonel Richard B. Mason, who was a military governor, wrote a report about the goldfields. It had very surprising facts: Two miners on Weber Creek found $17,000 worth of gold in 7 days. Six miners with 50 Indians found 273 pounds of gold at the same time. Sales at Sam Brannan's store, which was near the mines, ended up being more than $36,000 USD. Mason sent his report together with a tin of gold to Washington.

Prospectors traveled about Cape Horn from the East, or they might have risked illness crossing the Isthmus of Panama. The most tenacious trekked 2,000 miles via land to get there, and cholera proved a far more deadly killer than the Native Americans.

The news of the gold reached the coast of California by boat. Thousands of people from Hawaii, Oregon, Mexico, Chile, Peru, and China visited California. This was before the East Coast population learning what would happen. People in Europe soon followed.

On the East Coast, newspapers first published accounts of the gold discovery in 1848. The editors were not sure about the idea of doing something that happened in California. But many people wrote letters about it. President James K. Polk talked about Colonel Mason's report in his State of the Union address on December 5, 1848. Americans became believers after that.

Many people in the US borrowed money, mortgaged their homes, or spent their life savings on buying gold. It was very appealing because people are lucky if they have a job.

Women during the California Gold Rush

American women, including Luzena Wilson, went to California. But most women stayed home. These women had to take on responsibilities they had never anticipated, such as caring for their families alone and running farms by themselves when their husbands went away.

In 1850, three percent of the people in California's mining region were women. There were 800 immigrant women on a ship of 30,000 men.

Before 1849, California's Constitution said that if a woman was married, she had to share her property with her husband. But in 1849, this changed so that they could own their property and not have to share it with their husband.

Women came to California from many countries: Chile, Peru, Mexico, and China. Dame Shirley, the author, whose real name was Louise Amelia Knapp Smith Clapp, wrote about the mining camps. She noted that a woman made USD 100 a month washing clothes there.

Mexican ladies in Sonora sold tortillas and tamales on the street. For sitting near a client, a French girl was rewarded with an ounce of gold. A Swiss woman who worked with an organ grinder made over $4,000 in a few months.

Population Increases

By the end of 1848, 4,000 people had arrived in the gold region, and by the end of that year, about 80,000 "forty-niners" (as the fortune seekers of 1849 were known) had come to California.

California became a state in 1849, with a constitution and government. The state formally joined the United States in 1850.

By 1853 250,000 people were living there. They had mined $2 billion worth of gold. But few people got rich because the work was hard, prices were high, and living conditions were not good.

The Routes to California

The easterners who had arrived in California or Oregon began going to the western Sierras. However, it was December 1848 before President James Polk officially informed Congress of the findings, which meant that travelers from the East were unable to start a trip. The largest migration in American history (25,000 people) was already underway by the spring of 1849.

The plains and desert in spring and summer were better than average, so the wave of emigrants was able to move along. But it still wasn't easy. Many livestock died.

The trip became harder as we went. There was less grass and clean water. Diseases like cholera got more people sick.

Native Americans had lived in the West for a long time without outside competition. But the pioneers' lust for wealth was hurting the indigenous people. They were consuming food, land, water, and space.

As a result of the Gold Rush, many new routes were established into California. With approximately 140,000 immigrants traveling via the California Trail between 1849 and 1854, routes were frequently modified or even abandoned.

The "Forty-Niners" in California Gold Rush

In 1849, 300,000 people came to California. They came in covered wagons and on horseback.

Some people who arrived that year were known as "forty-niners" because they began to arrive in 1849. The forty-niners used pans to extract gold from silt deposits around the river.

People came from other countries as well as the US. It was made easier because of better technology for trains and ships. They came to California and changed how it looked.

Though California had a lot of gold and people came to get rich, life as a forty-niner was difficult. A few prospectors found gold in the river. But most people did not find anything of value. Prospecting was hard work.

They did hard work from early morning to late at night. The hope of finding gold gave them a dream. If they didn't find gold, it wasn't a problem because they could do more hard work.

Anyone could find gold. No taxes were put on what they found. There were no towns or roads in the gold country.

Every miner was on his own, and nobody had to work for wages. But miners could get paid if they wanted. The spirit of entrepreneurship that we see in California today started in the gold mines in 1849.

Miners kept inventing faster, more destructive methods of finding gold. The land was ravaged.

Hillsides were washed away in the water. Towns downstream received a lot of mud. Water was poisoned with mercury, arsenic, cyanide, and other toxins. People cut down big forests of oak and pine trees to use for mining timbers.

Some of the miners from California liked it so much that they didn't go back. They sent for their families and found out that they could make a lot of money off of their farms.

Violence and Discrimination

The lack of housing, sanitation, and law enforcement in the mining camps and surrounding areas made a dangerous mix. The crime rates in the goldfields were very high.

People often took the law into their own hands. If there were no police, they would do what needed to be done themselves.

As more and more people came to the region, new towns were built. Towns like San Francisco grew quickly.

People did not want the Chinese and Latin American people to live in their town. The white people did not want them to live there because they thought it would be bad for their town.

In California, as the population grew, people became more and more anti-immigrant. The state government started taxing and making laws that targeted immigrants.

As more and more white people settled in America, the violence against Native Americans became worse. Peter Hardeman Burnett, the first governor of California, wanted to remove Native Americans. He was not pleasant to them, and he wanted them gone.

Under Burnett's leadership, the state of California paid money to white people in exchange for the scalps of Native Americans. The result of this was that people who lived in mines and farms formed vigilante groups to kill off California's native population. By 1890, they were almost gone.

Consequences

In California, the Gold Rush had a big effect. It lasted from 1848 to 1855.

It didn't take long to find all of the gold that was left in the dirt. As mining techniques became more complex, gold became a big business. As the mining industry grew, individual gold-diggers could not compete with how big it had become. The mines were just too big.
Read more about Westward Expansion
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California Gold Rush Facts and History - History for Kids

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In 1848, people found gold in the Sacramento Valley. The California Gold Rush was started by the discovery of gold in 1848. Thousands of people came to this area looking for money. In total, $2 billion in precious metal was extracted from the area by 1849.

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The California Gold Rush

The discovery of gold in California in the mid-19th Century ushered in one of the largest migrations in American history, as tens of thousands of hopeful, excited, and just plain desperate participated in the California Gold Rush.

It all began on January 24, 1848, on the South Fork of the American River, near what is now the California town of Coloma. John Sutter had hired a number of people to build a saw mill in the area, and James Marshall was one of the people doing the constructing. On that fateful day, Marshall saw tiny pieces of gold in the runoff millwater. He collected some of the gold pieces and showed them to Sutter, who swore Marshall to secrecy.

Despite this agreement, the story got out, possibly because Marshall wouldn't have been the only one to notice the gold in the millwater. Nevertheless, the story was soon a well-travelled one, with a publisher named Samuel Brannan soon walking up and down the streets of San Francisco holding a jar full of gold. The first major East Coast newspaper to report Marshall's discovery, the New York Herald, did so on August 19. President James K. Polk told the nation about the gold discovery in an address to Congress on December 5. Before long, the rush was on and '49ers, as they were called (after the year in which they set out, 1849), descended on California by the tens of thousands.

In 1849, the gold-motivated migrants numbered 80,000. Most of those were Americans in 1849, but the following few years saw gold-seekers come from all over the world. By 1856, more than 300,000 people had followed their gold dreams to what they hoped were the gold fields of California.

In the beginning, prospectors could find gold nuggets by sifting through the top one or two layers of dirt or in streams and riverbeds, using methods such as panning. As the gold supply dwindled and desire for gold increased, prospectors employed more sophisticated methods.

Many of the '49ers and other prospectors who came to California in search of a dream found they liked the place enough to stay. San Francisco went from an 1846 population of 200 to an 1852 population of 36,000. Other California cities and towns experienced similar growth. As a result, California became a state, in 1850, its infrastructure growing by leaps and bounds: Schools, churches, roads, and businesses rose from empty land, as many people found themselves earning a good living by providing goods and services to prospectors. Supply stores, warehouses, taverns, and hotels dotted the landscape, surrounding the areas where gold was known to be.

Modern-day estimates from the U.S. Government put the amount of gold discovered in the first five years of the California Gold Rush at 12 million ounces, worth more than $16 billion in today's dollars.

Many settlers made homes for themselves by displacing (and, in some cases, ending the lives of) Native Americans, continuing a Manifest Destiny trend that had begun in the East and continued in the Midwest and South.

Many others chasing their dreams found nothing but frustration. Many prospecting hopefuls spent all of the money that they had on the search for great wealth and ended up with none of their own. For many, the travel to California would have cost a steep price, especially if they had come from Latin America or Europe or China or Australia, as a great many did. The Americans who migrated westward generally crossed the Rocky Mountains or the Isthmus of Panama to get to gold country. People who came from other countries made great use of boats that docked in San Francisco and other, more southern ports.

The legality of various prospectors' claims to gold was not at all straightforward. When Marshall first found gold, on January 24, the land was still technically owned by Mexico, although that country had surrendered to U.S. forces, ending the Mexican-American War. The Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo, which officially ended the war, went into effect on February 2. Even then, California was under the control of the U.S. Military.

American soldiers did not roam the gold fields, however. The areas were largely self-policed, which allowed for all sorts of varied rules of law. As towns sprang up, rural law enforcement made its presence felt.

What this meant for the initial waves of prospectors, however, is that the gold was theirs for the taking, no questions asked, no taxes assessed, no price to be paid other than the hard labor expended to find the gold in the first place. Protecting that find proved problematic for many. The only real solution to the lawlessness that existed in some areas was the drying up of the gold deposits, making it unpalatable for anyone looking for quick and easy wealth.

The California Gold Rush was not kind to Sutter or Marshall, either. Unequipped with his own private security force, Sutter could do little to stem the tide of prospectors who camped on the land on which he had intended to complete his sawmill. He saw his dreams of an agriculture bonanza dry up in the dust left by prospectors' boots and horses' hooves. Marshall had little luck prospecting, either. Both men died poor and forgotten, except for the part that they played in setting off the Gold Rush in the first place.

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The California Gold Rush The discovery of gold in California in the mid-19th Century ushered in one of the largest migrations in American history, as tens of thousands of hopeful, excited, and just plain desperate participated in the California Gold Rush.

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Trail of Tears | We Shall Remain | PBS LearningMedia

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In this video segment adapted from American Experience: "We Shall Remain," reenactments help tell the story of how the Cherokee people were forced from their lands in the southeast. The U.S. government initially promised the Cherokee and other Native American tribes that if they could assimilate into European Americans lifestyles, they would be considered equals.

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In the 1830s the U.S. government took away the homelands of many Native American groups in the Southeast. It then forced them to move to lands west of the Mississippi River. Most of them had to walk all the way. This event is known as the Trail of Tears.

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The Trail of Tears was a forced movement of Native Americans in the United States between 1836 and 1839. The United States government forced Native Americans to leave their lands and move outside the United States. The U.S. then took over the Native Americans' land and made it available to mostly white settlers.

Because thousands of Native Americans died during this forced movement, it is called the "Trail of Tears."

In 1828, gold was found near Dahlonega in Georgia. This resulted in a gold rush. At that time, a Native American nation called the Cherokee lived in Georgia. Many Cherokee children went to American schools. The Cherokees had their own newspaper and built three-story houses. Some even owned slaves.

Even though the land belonged to the Cherokee Nation, President Andrew Jackson wanted this land to belong to the United States. The land was worth over $7,000,000 ($172,730,303 in 2023) U.S. dollars. Jackson signed a law that forced the Cherokees to move. This was called the Indian Removal Act. However, at that time, the Cherokees had their own nation and their own government. They did not have to follow laws made by the United States. Therefore, Jackson signed laws that let him take nearly all the Cherokees' rights.

The Cherokee nation did not want to accept those laws or the Indian Removal Act, so the Cherokees' Chief John Ross tried to defend the Cherokee rights through the United States courts. In 1832, the Supreme Court of the United States said that the Cherokee were living in their own country, "in which the laws of Georgia can have no force." The Court said Georgia had no right to make the Cherokee do anything.

Nevertheless, the U.S. government used a treaty, called the Treaty of New Echota, to remove the Cherokee nation by force. The treaty was signed by the leader of a small group of Cherokees with different opinions than the rest of the Nation. Since an official Cherokee leader did not sign the treaty, it was not legal under Cherokee law. About 15,000 Cherokees signed a petition against the treaty. Newspapers and people around the United States (including John Quincy Adams) protested the treaty. The United States Senate approved the treaty by just one vote. President Jackson signed the treaty into law on May 23, 1836. The treaty gave the Cherokees two years to leave their lands. Only about 2,000 left within the two years.

Forced removal

"

"I fought through the War Between the States and have seen many men shot, but the Cherokee Removal was the cruelest work I ever knew."
- A Georgia soldier who participated in the removal

"

The deadline for Cherokees to leave their land voluntarily was on May 23, 1838. President Martin Van Buren sent General Winfield Scott to lead the soldiers who would force the Cherokee to leave.

On May 26th, the official removal began. 7,000 soldiers forced about 15,000 Cherokees and 2,000 of their slaves to leave their land. All Cherokees had to leave their homes right away. Within three weeks, the Cherokees were all forced into concentration camps. They were forced to stay in these camps for the summer of 1838. 353 Cherokee died from dysentery and other diseases.

Finally, Chief Ross got General Scott to agree to a deal. Chief Ross promised that he and other Cherokee leaders would bring the Cherokee people to their new lands on their own. General Scott agreed and even got the U.S. Army to pay the costs of the trip.

The Cherokee traveled in groups of 1000 to 3000 people on three main routes. Different groups started in Chattanooga, Tennessee; Guntersville, Alabama; and Charleston, Tennessee. Most Cherokees had to walk; others, if they were wealthy men, could use wagons. The United States government also gave the Cherokee about 660 wagons.

It is said that many Cherokees sang a Cherokee version of the song Amazing Grace, which became a kind of anthem for the Cherokee nation.

The trip was about 1,200 miles long. During the trip, the Cherokee had to deal with winter weather, blizzards, and diseases. Not everybody agrees on how many people died on the trip. Some say 2,000 and others say 6,000, but most say about 4,000 people died. Finally, the Cherokee who were still alive arrived in what is now Oklahoma.

The Cherokee took different routes. Some were by land and others by water. Some boats were destroyed, which was a danger on water routes. On the ground, people had to walk through mud and cold weather, and it was harder walking on land.

Water route

This route was taken by about 2,800 Cherokees split into three groups. All groups started at Ross's Landing at the Tennessee River. They used boats to travel to the Ohio River, which took them south to the Mississippi River. They took the Arkansas River westward from the Mississippi. They arrived near Fort Coffee, Oklahoma. The first group left on June 6 and reached the territory after 13 days. The second and third groups had a lot of problems with diseases, so their trip took longer.

Land routes

The people who did not travel by water took land routes. Leaders chosen by John Ross guided groups of 700-1,600 people, usually on northern routes. The routes led through central Tennessee, southwestern Kentucky, and southern Illinois. The groups crossed the Mississippi north of Cape Girardeau, Missouri, then traveled through southern Missouri and west of Arkansas. The people who signed the Treaty of New Enchota were willing to trade their homeland for $5 million and land in Oklahoma. United States soldiers led them and usually took a southern route. All land routes usually ended near Westville, Oklahoma. These routes cover more than 2,200 miles in 9 states. Many people died on the journey because of diseases, lack of water, and bad road conditions.

Interesting facts about the Trail of Tears

The five tribes who were mainly affected by the Indian Removal Act were fairly civilized. They had tried to adopt some of the American culture and were friendly with the colonists.

Even though they were given money for food, many of the Cherokee died of starvation because dishonest merchants sold them bad food at high prices.

The Trail of Tears was not the end of the mistreatment of Native Americans. Much of their in Oklahoma was soon taken from them as well.

The Cherokee who survived the Trail of Tears established a new nation and government in Tahlequah, Oklahoma.

John Ross survived the Trail of Tears and was elected Principal Chief of the new Cherokee Nation in 1839.

Some of the Cherokee men who survived the Trail of Tears killed John Ridge, a Cherokee leader who agreed to the Treaty of New Enchota.

The U.S. government did not pay the Cherokee the $5 million they were owed from the Treaty of New Enchota until the Cherokee filed petitions.

The Seminole tribe, one of the tribes that was forced to move, resisted for seven years.

As a result of the Indian Removal Act, 25 million acres of land was left for settlers and colonists in the southeast United States.

Related pages

Images for kids

A Trail of Tears map of Southern Illinois from the USDA - U.S. Forest Service

In Spanish: Sendero de lágrimas para niños

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Educational Videos for Students (Cartoons on Bullying, Leadership & More)

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Trail of Tears for Kids Documentary: Watch our Cartoon for Kids on the Trail of Tears

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Trail of Tears Facts for Kids | History, Tribes, Outcome & Context

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Between the years 1830 and 1850 over 60,000 Native Americans were forced to walk a 5000 miles long path known as the Trail of Tears.

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How the Brutal Trail of Tears Got Its Name

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The Trail of Tears is the name given to the route taken by Native Americans when they were forced out of their homes by the Indian Removal Act in 1830.

President Andrew Jackson decided that Native Americans should be forced to leave.

The name Trail of Tears refers to a Cherokee word for the trail because many lost their lives on this long journey.

It is thought that over 100,000 indigenous people were forced out of their homes in the Southeast United States. This era is sometimes referred to as the Removal Era.

Around 15,00 people died on this very difficult journey.

The trail stretched 5,045 miles across nine states, including:

Why were Native Americans forced from their homes?

The main reason these people were forced out was through greed. The British Proclamation of 1763 drew out "Indian Territory" where Native Americans were supposed to live.

This land was supposed to be protected and it was agreed at the time that Native Americans would live here undisturbed.

In any case, the British and then the U.S. government ignored the rules. People continued to find land there and hunt around for ways to make money.

The situation took a turn for the worse when people heard there was gold on Native American land. This caused what was called a "gold rush."

The Gold Rush

In 1829, a gold rush happened on Cherokee land in Georgia. This was not a small amount of gold that was found. It was enough to make prospectors (those looking to make money) go crazy.

On average, in Georgia, the gold mines could produce around 300 ounces of gold per day.

That is enough to make around 850 big gold necklaces. The price of gold changes all the time but today, it would be around $510,000 worth of gold per day.

By rights, according to the British Proclamation, this gold was on Native American soil but that is not how greedy prospectors saw it.

The president himself was a keen speculator so he did not hesitate to pass the Indian Removal Act in 1830.

Did Native Americans want to move?

Some Native Americans were in a position to negotiate with the government and get some money for their losses.

However, neither the government nor the people moving knew that the journey itself would lead to such a loss of life. People died through hunger, disease or just exhaustion.

The Chickasaw people were fed up waiting for the government, so they managed to sell off their land privately and pay for their own transportation.

They suffered slightly less than other groups when they travelled in 1837.

The Creek people agreed to move in 1832 but many Europeans moved in early. This caused conflict and lots of troubles so they did not move until 1836.

The Seminoles did make some agreements but many members of the community protested. They believed that the people signing the agreements did not represent them.

This led to a conflict known as the Seminole War between 1835 and 1842.

The Cherokee also resisted removal but did so through legal means. They had to take on the state in famous cases, such as the Cherokee Nation vs. Georgia in 1831.

The U.S. Supreme Court ruled against the Native Americans. Then, Cherokee leaders negotiated deals.

These deals did not suit a lot of Cherokee people, who thought the deal was unfair. Some moved voluntarily, not realising that their property rights would not be respected.

In 1838, many of the Cherokee were forced out, some were held at gun point.

The Cherokee fared badly from these events. Before making the long journey, they were imprisoned in internment camps. Many Cherokee people became ill before the journey even began.

A tragic event, remembered today

It was decided in 1987 that this event should be remembered by the U.S. Congress. The Trail of Tears became a National Historic Trail to remember those who had lost their lives.

Why did Native Americans have to go on the Trail of Tears?

How long was the Trail?

What were people mining for on Native American land?

How much gold was mined per day in the goldmine?

When was the Indian Removal Act passed?
Native Americans

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Trail of Tears - US History The Trail of Tears is the name given to the route taken by Native Americans when they were forced out of their homes by the Indian Removal Act in 1830. President Andrew Jackson decided that Native Americans should be forced to leave.

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On a gloomy December afternoon in 1803, a boat crept along the banks of the Mississippi River and landed at the mouth of the Wood River in what is now the state of Illinois. A group of men climbed out and began to set up camp under a dark canopy of oak trees. Suddenly a violent storm moved in, pelting the area with snow and hail.

The men didn't turn back though. Instead, they hunkered down and spent the next five months here preparing for the trip they were about to embark on,in which poor weather would be one of the many dangers they'd face.

Among these men were Meriwether Lewis and William Clark, co-leaders of an expedition tasked with exploring land that the United States had recently acquired. Their trip would turn into an epic 8,000-mile-long trek-and the first big step in the United States' westward expansion.

LET'S MAKE A DEAL

When Thomas Jefferson became the third president of the United States in 1801, the country basically stopped at the Mississippi River. France controlled much of the land to the west of this waterway.

President Jefferson wanted to acquire the Port of New Orleans, in what is now the state of Louisiana, from the French. Its prime location made it a key spot for trade. In 1803, Jefferson made what's known as one of the greatest real estate deals in history: the Louisiana Purchase.

After negotiations, France agreed to sell the entire city of New Orleans, which included the port, to the United States for $10 million; they threw in the rest of the territory they owned for an additional $5 million. The agreement-which gave the United States approximately 828,000 square miles of land-almost doubled the size of the nearly 30-year-old nation.

The United States only paid about three cents an acre for the land, which stretched from the Mississippi River in the east to the Rocky Mountains in the west and from the Gulf of Mexico in the south to the Canadian border in the north. Spain still owned much of the southwestern part of what's now the United States, stretching from the area that would become Texas to present-day California.

Purchasing this enormous amount of land was one thing, but exploring it was another. Jefferson wanted to plan an expedition to investigate the territory. He called the proposed mission the Voyage of Discovery and began assembling a team of explorers called the Corps (KOR) of Discovery. The president chose Captain Meriwether Lewis and Captain William Clark to lead the expedition. Lewis, President Jefferson's personal secretary, was an officer in the United States Army and spoke several Native American languages. Lewis recommended Clark-a retired officer who had served alongside him in the Army-as the expedition's co-leader.

WAY OUT WEST

In the spring of 1804, Lewis, Clark, and dozens of other men left St. Louis, Missouri, by boat. They traveled westward through what is now Missouri, Iowa, Nebraska, and South Dakota.

In November they reached Knife River Village in present-day North Dakota. There they met a young Shoshone Native American woman called Sacagawea (Sa-kuh-juh-WEE-uh) and her fur-trader husband, Toussaint Charbonneau (Too-SAHNT SHAR-bon-oh). The couple joined the expedition as interpreters, translating the language of the local tribes for Lewis and Clark's men.

Sacagawea didn't just serve as an interpreter during the trip, however. She helped Lewis and Clark's men obtain essential supplies and horses, identified edible plants and herbs, and prevented hostile relations with other tribes simply by being with the group-all while carrying her newborn baby on her back.

After meeting Sacagawea and her husband, the Corps traveled west from North Dakota, 15 to 20 miles a day on foot and by boat, toward the mountains. Day after day, the exhausted, freezing team braved rough rivers and perilous peaks, getting by on very little food. They wouldn't see the Pacific Ocean until November 1805-over a year after they first left Missouri.

COMING HOME

After a long winter waiting out the bad weather, the Corps was able to start making their way back east in March 1806. After returning Sacagawea and her husband to North Dakota, the remainder of the Corps arrived back in Missouri in late September, more than two years after they started their expedition.

Lewis and Clark's team mapped uncharted land, rivers, and mountains. They brought back journals filled with details about Native American tribes and scientific notes about plants and animals they'd never seen before. They also brought back stories-tales that made other Americans dream about heading west.

Many Americans did more than dream. The great westward expansion was about to begin.

Text adapted from The Journals of Lewis and Clark; The Mississippi and the Making of a Nation: From the Louisiana Purchase to Today; and Sacagawea

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How Lewis and Clark-along with a Native American guide, Sacagawea-explored the newly expanded United States

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Kids learn about the biography and life of explorers Meriwether Lewis and William Clark. They explored the wild west of America.

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Lewis & Clark Expedition - Sacagawea - Educational Social Studies Video - Elementary Students & Kids

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The Lewis and Clark Expedition: Getting Started

More than 200 years ago, Thomas Jefferson signed the Louisiana Purchase, acquiring 828,000 square miles of land that had originally belonged to France. He paid $15 million dollars for land that is now Arkansas, Missouri, Iowa, Kansas, Oklahoma, and Nebraska, as well as parts of North Dakota, South Dakota, Montana, Wyoming, Colorado, Minnesota, New Mexico, and Texas.

At that time, few white people had traveled beyond the Mississippi River. It was a mysterious, untamed wilderness. Jefferson knew that before it could be settled, it needed to be mapped and explored.

Fun Facts

President Jefferson called his private secretary Captain Meriwether Lewis into his office. He asked him to organize an exploration party.

Lewis agreed and sent a letter to his friend William Clark, who was living in Kentucky. In the letter, Lewis invited Clark to join him on the trip. He said that the goals of the trip were to find a river passage across North America to the Pacific Ocean; to meet and trade with Indian tribes; to discover new plants and animals; and to make new maps.

Clark took only a day to think about it before saying yes. The exploration was named "The Corps of Discovery."

From the beginning, Lewis experienced challenges and discouragements. The boat builders turned out to be a "set of drunkards" and took twelve days just to make the oars and poles. Finally on August 31, the boat was completed and loaded.

The packing list was simple, but complete. It included 1 Mariner's compass; 4 tin blowing trumpets; 24 iron spoons; 1 microscope; 1 measuring tape; 6 papers of ink powder; mosquito curtains; 4 metal pens; 15 rifles; 1 lb. blistering ointment; 2 crayons; 1 pair pocket pistols; 30 shirts of strong linen; 6 copper kettles; 4 fishing hooks; 2 pick axes.

For trading with Indians, the men took silver peace medals; 30 gallons of spirits; 50 pounds of tobacco; 2 dozen tinsel tassels; 100 burning glasses; 6 paper small bells; glass beads, and 12 red silk handkerchiefs.

Lewis and Clark selected several men to join their group. They chose men with a variety of skills.

John Ordway was the top sergeant at Camp Wood, Illinois. He joined the permanent party and kept a journal of the trip in case Lewis and Clark's journals were lost.

George Drouillard was an expert hunter and woodsman, capable of following the faintest tracks. His mother was a Shawnee Indian who came along as an interpreter.

York was William Clark's faithful slave. He was very large and strong.

Pierre Cruzatte was a professional riverman. He was blind in one eye, was part Omaha Indian, and played the fiddle.

Joseph and Reubin Field (brothers) were young, energetic, and strong.

John Shields was the oldest of the men at age 35, but he was a skilled blacksmith and gunsmith.

George Shannon, age 16, was the youngest member of the group. He joined after his father died in Ohio.

Lewis and Clark: Journey Onward

After a long, cold winter, the Corp left Fort Mandan on April 7, 1805. Lewis and Clark knew that they would soon leave the Missouri River and head into the wilderness. They had many exciting adventures and challenges ahead.

Fun Facts

At Fort Mandan, the large boats or barges turned back. The company would be traveling by land frequently now. The barges sailed back to St. Louis with letters to friends and the government. The specimens they'd made over the winter were mailed back to President Jefferson.

The party that continued forward included 33 people in six small canoes and two larger boats (pirogues). Everyone felt excited but anxious. They were going into territory where no white man had ever been before.

On May 14, 1805, they were traveling on the river when a small storm stirred up. Charbonneau, the French trader and interpreter, was very frightened. He dropped the rudder and began shrieking and praying, almost tipping the boat over. The boat contained valuable supplies, tools, books, and food. The Bowman, Cruzatte, threatened to shoot Charbonneau if he didn't calm down. Cruzatte ordered the men to begin bailing water out of the boat, which was near sinking. Charbonneau's brave wife, the Shoshone Indian, Sacagawea, grabbed most of the materials that were washed overboard-all while holding her infant son.

On the same evening, the men found a huge brown grizzly bear. Six hunters shot at him. The bear attached them and two men shot him again, only slowing him down for a moment. The bear chased after them again and was so close that the men threw down their guns and jumped into the river. The bear followed them, just a few feet behind one of the men. Finally a man on shore shot the bear again and killed him. It was a close call. The Corp realized that there were safer ways to get meat than hunting bears.

On June 27, 1805, the men experienced a terrible hail storm, something new to many of them. The hail was the size of pigeon's eggs, according to Lewis's journals, and would have killed a man if it had hit him. The men hid under their canoes.

Vocabulary

Pirogue: Long, thin, flat-bottomed canoe or dugout that could slip into narrow places

Rudder: a flat piece of wood or metal that helps control a boat

Questions and Answers

Lewis and Clark: Crossing the Rocky Mountains

Lewis and Clark (and Thomas Jefferson) had hoped to discover a Northwest Passage, a system of rivers that would run all the way to the Pacific Ocean, opening up trade with Asia. The Rocky Mountains were a disappointing surprise and the end of their dreams of finding a continental waterway. Crossing the mountains was a tough challenge.

Fun Facts

In late summer of 1805, the Corp began their travels across the mountains. Their journals record that they crossed some of the worst roads imaginable. The sides were steep and some of the roads were still covered with snow. Several of the horses fell and some were crippled. One horse fell a hundred yards into a creek, but was fine.

They were fascinated to find boiling water coming out of the ground. One person took a bath in the warm water.

Game was hard to find in the mountains and the men often went hungry. Sometimes they had to kill a horse to have something to eat. In late August, the weather was already cold and snowy.

Finally they came out of the mountains. A Nez Perce Indian took them to the Grand Chief's lodge. He drew them a map of the rivers going forward. The men built five dugout canoes and continued on.

The men traveled down white water rivers in those canoes. One canoe sank and another turned over. They lost their gun powder, some bedding, and much of their food.

The native people watched from the shores and thought the men were crazy for trying to travel over such dangerous rapids. They hid in their homes. They thought the men were not men, but birds that had fallen from the clouds. They were happy to see Sacagawea because they knew the men were not coming to hurt them. Women never traveled with war parties.

Vocabulary

Questions and Answers

Watch a video containing Lewis's own words about how he felt when he first saw the Rocky Mountains.

Lewis and Clark: Headed to Oregon

Lewis and Clark's company were excited to leave the Rocky Mountains. They passed through Idaho, Washington, and Oregon on the way to the Pacific Ocean.

Fun Facts

The Snake River flowed into the Columbia River, slowing and widening. The group discovered many harbor seals as the river neared the ocean.

They had salmon for dinner, which Lewis said was the most delicious fish he had ever tasted.

They observed that the Chinook Indians flattened their babies' heads with boards so they were long and narrow at the top.

Lewis wrote that he met a chief who carried in a bag 14 fingers taken from enemies.

They were impressed with the Chiluckitequaw canoes, which were decorated with intricate carvings and flew swiftly through the waves.

Ducks, geese, and swans were so numerous that it was hard to sleep at night because of their noise.

On November 7, 1805, the group sighted the Pacific Ocean and heard its thunderous roar. They were overjoyed!

They approached the sea and wanted to explore it. The waves were so high that many of the men got seasick. Rainy weather made it hard to hunt or to explore.

Lewis and Clark: The Journey Home

Lewis and Clark reached the Pacific Ocean on November 18, 1805. It was too late in the year to head back so they wintered there and left for home the following March, 1806.

Fun Facts

Native Americans showed them a quicker route through the mountains. The group split up to explore the Yellowstone and Marias Rivers.

Along the way, they had many adventures. Indians tried to steal their horses and guns. Cruzatte shot Lewis in the britches because he mistook him for an elk.

Clark wrote in his journal that the number of buffalo, elk, and antelope was too many to number. One day, the group had to wait an hour to allow a herd of buffalo to pass.

Both Spain and England had an interest in the western part of the United States. Spanish forces tried on four different occasions to find and capture Lewis and Clark. They arrived in Nebraska around September 1, and would have pressed forward to find Lewis and Clark if a Pawnee Indian tribe hadn't stopped them.

Chief Big White, the Mandan chief, joined the group and visited Thomas Jefferson.

On September 21, 1806, the men arrived near St. Louis. Many people thought they had died. They were met with cheering crowds.

The trip had taken more than two years and four months.

During their journey, Lewis and Clark's company traveled more than 7,689 miles of rough wilderness. They traveled through prairies, mountains, rivers, and forests. They mapped everything.

They discovered over 300 new plants and animals previously unknown to science.

Their exploration allowed America to claim the Pacific Northwest and opened the region to fur traders, settlers, and mountain men.

Lewis and Clark: A Dog Named Seaman

33 people went on the cross country journey known as the Corps of Discovery or the Lewis and Clark Expedition. But none of them were as loved by Lewis as his dog, Seaman.

Fun Facts

Lewis bought Seaman for $20 from a man named John Hansen. Seaman was a Newfoundland, large and black with thick fur and webbed feet. Lewis knew he'd be a good companion for the trip west.

As the expedition went up the Ohio River, they noticed squirrels swimming across the river. Lewis told Seaman to catch the squirrels. Seaman would jump into the river, swim to the squirrels and bring them back. The men fried the squirrels for supper.

The group once met some Native Americans who were fascinated with Seaman. Their dog was small, maybe 20 pounds. Seaman was a huge dog, weighing 150 pounds. His thick hair made him seem even bigger. The Indians thought he was a bear. When they realized he was a dog, they wanted to trade for him. Lewis said, "No trade."

Another time, the group encountered many beavers along the river. Beaver pelts were valuable. Lewis told Seaman to get the beaver and the dog jumped into the river, swimming toward one of the largest ones. That beaver lashed around and bit Seaman hard in the leg, cutting through an artery. Seaman barely made it back to the boat because he was faint from losing blood. Lewis took him to the shore and cleaned him up. Seaman was very weak. Lewis and Sacagawea cared for him for several days, giving him buffalo broth and meat. Finally he got better.

One night a buffalo bull charged into camp, headed straight toward a tent where men lay sleeping. He was within 2 feet of their heads and would have crushed them. Seaman wheeled and barked at him. The buffalo stopped, confused, and finally moved on.

Three Clatsop Indians came one night to steal Seaman. They lured him away with beaver meat and put a rope around his neck. They were headed toward their village when Lewis discovered Seaman was gone. He ordered his men to follow the Indians. If they refused to give Seaman back, Lewis said, "Shoot." Sure enough, they let Seaman go.

Read Lewis and Clark and Me: A Dog's Tale by Laurie Myers and illustrated by Michael Dooling.
Watch a play about Seaman.

Lewis and Clark: York

William Clark is well-remembered for leading the Corps of Discovery, but there were many other men who played quiet, but important, roles. One of those men was named York and he and William Clark were childhood friends.

Fun Facts

York was born on the plantation owned by William Clark's father. York was named after his father, York.

He was probably William's playmate and it's likely that they rode horses, fished, and swam in the streams of Virginia together.

When York was 12, he became William's personal servant.

Unlike many slaves who spent their days in the fields caring for crops, York lived in the Clark home. He had good food, shoes, and clothing.

He could not read or write. It was illegal in those days to teach a slave to read.

In 1785, York moved with the Clark family to a new plantation in Kentucky. Everyone helped clear land, plant crops, and build the house, barn, and cabins for the slaves. It was hard work.

York had to protect the Clark family from Indians and learned to shoot a gun.

When William left for the military, York stayed behind working on the plantation. William returned and once again, York became his personal servant. In 1800, York fell in love with and married a slave from a nearby plantation. Since records weren't kept on slaves then, we have no knowledge of her name or if the couple had children.

When Lewis and Clark organized the expedition, they looked for strong, rugged men. William knew York would be a good choice. As a slave, York couldn't refuse William's request. He had to go.

The company set out in May, 1804. They had many challenges with Indians, mosquitoes, disease, cold weather, and accidents.

William wrote in his journal that York swam to a sandbar sitting in the middle of the Missouri River to gather some watercress for dinner. The men ate mostly meat and were probably happy to have some greens.

York also cared for Sergeant Charles Floyd when he became ill.

York killed two buffalo during a hunt.

The Native Americans had never seen a black man. They were astonished by his dark skin and his large size. He pretended to be a bear and chased the children, making them laugh and squeal. They loved York. They considered him a powerful warrior, stronger than the white men.

In November, the group voted on whether they would build a fort for the winter near the Pacific Ocean or try to travel back to Washington. Everyone in the group voted, including York and Sacagawea. During this time, slaves and women were generally not allowed to vote, but everyone had a say in this group.

York traded with the Nez Perce Indians for food during that long, cold, hungry winter. He traded some small items like buttons for three bushels of edible roots and some bread. Lewis was very happy!

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The Lewis and Clark Expedition - American History For Kids

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The Lewis and Clark Expedition: Getting Started More than 200 years ago, Thomas Jefferson signed the Louisiana Purchase, acquiring 828,000 square miles of land that had originally belonged to France. He paid $15 million dollars for land that is now Arkansas, Missouri, Iowa, Kansas, Oklahoma, and Nebraska, as well as parts of North Dakota, South ...

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Without This Woman's Help, Lewis and Clark Were Goners

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The Lewis and Clark Expedition was an expedition by Meriwether Lewis (1774-1809) and William Clark (1770-1838), two men chosen by United States President Thomas Jefferson to explore the Louisiana Purchase, which the country had just bought from France. (This land was made up of much of what is now the Central and Western United States). They left Saint Louis in 1804, leading a group of 33 people. The group reached the Pacific in 1806, viewing much of the West on the way and writing down what they saw. Along the way, the group was joined by a Shoshone Native American woman named Sacagawea, who helped guide them. After their exploration, Lewis became Governor of Louisiana Territory, and Clark became Governor of Missouri Territory.

The timeline covers the primary events associated with the expedition, from January 1803 through January 1807.

Preparations

For years Jefferson had heard of and read accounts of the various ventures of other explorers in parts of the western frontier and consequently had a long held interest in further exploring this largely still unknown region of the continent. In the 1780s, while Minister to France, Jefferson met John Ledyard in Paris and discussed a proposed trip to the Pacific Northwest.

Jefferson had also read Captain James Cook's A Voyage to the Pacific Ocean (London, 1784) an account of Cook's third voyage, and Le Page du Pratz'z The History of Louisiana ...(London, 1763) all of which greatly influenced his decision to send an expedition. Like Captain Cook, Jefferson also wished to discover a practical route through the Northwest to the Pacific coast. However it was Alexander Mackenzie's publication of 1801, Voyages from Montreal, which revealed to Jefferson, who had read the book at Monticello in 1802, of Britain's declaration of its intent to control the lucrative fur trade of the Columbia River, that convinced him of the importance of securing the territory as soon as possible.

Two years into his presidency, President Thomas Jefferson asked Congress to fund an expedition through the Louisiana Purchase, and to the Pacific Ocean.

In 1803, Jefferson commissioned the Corps of Discovery, and named U.S. Army Captain Meriwether Lewis its leader, who in turn selected William Clark as second in command.

Lewis demonstrated remarkable skills and potential as a frontiersman. As the expedition was gaining approval and funding Jefferson made efforts to prepare him for the long journey ahead.

The U.S. mint prepared special silver medals with a portrait of Jefferson and inscribed with a message of friendship and peace, called Indian Peace Medals or peace medals. The soldiers were to distribute them to the nations they met. These symbolized U.S. sovereignty over the indigenous inhabitants. The expedition also prepared advanced weapons to display their military firepower. Among these was an air rifle of about .44 caliber, powerful enough to kill a deer.

There were 33 people, including 29 participants in training at the 1803-1804 Camp Dubois (Camp Wood) winter staging area in Indiana Territory, near present day Wood River, Illinois. They left on May 14, 1804, and met up with Lewis in St. Charles, Missouri, a short time later; the corps followed the Missouri River westward. Soon they passed La Charrette, the last Euro-American settlement on the Missouri River.

The expedition followed the Missouri through what is now Kansas City, Missouri, and Omaha, Nebraska. On August 20, 1804, Sergeant Charles Floyd died, apparently from acute appendicitis. He was the only member of the expedition to die, and was among the first to sign up with the corps of Discovery. He was buried at a bluff by the river, now named after him, in what is now Sioux City, Iowa. His burial cite was marked with a cedar post on which was inscribed his name and day of death. A mile up the river the expedition camped at a small river which they names Floyd's River. During the final week of August, Lewis and Clark reached the edge of the Great Plains, a place abounding with elk, deer, bison, and beavers.

The Lewis and Clark Expedition established relations with two dozen indigenous nations, without whose help the expedition would have starved to death or become hopelessly lost in the Rocky Mountains.

The Americans and the Lakota nation (whom the Americans called Sioux or "Teton-wan Sioux") had problems when they met, and there was a concern the two sides might fight.

One of their horses disappeared, and they believed the Sioux were responsible. Afterward, the two sides met and there was a disagreement, and the Sioux asked the men to stay or to give more gifts instead before being allowed to pass through their territory. They came close to fighting several times, and both sides finally backed down and the expedition continued on to Arikara territory.

After the expedition had set up camp, nearby Indians came to visit in fair numbers, some staying all night. For several days Lewis and Clark met in council with Mandan Indian chiefs. Here they met a French-Canadian fur trapper named Toussaint Charbonneau, and his young Shoshone wife Sacagawea. Charbonneau at this time began to serve as the expedition's translator. Peace was established between the expedition and the Mandan Chiefs with the sharing of the Mandan peace pipe.

They followed the Missouri to its headwaters, and over the Continental Divide at Lemhi Pass. In canoes, they descended the mountains by the Clearwater River, the Snake River, and the Columbia River, past Celilo Falls and past what is now Portland, Oregon at the meeting of the Willamette and Columbia Rivers. Lewis used William Robert Broughton's 1792 notes and maps to find the stratovolcano mountain for navigation.

The expedition faced its second bitter winter, and on November 24, 1805 voted on whether to camp on the south side of the Columbia river (modern Astoria, Oregon), building Fort Clatsop. By March 22nd the stormy weather had subsided and the following morning the Corps began their journey homeward using canoes, and later by land.

The Corps met their objective of reaching the Pacific, mapping and establishing their presence for a legal claim to the land. They established diplomatic relations and trade with at least two dozen indigenous nations. They did not find the Northwest Passage.

In March of 1804, the Spanish in New Mexico learned from U.S. General James Wilkinson, later discovered to be a paid agent of the Spanish crown, that the Americans were encroaching on territory claimed by Spain. On August 1st, they sent four armed expeditions of fifty two soldiers, mercenaries, and Indians from Santa Fe northward under Pedro Vial and José Jarvet, to intercept Lewis and Clark and imprison the entire expedition. When they reached the Pawnee settlement on the Platte River in central Nebraska they learned that the expedition had been there many days before, but because the expedition at that point was covering seventy to eighty miles a day Vial's attempt to intercept them was unsuccessful.

Geography, science

The Lewis and Clark Expedition gained an understanding of the geography of the Northwest and produced the first accurate maps of the area. During the journey, Lewis and Clark drew about 140 maps. Stephen Ambrose says the expedition "filled in the main outlines" of the area.

The expedition documented natural resources and plants that had been previously unknown to Euro-Americans, though not to the indigenous peoples. Lewis and Clark were the first Americans to cross the continental divide, the first Americans to see Yellowstone and enter into Montana and produce an official description of these different regions. Their visit to the Pacific Northwest, maps, and proclamations of sovereignty with medals and flags were legal steps needed to claim title to each indigenous nations' lands under the Doctrine of Discovery.

Lewis and Clark's expedition had no greater advocate and no greater beneficiary, than the American Philosophical Society (APS). Their duties, as assigned by Jefferson, were preeminently scientific. Specifically, they were instructed in geography, astronomy, ethnology, climatology, mineralogy, meteorology, botany, ornithology, and zoology.

The expedition recorded more than 200 plants and animals that were new to science and noted at least 72 native tribes.

Jefferson had the expedition declare "sovereignty" and demonstrate their military strength to ensure native tribes would be subordinate to the U.S., as European colonizers did elsewhere. After the expedition, the maps that were produced allowed the further discovery and settlement of this vast territory in the years that followed.

In 1807 Patrick Gass a private in the US Army, published an account of the journey. He was promoted to Sergeant during the course of the expedition. Paul Allen edited a two-volume history of the Lewis and Clark expedition that was published in 1814, in Philadelphia, but without mention of the actual author, banker Nicholas Biddle. Even then, the complete report was not made public until more recently. The earliest authorized edition of the Lewis and Clark journals resides in the Maureen and Mike Mansfield Library at the University of Montana.

Sacagawea, sometimes called Sakajawea or Sakagawea (c. 1788-December 20, 1812), was an indigenous woman who accompanied her husband Toussaint Charbonneau on the expedition to the Pacific Ocean. Her son Jean Baptiste Charbonneau was born in 1805 with the help of the expedition.

Though she has been discussed in literature frequently, much of the information is exaggeration or fiction. Scholars say she did notice some geographical features, but "Sacagawea...was not the guide for the Expedition, she was important to them as an interpreter and in other ways." The sight of a woman and her infant son would have been reassuring to some indigenous nations, and she played an important role in diplomatic relations by talking to chiefs, easing tensions, and giving the impression of a peaceful mission.

In his writings, Meriwether Lewis presented a somewhat negative view of her, though Clark had a higher regard for her, and provided some support for her children in subsequent years. In the journals, they used the terms "squar" and "savages" to refer to Sacagawea and other indigenous peoples.

Legacy and honors

Since the expedition, Lewis and Clark have been commemorated and honored over the years on various coins, currency, and commemorative postage stamps, as well as in a number of other capacities.

Lewis and Clark Expedition, 2004
200th Anniversary issue U.S. postage stamp commemorating the 200th anniversary of the Expedition

Lewis and Clark Expedition
150th anniversary issue, 1954

Lewis & Clark were honored (along with the American bison) on the Series of 1901 $10 Legal Tender

Lewis & Clark Mosaic image in Missouri

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Lewis and Clark Expedition Facts for Kids

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The Lewis and Clark Expedition was an expedition by Meriwether Lewis (1774-1809) and William Clark (1770-1838), two men chosen by United States President Thomas Jefferson to explore the Louisiana Purchase, which the country had just bought from France. (This land was made up of much of what is now the Central and Western United States).

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Lewis and Clark Expedition

The Lewis and Clark Expedition is considered to be one of the most important exploration events in U.S. history. President Thomas Jefferson knew the importance of exploring the new land area that had just been bought from the French in the Louisiana Purchase.

Jefferson selected Meriwether Lewis to lead the expedition, and Lewis wanted William Clark to help him lead. The amount of land in the Louisiana Purchase almost doubled the size of the United States, and the expedition would take over two years.

Exploring the new land involved a lot of dangers, including horrible weather, rough terrain, treacherous waters, disease, near starvation, and both hostile and friendly Native Indians. The team traveled over 8,000 miles, mapping out the geography, keeping journals of animals, plants, and other ecological information, as well as including everything that they could about this new North American uncharted area.

President Jefferson had a former relationship with Meriwether Lewis when he was his 27-year-old personal secretary. Jefferson knew of Lewis' history as part of the Virginia state militia that assisted in putting down the Whiskey Rebellion as well as his role as U.S. Army Captain. Jefferson had a calm confidence in Lewis' abilities, education, and knowledge to do the job on this expedition.

William Clark had served with Lewis in the regular Army after he had joined the state militia in Kentucky. Clark held a commission as lieutenant of infantry under President George Washington. Due to serving together, Lewis knew well that Clark was dependable and would make an excellent co-leader.

The importance of the Louisiana Purchase meant that the size of the United States had almost doubled. Little was known about the far west areas, as ownership had changed hands a few times. France had originally claimed ownership, but after the French and Indian War turned over some of Louisiana to Spain and the rest to Great Britain. In 1799 Napoleon Bonaparte became the leader of France, and he wanted the old territory back. He knew the benefits of trade along the Mississippi River and the value of the port at New Orleans.

King Charles IV of Spain gave the Louisiana Territory back to France in 1802, but he also revoked America's port access. This nearly caused a war until President Jefferson, and James Monroe got Bonaparte to sell the 827,000 square miles known as the Louisiana Territory for $15 million. What few know is that Bonaparte actually sold the Port of New Orleans for $10 million and threw the rest of the land in for an additional $5 million.

Jefferson worked with Congress to finance an expedition to survey the lands and gather as much information as possible. He knew that the population of the United States was growing and it needed places for expansion and successful farming.

Preparing for such a vast expedition was almost daunting. Lewis had studied botany, zoology, medicine, and astronomy, and he used his skills to look through as many of the existing maps as possible. Both Lewis and Clark led the expedition equally, and they each had particular skills to offer as the trip was planned.

The trip was going to cover areas starting at the Mississippi River, then west to the Rocky Mountains, then from the southern area of the Gulf of Mexico to the northern Canadian border. They wouldn't include what is now Texas and part of California because Spain still owned that land area.

President Jefferson called the expedition the "Voyage of Discovery," and referred to the members of the expedition as the "Corps (KOR) of Discovery." Jefferson knew that this would be one of the most challenging expeditions that had ever happened in the United States, and after Congress approved the funding, Lewis and Clark and their team members set out to explore the newest areas of the U.S.

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Lewis and Clark Expedition - History for kids

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The Lewis and Clark Expedition is considered to be one of the most important exploration events in U.S. history. President Thomas Jefferson knew the importance of exploring the new land area that had just been bought from the French in the Louisiana Purchase. Jefferson selected Meriwether Lewis to lead the expedition, and Lewis wanted William ...

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Home base for the group was near what is now Saint Louis, Missouri. On May 14, 1804, the men started up the Missouri River in three boats. On August 3 they had their first meeting with Native Americans, near what is now Council Bluffs, Iowa.

The group spent the winter in what is now North Dakota, among the Mandan Sioux. There a young Native American woman named Sacagawea joined the expedition. Sacagawea was very helpful to the explorers. She knew which plants were good to eat. She also knew Native American languages.

In the spring of 1805 the explorers continued up the Missouri to its source. They then followed another river, the Jefferson, up into the Rocky Mountains.

The group was now in the country of Sacagawea's own people, the Shoshone. (She had been kidnapped as a child.) The Shoshone helped the explorers cross the Bitterroot Range of the northern Rocky Mountains.

The group then floated down the Columbia River. They reached the Pacific Ocean on November 15, 1805. They had traveled more than 4,100 miles (6,600 kilometers). They spent a rainy winter south of what is now Astoria, Oregon.

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Between 1804 and 1806 a group of U.S. soldiers and explorers traveled from the Mississippi River to the Pacific coast and back. The leaders of this expedition, or journey,...

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Here's What It Was Really Like To Pioneer On The Oregon Trail

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For Kids

In the 1800s, people who made their home in the American frontier were called pioneers. People came from all over the world, from Britain, Germany, France, Sweden, Russia, Ireland, Scotland, and Italy to start new lives in the "land of opportunity". Many settled in the frontier.

Land: The first thing the pioneers did was to claim land or buy land. In the 1830s and 40s, land was about $2 an acre around the Great Lakes and in Oregon and California. The Homestead Act offered 160 acres for free (with certain requirements.) Until then, people traveled through the plains and prairies to reach the far west. They though the plains would not work well for settlement because there were very few trees and water was scarce. But free land, combined with the coming of the Transatlantic Railroad, made settlement on the prairies very attractive.

Homes: Upon arrival at their new home, wherever they settled, people needed to build a home. In areas where trees were plentiful, they built log cabins. They built sod houses on the prairies. Besides building a home, they needed to locate a source of clean drinking water, which meant sometimes they had to dig a well. They had to protect their animals and plant crops.

Friends, Family, Loneliness: If they were lucky, they were met by family and friends, or joined an existing community, with people willing to help them carve a farm of their own out of the frontier. But some settlers were on their own. One of the biggest problems with frontier life was the loneliness. Even those who grouped loosely together might not see another family for weeks or months at a time.

Bees: Many settlers developed an attitude towards work that woudl make it more enjoyable. Instead of trying to make quilts alone, the women would gather and make quilts together, many quilts at one time. These were called quilting bees, or bees for short. While the women quilted, the men would build a barn or a house at the location of the bee, or do other work that was needed. After the work was done for the day, food was served. Kids played games. Adults danced. Everyone looked forward to a bee.

Books: One of the biggest recreational activities on the frontier, besides bees, was reading. Most pioneers could read. The pioneers read everything they could find, including magazines, newspapers, the Bible, and other books when available. The mail was slow, but welcomed eagerly when it arrived.

Clothes: Pioneer clothing was simple, and made from sturdy materials. The fibers of the flax plant was used to make linen. Leather was used a lot because it was sturdy and available. Buckskin, leather made from deer hide, was used to make pants, jackets, and boots. Pioneers with sheep used the wool to make thick winter coats. Farmers wore smocks and overalls (still wore today.) Cowboys wore denim, leather breeches and tall boots. In the 1850s, a tailor named Levi Strauss began making and selling denim trousers, which today we call "Levi jeans". As settlements grew, especially after the transcontinental railroad was built, fabric was easier to purchase. Frontier women could buy cotton to make shirts and dresses. Girls dressed like their mothers. They additionally wore pinafores or aprons. Pinafores pulled over the head and hung from the shoulders. Aprons tied at the back of the waist. Boys wore clothes like their fathers.

Hats: Cowboys wore great big leather hats that they used to carry water to their thirsty horse. Cowboy hats also doubled as wash basins for the owner. Farmers wore straw hats to protect themselves from the sun. Women wore soft linen caps indoors and bonnets outside.

Hair Styles: Men grew bushy side whiskers, mustaches, and beards. Women let their hair grow long, and wrapped it up in a loose or plain bun.

New Inventions and Mail Order Catalogs: The invention of the sewing machine in the mid 1800s helped pioneer women greatly. Not all pioneer owned a sewing machine, but those that did were very lucky, and usually employed to sew clothes for other pioneers. As railroads connected the west to the east, people began to be able to order ready made clothes. Catalogs from Sears-Roebuck and Montgomery Wards were sent all over the country for mail orders.

Education: Some communities had a one-room school house, with one teacher that taught all the grades. Some kids rarely made it to school. It was too far or too cold. Teachers were paid. Female earned about half of what male teachers earned. Kids were taught reading, writing, math, music, and a little history. Teachers were often invited to live with one of the families. It helped supplement their earnings, but they had to do chores. Even kids as four or five had chores. Life was harsh on the frontier. Everyone had to help to survive.

Games Pioneer Kids Played (sackschools)

For Teachers

Pioneer Life and the Frontier - Free Lesson Plans and Classroom Activities

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Western Expansion for Kids - Pioneer Life on the Frontier

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In the 1800s, people who made their home in the American frontier were called pioneers. People came from all over the world, from Britain, Germany, France, Sweden, Russia, Ireland, Scotland, and Italy to start new lives in the "land of opportunity". Many settled in the frontier.

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Pioneer children wanted the same things children want today. They liked spending time with their families, learning new things, and playing with friends. Their lives were very different in other ways though.
Fun Facts

Pioneers often had large families, although it wasn't uncommon for at least one child or parent to die early of disease or accident.

Pioneer children helped their parents from the time they were very young. Girls learned to cook, grow gardens, and sew. Boys learned to hunt, raise crops, and build things. Both boys and girls might milk a cow, gather firewood or buffalo chips, or gather eggs.

Pioneer families had few belongings. The children might have a pair of clothes for every day and one for Sundays and special occasions. Their toys were usually handmade. Girls might have a special doll. Boys might have a ball or carved animal. Children slept on skins on the floor or in beds filled with feathers, corn cobs, or cattails. They usually shared a bed with at least one sibling, sometimes more!

Pioneer children often walked for miles as they traveled west with their families. When their shoes wore out, they walked barefoot.

Food was simple and consisted mostly of cornbread or porridge, meat, and fish. During the summer, they ate fresh fruits and vegetables. They also dried onions, beans, apples, and other foods to use during the winter. Candy or cookies were special treats, usually saved for holidays. Some people made maple syrup candy by pouring maple syrup onto snow and letting it harden.

Life could be dangerous! Falling from a wagon, being crushed by oxen, drowning, or getting lost were all very real dangers. Older siblings often cared for the younger ones.

Vocabulary

1. Handmade: made by hand

2. Porridge: a thin cereal like oatmeal

Questions and Answers
Question: Did pioneer children think their lives were hard?

Answer: Many pioneers recorded their feelings in diaries. We know that they were sometimes sad and felt their lives were hard. Mostly though they focused on working hard and enjoying happy times with their families.
Learn More
Read about the games pioneer children played.

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Life for Pioneer Children - American History For Kids

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Pioneer children wanted the same things children want today. They liked spending time with their families, learning new things, and playing with friends. Their lives were very different in other ways though. Fun Facts Pioneers often had large families, although it wasn’t uncommon for at least one ch…

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Kids learna about the daily life on the frontier of the Old West. How pioneers and settlers lived.

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A woman recounts the words she heard from her grandmother who was on the Trail of Tears

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American Experience | What Was the Trail of Tears? | Season 21 | Episode 7 | PBS

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The Trail of Tears march caused the death of more than 4,000 Cherokee people.

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A territorial history of the United States

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On July 4, 1776, the American colonies declared their independence from British rule. Thomas Jefferson drafted the document, which was ratified by the Continental Congress. Benjamin Franklin (first U.S. Ambassador to France), John Adams and John Jay represented the United States at the treaty signing. David Hartley represented King George III.

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Kids learn about the California Gold Rush from the Old West. Thousands of people move to the west to search for gold and strike it rich.

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The transcontinental railroad in the latter half of the nineteenth century was typically built with substantial infusions of federal, state, and local government aid. This aid took two forms: loans and land grants. The railroads sold the land to settlers for cash. In the process, they also created a market for their services. Those who lived near their railroad now had livelihoods that hinged on the railroad's success, usually because they needed it to ship their freight.

Transcontinental Railroad of 1869

The Pacific Railway Act of 1862 called for the laying of track by the Union Pacific (UP) and the Central Pacific (CP), the former going west from Omaha and the latter going east from Sacramento. The two roads would eventually link.

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The project had more than its share of problems. The government subsidies introduced perverse incentives, all chronicled by Professor Folsom. Since the railroad companies received land and loans in proportion to the amount of track they laid, management had an incentive to lay track rapidly in order to collect as much federal aid as possible. There was much less emphasis on the quality of track laid or on following the shortest possible route than there would have been in the absence of these government handouts. To the contrary, circuitous routes meant more track laid and therefore more federal aid. Moreover, since low-interest loans were granted in higher amounts for more mountainous terrain, the railroad companies had greater incentive to lay track over less suitable land than if they had had to lay track with their own resources.

As the two tracks approached each other in Utah in 1869, more serious troubles began. Seeing the end of subsidies looming, the two lines built track parallel to each other instead of joining, and both lines applied for subsidies on the basis of the parallel track. Worse, physical destruction and even death resulted when the mainly Irish UP workers clashed with mainly Chinese CP workers. The celebrations that took place on May 10, 1869, when the two lines finally met, obscured the often shoddy workmanship that government grants had inadvertently encouraged, and it was not until several years later that all the necessary repairs and rerouting were completed. Looking back on the construction process, UP chief engineer Grenville Dodge remarked, "I never saw so much needless waste in building railroads. Our own construction department has been inefficient."

Cite This Article

"Transcontinental Railroad of 1869" History on the Net
© 2000-2021, Salem Media.
April 15, 2021 <https://www.historyonthenet.com/transcontinental-railroad-1869>
More Citation Information.

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Transcontinental Railroad of 1869 - History

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Loading... The transcontinental railroad in the latter half of the nineteenth century was typically built with substantial infusions of federal, state, and local government aid. This aid took two forms: loans and land grants. The railroads sold the land to settlers for cash. In the process, they also created a market for their services.

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Kids learn about the Pony Express from the Old West. Riders would swap horses at stations to deliver the mail faster to and from California.

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The Pony Express - A Revolution in Transportation and Communication (NHD 2013 Documentary)

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The Pony Express was a system that delivered mail on horseback between Missouri and California. The service lasted for only about a year and a half in the early 1860s.…

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Pony Express

As the United States expanded westward, there was little in the way of communication from the East Coast to the often barren communities in the West. Settlers were creating small villages and towns, and they depended on recent arrivals to hear any news from back East.

The Union created a method to communicate between the already established states to the new state of California and many states in between. They established the Pony Express to carry mail by horseback in satchels, and everything depended on how fast the riders could get the mail to its destination. The Pony Express has become one of the U.S. icons of the West.

The need for a communication method between the states was very obvious. Besides getting news from new arrivals, the only other ways were by ship from the New York or other ports that traveled to the Panama Isthmus (the Panama Canal hadn't been built yet) across by mule, then taking an additional ship to San Francisco. A majority of the mail was sent and received this way, and it took months. Another way was from the Butterfield Overland Mail Company that had established themselves by taking the southern route to the West Coast. This method also took months.

As tensions increased between the North and South, the Northern states needed a faster way to send and receive communications with California. The Midwest and West Coast settlements were expanding, and there was a requirement for faster and better ways to get information.

The Pony Express was the idea of William B. Waddell, Alexander Majors, and William H. Russell. They created a 1966-mile trail starting in St. Joseph, Missouri, that extended to Sacramento, California. They created a poster ad that was looking for lightweight less than 125 lbs) orphans that could ride horses. This poster is considered to be the first American "classified ad." They sent multiple riders out from both Sacramento and St. Joseph on April 3, 1860. Riders would carry the satchels, meet up at a designated place where they would pass the satchel to new riders with fresh horses. The journey heading east took 11 days, 12 hours. The journey heading west took nine days, 23 hours.

The riders were pretty much on their own, and they had to travel through the dangerous country. They experienced awful weather, and the time that it took depended upon how good the weather was. Traveling through the snow was treacherous, and they had to always be on the lookout for attacks by Native Americans.

The horses were the major ingredient in the success of the Pony Express. With a healthy, superb horse, a rider could travel as far as 250 miles per day. This was over twice as far as a standard stagecoach or covered wagon could travel. It was coordinated so that the riders switched out horses around every 75 miles, and they would switch out riders every several hundred miles or so.

The riders took incredible chances, and because the job was so dangerous, only orphans or people that we're completely alone in the world were hired. While most riders were younger, the age for the riders ranged from 11 years to almost 50 years. The pay was $100 per month, which was considered a fantastic income for the time.

At its peak, the Pony Express had around 183 riders, 400-500 horses, and 165-way stations. However, the progress of the telegraph meant that information could be transmitted across the country in a much faster way, and within 19 months after the Pony Express started, the last rider was sent out on October 24, 1861.

The Pony Express ended up losing over $200,000, but it should be noted that only one mail shipment was lost, and only one rider was ever lost. The image of the Pony Express and the riders have remained as one that acts as an example of the American West.

Q&A:

What were the requirements for a Pony Express Rider to be hired?
125 lbs or less, be able to ride a horse well, orphan or alone

How often would the Pony Express riders switch out horses?
Every 75 miles

Why was the Pony Express established?
For communication between the East Coast and the new settlements to the West

How far could a good Pony Express rider travel in a day?
250 miles

How long did the Pony Express last?
19 months

What were the obstacles the Pony Express riders had to face?
Bad weather and Native Americans

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The southwestern area of the United States was once owned by Spain. What we now recognize as Texas had been part of that area, and in 1821 Mexico became independent of Spain, and their territory included Texas. Those living in Texas were not in agreement with the Mexican government, and they declare…

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Spanish:

Guerra de 1847 or Guerra de Estados Unidos a Mexico ("War of the United States Against Mexico")

What was the Mexican-American War?

What did the Mexican-American War have to do with Manifest Destiny?

Was there opposition to the Mexican-American War within the United States?

What did the U.S. gain by winning the Mexican-American War?

How did the Mexican-American War increase sectionalism in the United States?

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Mexican-American War, war between the United States and Mexico (April 1846-February 1848) stemming from the United States' annexation of Texas in 1845 and from a dispute over whether Texas ended at the Nueces River (Mexican claim) or the Rio Grande (U.S. claim). The war-in which U.S. forces were consistently victorious-resulted in the United States' acquisition of more than 500,000 square miles (1,300,000 square km) of Mexican territory extending westward from the Rio Grande to the Pacific Ocean.

"American blood on American soil": Polk and the prelude to war

Mexico severed relations with the United States in March 1845, shortly after the U.S. annexation of Texas. In September U.S. Pres. James K. Polk sent John Slidell on a secret mission to Mexico City to negotiate the disputed Texas border, settle U.S. claims against Mexico, and purchase New Mexico and California for up to $30 million. Mexican Pres. José Joaquín Herrera, aware in advance of Slidell's intention of dismembering the country, refused to receive him. When Polk learned of the snub, he ordered troops under Gen. Zachary Taylor to occupy the disputed area between the Nueces and the Rio Grande (January 1846).

On May 9, 1846, Polk began to prepare a war message to Congress, justifying hostilities on the grounds of Mexican refusal to pay U.S. claims and refusal to negotiate with Slidell. That evening he received word that Mexican troops had crossed the Rio Grande on April 25 and attacked Taylor 's troops, killing or injuring 16 of them. In his quickly revised war message-delivered to Congress on May 11-Polk claimed that Mexico had "invaded our territory and shed American blood on American soil."

Spot Resolutions and Civil Disobedience: American opposition to the war

Congress overwhelmingly approved a declaration of war on May 13, but the United States entered the war divided. Democrats, especially those in the Southwest, strongly favoured the conflict. Most Whigs viewed Polk's motives as conscienceless land grabbing. Indeed, from the outset, Whigs in both the Senate and the House challenged the veracity of Polk's assertion that the initial conflict between U.S. and Mexican forces had taken place in U.S. territory. Further, legislators were at odds over whether Polk had the right to unilaterally declare that a state of war existed. Principally at issue was where the encounter had actually taken place and the willingness of Americans to acknowledge the Mexican contention that the Nueces River formed the border between the two countries. Active Whig opposition not only to the legitimacy of Polk's claim but also to the war itself continued well into the conflict. In December 1846 Polk accused his Whig doubters of treason. In January 1847 the by-then Whig-controlled House voted 85 to 81 to censure Polk for having "unnecessarily and unconstitutionally" initiated war with Mexico.

Among the most-aggressive challenges to the legitimacy of Polk's casus belli was that offered by future president Abraham Lincoln, then a first-term member of the House of Representatives from Illinois. In December 1847 Lincoln introduced eight " Spot Resolutions," which placed the analysis of Polk's claim in a carefully delineated historical context that sought to

obtain a full knowledge of all the facts which go to establish whether the particular spot of soil on which the blood of our citizens was so shed was, or was not, our own soil at that time.

Ultimately, the House did not act on Lincoln's resolutions, and Polk remained steadfast in his claim that the conflict was a just war.

Abolitionists saw the war as an attempt by the slave states to extend slavery and enhance their power with the creation of additional slave states out of the soon-to-be-acquired Mexican lands. One abolitionist who agreed with that interpretation was author Henry David Thoreau, who was incarcerated in July 1846 when he refused to pay six years' worth of back poll taxes because he felt the U.S. government's prosecution of the war with Mexico was immoral. Although he spent only a single night in jail (his aunt, against his wishes, paid the taxes, thus securing his release), Thoreau documented his opposition to the government's actions in his famous book-length essay Civil Disobedience (1849), insisting that if an injustice of government is

of such a nature that it requires you to be the agent of injustice to another, then, I say, break the law. Let your life be a counter friction to stop the machine.

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Mexican-American War | Significance, Battles, Results, Timeline, & Facts

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Mexican-American War, war between the U.S. and Mexico from 1846 to 1848. It was caused by a territorial dispute stemming from the United States' annexation of Texas in 1845 and from contention over whether Texas ended at the Nueces River or the Rio Grande.

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Find a summary, definition and facts about the Mexican American War for kids. Timeline, map, summary and causes of the Mexican American War. Timeline of the Mexican American War for kids, children, homework and schools.

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Expansión de Estados Unidos al Oeste Español Brainpop

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Así Era Realmente Ser Un Pionero En La Senda De Oregón