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Look at the map. The Union Pacific and the Central Pacific Railroad started building at the same time. Why did the builders of the Central Pacific cover a lot less ground than the engineers of the Union Pacific did (even if you take Omaha east of Chicago as a starting point)?

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Watch the short documentary film and note down all the problems that building the railroad(s) entailed.

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Transcontinental Railroad (1869)
Discover the complex negotiations that went into the creation of the railroad that would shrink the time it took to cross the nation from six months to one week.

In the early nineteenth century, traveling from the East to the West Coast was a four- to six-month journey, and safe passage was far from guaranteed. The land routes took travelers through deserts, across plains and rivers, and over mountains. Sea passage took just as long, taking travelers either through Panama or around Cape Horn, on South America's southern tip.

The construction of the Transcontinental Railroad would drastically change that, directly connecting the coasts, making travel cheaper, quicker, and safer and opening the door for massive economic expansion across the country.

By the mid-nineteenth century, most everyone in Washington agreed that America needed a railroad to connect the coasts. By 1848, five separate railroad resolutions went before Congress, each proposing a distinct route, most of them snaking through the lower passes on the northern side of Rocky Mountains, headed towards San Francisco or Vancouver, or traveling south towards San Diego, avoiding the Rockies and the Sierra Nevada altogether.

The debate surrounding the railway's path became particularly charged in the years immediately preceding the Civil War.

A portrait of Theodore Dehone Judah, chief engineer for the Central Pacific Railroad Photographer and date unknown. Courtesy of the Internet Archive

"The Southern legislators would not let a northern route go in because it would give the North supremacy," said Phil Sexton, a cultural and national heritage interpreter with the California State Railroad Museum. "The Northern legislators would not allow a southern route because it could help expand slavery."

But California engineer Theodore Judah, who had already overseen the construction of the first rail line west of the Missouri River, scouted out and surveyed a third option with the backing of four Sacramento merchants and gold rush tycoons known as the "Big Four." Judah's proposed path ran straight through the snowy Sierra Nevada mountains to Sacramento, California, the heart of the California Gold Rush.

In 1857, Judah published and distributed copies of a pamphlet laying out his vision and his research. A Practical Plan for Building the Pacific Railroad drummed up significant interest in Washington and drew more financial backers to his cause.

Still, many thought his route was preposterous. Though more direct, it would be much more difficult to build.

Map of the Central Portion of the United States Showing the Lines of the Proposed Pacific Railroads. Published by the Union Pacific Railroad, circa 1857. Courtesy of the Library of Congress

But soon after the Civil War broke out, Judah headed back to Washington to lobby once again. Only now, with the Southern legislators removed from the voting pool, Judah had much less opposition. He and his supporters in Washington were also able to sell the cross-continental line as a war measure, designed to link California and Nevada - and their rich resources - more closely to the Union.

The Pacific Railroad Act, which Judah helped write, was signed by President Lincoln on July 1, 1862. It authorized the Union Pacific to build westward from Council Bluffs, Iowa, while the Central Pacific built eastward from Sacramento, California. The two tracks would then meet at a point to be determined. In Iowa, trains would connect to and from the Atlantic coast on existing railroads, thus creating a coast-to-coast route.

However, though the federal support won Judah loans, grants, and permission to start construction, getting the project off the ground remained a challenge, particularly for the Central Pacific.

First, the equipment they needed was stuck on the East Coast. Nearly every spike, rail, shovel, and locomotive had to be sent via ships that sailed south around Cape Horn and up the Pacific Coast.

An even more daunting challenge was to recruit enough labor for the herculean task. Initial enlistment efforts fell far short of the number of workers needed for the job, so foremen turned to Chinese laborers. Initially, they recruited migrants who had come to California during the Gold Rush. When that wasn't enough, they recruited directly from impoverished regions of China. Though records differ, historians agree that at least 10,000 Chinese laborers were employed by Central Pacific at the time, representing nearly 90 percent of the workforce.

"The conventional wisdom is that Chinese laborers were unskilled, illiterate, but actually they were skilled," said Sue Lee, former head of the Chinese Historical Society of America. "They came from the Guangdong area...and they had all kinds of skills. They were miners, they were stone workers,...they were carpenters, as well as doctors."

Heading of east portal, Tunnel No. 8. Photograph of a Chinese worker by Alfred A. Hart between 1865 and 1869. Published by the Golden State Photographic Gallery. Courtesy of the Library of Congress

The Chinese laborers often did the most arduous, death-defying jobs and worked 12-hour shifts. After fees for housing and travel were deducted, they also earned far less than their white, mostly Irish, counterparts.

In some spots, workers built wooden trestles to cross deep ravines. In other places, they carved shelves into mountainsides. But high up in the mountains, they often had to dig tunnels, many of them through solid granite. To do that, they used highly volatile nitroglycerin.

One of the most difficult portions of the track ran through Donner Pass, which became the stuff of legend and childhood nightmares just decades prior, when a group of 81 pioneers became trapped there for the winter, and some resorted to cannibalism to survive. The Summit Tunnel through Donner Pass was the longest at nearly 1,700 feet. Workers expedited the job by blasting a vertical shaft and then excavating out from the middle while others tunneled from both ends.

It is unknown how many Chinese died in the process. Estimates range from 50 to 1,200 fatalities.

"But it's not documented, which is very sad," said Lee. "Without the Chinese labor, the Transcontinental Railroad...would have taken several years more. It really was the diligence and teamwork of the Chinese that helped finish the railroad."

As it was, only six years after construction began, the eastern and western rail lines met at Promontory Summit, Utah, on May 10, 1869.

East and West shaking hands at the laying of the last rail. Taken at the ceremony at Promontory Summit, Utah on May 10, 1869. Photo by Andrew J. Russell, 1869. Source: Wikimedia Commons, via the Yale University Libraries

Sadly, despite the relatively quick work, Theodore Judah wasn't there to see the realization of his long-cherished dream. Disagreements between Judah and his business associates in 1863 left him with the option of either selling his shares to his partners or buying them out. He traveled to New York via steamer to seek financial support but contracted yellow fever while docked in Panama. At the age of 37, Theodore Judah died shortly after his arrival on the East Coast.

A Modern Ride on the Transcontinental Railroad
Amtrak still operates passenger trains over portions of the original Transcontinental Railroad route. Even today, navigating that treacherous path can present challenges for engineers.

In the end, Judah's partners - Collis Huntington, Charles Crocker, Mark Hopkins, and Leland Stanford, known as the "Big Four" - reaped the rewards of the project that he set in motion.

America changed almost overnight. The Transcontinental Railroad allowed for goods to be shipped and sold nationally and laid the foundation for America's global economic ascendance. It also stitched together a collection of far-flung states into a single country, allowing people and ideas to travel more widely than ever before.

"The railroad gets completed and suddenly everybody knows everybody all over the country," said Sexton. "It speaks to the passion and drive that people had to span this continent and to really make this a transcontinental nation."

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10 That Changed America | 10 Modern Marvels | Transcontinental Railroad 3 Transcontinental Railroad 1869 Tunnel #3, Weber Canyon, Utah. Photographer unknown, 1869. Courtesy of the Library of Congress East Portal of Summit Tunnel. Photo by Alfred A. Hart between 1865 and 1869.

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Read the ad. Note down some (4 to 5) aspects how the Central Pacific Railroad tried to attract settlers (and thus laborers) to California.

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Watch 33:45 - 41:19 of the documentary. Where did the majority of the workforce come from? Why? How did their lifestyle help them work harder?

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The Transcontinental Railroad (AMAZING AMERICAN HISTORY DOCUMENTARY) The remarkable story of greed, innovation and gritty determination to build a .\r
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The Transcontinental Railroad (AMAZING AMERICAN HISTORY DOCUMENTARY) The remarkable story of greed, innovation and gritty determination to build a .\r
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The Transcontinental Railroad (AMAZING AMERICAN HISTORY DOCUMENTARY) The remarkable story of greed, innovation and gritty determination to build a .\r
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History Documentary Channel Thanks for watching ! dont forget subscribe and share if you like this video ! The Transcontinental Railroad (AMAZING .

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The Transcontinental Railroad (AMAZING AMERICAN HISTORY DOCUMENTARY)

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The Transcontinental Railroad (AMAZING AMERICAN HISTORY DOCUMENTARY) The remarkable story of greed, innovation and gritty determination to build a .\r\rThe Transcontinental Railroad (AMAZING AMERICAN HISTORY DOCUMENTARY) The remarkable story of greed, innovation and gritty determination to build a .\r\rThe Transcontinental Railroad (AMAZING AMERICAN HISTORY DOCUMENTARY) The remarkable story of greed, innovation and gritty determination to build a .\r\rHistory Documentary Channel Thanks for watching !

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5) East and West shaking hands at the laying of the last rail. Taken at the ceremony at Promontory Summit, Utah on May 10, 1869. Photo by Andrew J. Russell, 1869. Source: Wikimedia Commons, via the Yale University Libraries

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5) East and West shaking hands at the laying of the last rail. Taken at the ceremony at Promontory Summit, Utah on May 10, 1869. Photo by Andrew J. Russell, 1869. Source: Wikimedia Commons, via the Yale University Libraries

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Watch 44:37 - 51:00 of the documentary. Answer the following questions:
- How did the Indians use the buffalo? (3-5 examples)
- How did the arrival of the white settlers impact Native Americans?
- What did Native Americans do to sabotage the building of the railroad? (3-5 examples)
- How did the Whites deal with the "problem" of the Natives Americans?

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The Transcontinental Railroad (AMAZING AMERICAN HISTORY DOCUMENTARY) The remarkable story of greed, innovation and gritty determination to build a .\r
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The Transcontinental Railroad (AMAZING AMERICAN HISTORY DOCUMENTARY) The remarkable story of greed, innovation and gritty determination to build a .\r
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The Transcontinental Railroad (AMAZING AMERICAN HISTORY DOCUMENTARY) The remarkable story of greed, innovation and gritty determination to build a .\r
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History Documentary Channel Thanks for watching ! dont forget subscribe and share if you like this video ! The Transcontinental Railroad (AMAZING .

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The Transcontinental Railroad (AMAZING AMERICAN HISTORY DOCUMENTARY)

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The Transcontinental Railroad (AMAZING AMERICAN HISTORY DOCUMENTARY) The remarkable story of greed, innovation and gritty determination to build a .\r\rThe Transcontinental Railroad (AMAZING AMERICAN HISTORY DOCUMENTARY) The remarkable story of greed, innovation and gritty determination to build a .\r\rThe Transcontinental Railroad (AMAZING AMERICAN HISTORY DOCUMENTARY) The remarkable story of greed, innovation and gritty determination to build a .\r\rHistory Documentary Channel Thanks for watching !

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2) PBS - The Greatest Enterprise under God

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2) PBS - The Greatest Enterprise under God

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Watch the sections "Walking Gold Pieces" (45:40 to 49:10) and "A Wound in the Heart"
(1:12:03 until the end)

(You can also find the text accompanying the video under 3a and 3b)

Questions:
- How did the white settlers react when they "discovered" the buffalo? Note down different reactions.
- How long did it take to make the buffalo virtually extinct?
- How did the white settlers make profit from the buffalo?

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The West   05:   The Grandest Enterprise Under God 1868 - 1874

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Read the poster. Note down catchphrases that are intended to attract customers for the new railway line across the nation.

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Walking Gold Pieces

Following the lead of the Union Pacific and Central Pacific, other rail lines soon spread throughout the West -- the Kansas Pacific, Northern Pacific, and Denver Pacific; the Texas and Pacific; the Denver and Rio Grande; the Atchison, Topeka and Santa Fe.

And as the railroads moved onto the Great Plains, they brought with them people who had never seen the West, or its most magnificent animal, the buffalo. At first, they shot the buffalo for sport, banging away at the huge herds from the windows of passengers cars. One church group from Lawrence, Kansas, organized a two-day hunting excursion to raise money: three hundred people signed up.

When the white men wanted to build railroads, or when they wanted to farm or raise cattle, the buffalo still protected the Kiowas. They tore up the railroad tracks and the gardens. They chased the cattle off the ranges. The buffalo loved their people as much as the Kiowas loved them... Then the white men hired hunters to do nothing but kill the buffalo.
Old Lady Horse

The buffalo didn't belong to anybody. If you could kill them, what they brought was yours. They were walking gold pieces.
Frank H. Mayer

Frank Mayer was hanging around Dodge City, Kansas, in the heart of buffalo country, looking for work, when he met two hunters who offered to show him their brand-new trade. "I was young... I needed adventure," he remembered. "Here was it."

The new rail lines meant that buffalo robes and buffalo meat could be taken to eastern markets in greater numbers, at lower costs. And manufacturers had perfected techniques for turning stiff buffalo hides into soft leather -- ideal for shoes, cushions, carriage tops, and the belts that turned machinery in eastern factories.

Frank Mayer was determined to be among the first to profit from the buffalo boom. He sank everything he owned into a hunting outfit -- wagons, mules, camp equipment, and firearms. Then he headed out onto the Plains.

When I went into the business, I sat down and figured that I was indeed one of fortune's children. Just think. There were 20 million buffalo, each worth at least $3 -- $60 million. At the very outside, cartridges cost 25 cents each, so every time I fired one I got my investment back twelve times over. I could kill a hundred a day.... That would be $6,000 a month -- or three times what was paid, it seems to me, the President of the United States. Was I not lucky that I discovered this quick and easy way to fortune? I thought I was.
Frank H. Mayer

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Following the lead of the Union Pacific and Central Pacific, other rail lines soon spread throughout the West -- the Kansas Pacific, Northern Pacific, and Denver Pacific; the Texas and Pacific; the Denver and Rio Grande; the Atchison, Topeka and Santa Fe.

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A Wound in the Heart

"If you were looking for the definitive symbol of the conflict between the cultures that had existed in the American West for at least ten thousand years, and maybe longer, and the culture that was just a building East of the Mississippi River, this culture of technology, of commerce, of grasping after tomorrow before it arrives, you couldn't come up with two more powerful symbols than the Railroad, and the Buffalo, because when the Railroad met the Buffalo, the Iron Age met the Stone Age, the machine arrived in the garden, and the West was changed for ever."
T. H. Watkins

There was a man who killed a buffalo bull to no purpose.
Only he wanted its blood on his hands.
It was a great, old noble beast and it was a long time blowing its life away.
On the edge of the night,
the people gathered themselves up in their grief and shame.
Away in the West, they could see the hump and spine of the huge beast which lay dying along the edge of the world.
They could see its bright blood run into the sky where it dried, darkening, and was at last flecked with flakes of light.
N. Scott Momaday

The thing we had to have, we businessmen with rifles, was one shot kills. We based our success on... the overwhelming stupidity of the buffalo, unquestionably the stupidest game animal in the world... If you wounded the leader... the rest of her herd, whether it was three or thirty, would gather around her and stupidly "mill" ... All you had to do... was pick them off one by one... I once took 269 hides with 300 cartridges. Adventurous? No more than shooting a beef critter in the barnyard... It was a harvest. We were the harvesters.
Frank H. Mayer

Frank Mayer and thousands of other buffalo hunters swarmed onto the plains. Some stopped shooting just long enough to cool their over-heated rifle barrels with canteens of water. When the water ran out, they urinated down the barrel and kept shooting.

Up and down the plains those men ranged... Behind them came the skinners with their wagons. They piled the hides and bones into the wagons until they were full, and then took their loads to the new railroad stations... to be shipped east to market. Sometimes there would be a pile of bones as high as a man, stretching a mile along the railroad track.
Old Lady Horse

Thirty-two million pounds of buffalo bones made their way from the plains to eastern factories, where they were ground into fertilizer. Buffalo horns were turned into buttons, combs, knife handles. Hooves became glue. All across western Kansas, the slaughter went on -- perhaps as many as three million buffalo killed in the two years since the coming of the railroad.

Where there were myriads of buffalo the year before, there were now myriads of carcasses. The air was foul with a sickening stench, and the vast plain, which only a short twelvemonth before teemed with animal life, was a dead, solitary, putrid desert.
Col. Richard Irving Dodge

Many Americans grew alarmed at the extent of the slaughter. In the Spring of 1874, Congress passed a law to protect the buffalo. But President Ulysses S. Grant refused to sign it, and the killing continued. Hunters had already moved south of Kansas, onto hunting grounds reserved by treaty for the Indians. The government did nothing to stop them, and even provided the hunters with free ammunition.

You white people make a big talk, and sometimes war, if an Indian kills a white man's ox to keep his wife and children from starving. What do you think my people ought to say and do when they themselves see their buffalo killed by your race when you are not hungry?
Little Robe

The Indians sensed... that we were taking away their birthright and that with every boom of a buffalo rifle their tenure on their homeland became weakened and that eventually they would have no homeland and no buffalo. So they did what you and I would do if our existence were jeopardized: they fought.
Frank H. Mayer

In the summer of 1874, the Kiowas, Comanches, Arapahos and southern Cheyenne rose up and drove out the hunters -- and any other whites they came across. General Philip Sheridan ordered a massive campaign, deploying five columns of troops to pursue the Indians relentlessly during the summer and fall, depriving them of rest, or the opportunity to hunt. By the next spring, virtually all of the resisting bands on the southern Plains -- desperate now for food -- had been driven back onto the reservations.

The buffalo hunters went right back to work. Within a year, the herd on the southern plains had virtually disappeared.

One by one we put up our buffalo rifles... left the ranges. And there settled over them a vast quiet... The buffalo was gone... Maybe we served our purpose in helping abolish the buffalo; maybe it was our ruthless harvesting of him which telescoped the control of the Indian by a decade or maybe more. Or maybe I am just rationalizing. Maybe we were just a greedy lot who wanted to get ours, and to hell with posterity, the buffalo, or anyone else, just so we kept our scalps on and our money pouches filled. I think maybe that is the way it was.
Frank H. Mayer

"It would be hard to imagine anything more deeply hurtful than the loss of something ineffably sacred. One can only guess and imagine. We can't know what that is now. But certainly confusion, first of all, I suppose. Why is this happening? Why are you killing the buffalo? We do that, of course, but we do it in order to survive and we do it in a sacred manner. But this wholesale slaughter must have been first confusing, and then -- you know -- a devastation. A wound in the heart that we cannot conceive of now."
N. Scott Momaday

The buffalo saw that their day was over. They could protect their people no longer. Sadly, the last remnant of the great herd gathered in council, and decided what they would do. One young woman got up very early... and... peering through the haze, she saw the last buffalo herd appear like in a spirit dream. Straight to Mount Scott the leader of the herd walked. Behind him came the cows and their calves, and the few young males who had survived. As the woman watched, the face of the mountain opened. Inside Mount Scott the world was green and fresh, as it had been when she was a small girl. The rivers ran clear, not red. Into this world of beauty the buffalo walked, never to be seen again.
Old Lady Horse

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"If you were looking for the definitive symbol of the conflict between the cultures that had existed in the American West for at least ten thousand years, and maybe longer, and the culture that was just a building East of the Mississippi River, this culture of technology, of commerce, of grasping after tomorrow before it arrives, you couldn't come up with two more powerful symbols than the Railroad, and the Buffalo, because when the Railroad met the Buffalo, the Iron Age met the Stone Age, the machine arrived in the garden, and the West was changed for ever."

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Watch 49:19 to 54:52.
- Take note of the nationalities that settled the Plains and of the states that were populated thanks to the new railroad lines.
- What made life in the Plains hard for the settlers? How did they try to deal with the challenges?
- How did the Plains become the "breadbasket of the USA"?

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The West   05:   The Grandest Enterprise Under God 1868 - 1874

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As an alternative to watching the documentary, you can read the accompanying text here:

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Good Company

We had a motley array of neighbors. On one side a German who could scarce speak English married to a Bohemian who could speak little English and no German; on another side a family of Swedes fresh from the old country; on an adjoining farm a Scotsman with a Missouri wife; nearby a family from Iowa; another family from Illinois; some old, some young; some illiterate, some well educated; yet all engaged in the same enterprise.
Frank Waugh

As more and more railroads expanded into the West, an intense competition began. Settlers were sought who would provide business for their freight trains, and buy the land the railroads had been given as government subsidies. "You can lay track to the garden of Eden," said the head of the Northern Pacific, "but what good is it if the only inhabitants are Adam and Eve."

Western states also contended with one another for new residents. Since 1862, the Homestead Act had promised 160 acres of public land to any person who filed a claim, paid a ten-dollar fee, and agreed to work the property for five years.

In the 1870's, Kansas grew by more than half a million people. Nebraska's population quadrupled. Two hundred Scottish families settled on the Kansas-Nebraska border. The Hebrew Immigrant Aid Society lured Jews from eastern Europe to Oregon, Colorado, Kansas, the Dakotas. German-Russian Mennonites; Swedish, Dutch, French, Bohemian, Irish, and Norwegian families were soon scattered across the plains.

"In the villages of Europe you might be only a few steps away from your neighbors, certainly within hearing distance. You could hear the village's church bells ringing on a Sunday morning. Suddenly, here they were isolated many miles from neighbors and from villages with long periods of time between any kind of interaction. They had "wind sickness," they called it, from the constant blowing of the wind, they planted trees around their houses not simply for the shade or for the beauty, but to protect them from the immensity of the landscape."
Roger Welsch

They started towns like Lindsborg and Hoffnungsthal, New Alexanderwohl and Dannebrog -- some with the same street plans as their old villages in Europe. And they planted wheat they had brought along from as far away as Russia. It flourished as no other domestic crop ever had before on the semi-arid Plains, and would one day help make the United States the agricultural wonder of the world.

"The men had farmed in many cases most of their lives, but they had to struggle against roots and rocks and all these things that made farming difficult. They looked around them here, and there were thousands, tens of thousands, hundreds of thousands of acres without a root or a rock. They could put their plow in the ground and go miles and miles straight ahead without worrying about a hill. This was grass ground, earth that had never been turned in all of history except by maybe a buffalo's horn. They said the first time a plow went through that ground, it sounded like the opening of a giant zipper from the grass roots tearing as the plow went through it. To them, this was a dream come true."
Roger Welsch

"We seldom stop to think how desperately lonely it was. One of the tales I like the best was about a woman who lived out in West Texas. She seldom saw anybody up in the Panhandle. A cowboy came through one time and brought her a sack that had three chickens in it. And she could not bring herself to kill those chickens. She said, "You will never know what good company they were." There was some core of that woman that embraced this raw country. But you see it was her lot, her husband goes off to round up the cattle, whatever adventure that he might have been on, and it was her lot to keep the homestead, to run the ranch, to care for his family. And so I think of that woman often with those three chickens. And I bet they were good company."
Ann Richards

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We had a motley array of neighbors. On one side a German who could scarce speak English married to a Bohemian who could speak little English and no German; on another side a family of Swedes fresh from the old country; on an adjoining farm a Scotsman with a Missouri wife; nearby a family from Iowa; another family from Illinois; some old, some young; some illiterate, some well educated; yet all engaged in the same enterprise.

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Google the term and explain its connection to the railroad.
(Originally, this was NOT a TV series!!!)

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Watch 1:16:10 to 1:18:30.
Cheyenne and Laramie - new towns that had sprung up thanks to the railroad - are model towns that helped coin the term "wild west". Explain why life in the west was "wild".
PS: Did you get the hint to one of the myths of the Wild West mentioned in the video sequence? If yes, write it down.

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Documentaries - American History. The Transcontinental Railroad - Documentary 2017 ♥

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Read the information on the website.
How did the disappearance of the buffalo help to build a new industry in the USA?

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Ranchers managed to acquire or "borrow" huge tracts of land for their cattle. But many of them noticed that it was a long way to take their cattle to Chicago for meat-processing.

In 1882, Alexander Swan came to Omaha and urged business leaders there to consider creating a stockyard. He and others, including Englishman C. R. Schaller, argued that shipping cattle the extra 500 miles to Chicago caused weight loss, and therefore profit loss.

They also noted that Omaha was a transportation center, with the Union Pacific Railroad and the Missouri River. The Missouri provided an adequate water supply and excellent drainage, both necessary for raising stock. Swan noted, too, that there was plenty of corn and grass to fatten the cattle.

In 1884, a group of investors built cattle pens on 10 acres of ground. Then, just two years later, the investors built the Livestock Exchange building. As the stockyards grew quickly, so did the number of animals it processed. Soon meatpackers set up packing plants near the yards. By 1890, South Omaha was the center of an expanding western meat industry. The stockyards and packing plants became essential to the city of Omaha's economy.

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Ranchers managed to acquire or "borrow" huge tracts of land for their cattle. But many of them noticed that it was a long way to take their cattle to Chicago for meat-processing. In 1882, Alexander Swan came to Omaha and urged business leaders there to consider creating a stockyard.

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Read the text.
- Describe the typcial cowboy.
- Why did the cowboy become another symbol of the Wild West? (see also next column)

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Cowboys

From the southernmost tip of Texas, cattle trails pointed north -- the Shawnee, the Chisholm, the Western, the Goodnight-Loving. They all led to railheads, where the cattle were loaded into freight cars bound for eastern markets.

In less than two decades six million steers and cows were moved along them; so many, one trail driver said, that in places the dust was knee-deep to the cattle. The men who brought them to the railroads were given a new name "cowboys."

They were a mixed group: former Confederate cavalry men and immigrants who had only recently learned to ride; there were Indian cowboys and African-Americans -- and Mexican vaqueros, whose ancestors had introduced cattle to the West centuries earlier. A cowboy, one westerner observed, is "just a plain bowlegged human who smelled very horsey at times."

Edward C. Abbott was born in Cranwich, England, and brought to the West by his parents as a boy. Hoping the open air would improve his frail health, his father let him help drive a herd of cattle from Texas to Nebraska when he was just 10 years old. The experience, Abbott said later, "made a cowboy out of me. Nothing could have changed me after that."

The cowboys' average age was 24. They were paid so badly, and worked so hard, that two-thirds of them made only one trail drive before finding something better to do. They owned their saddle, but not the horse they rode -- and they rode it day and night.

"If a storm come and the cattle started running -- you'd hear that low rumbling noise along the ground... then you'd jump for your horse and get out there in the lead, trying to head them and get them into a mill before they scattered to hell and gone. It was riding at a dead run in the dark, with cut banks and prairie dog holes all around you, not knowing if the next jump would land you in a shallow grave."

"The singing was supposed to soothe the cattle and it did... The two men on guard would circle around with their horses on a walk, if it was a clear night and the cattle was bedded down and quiet, and one man would sing a verse of a song, and his partner on the other side of the herd would sing another verse; and you'd go through a whole song that way... I had a crackerjack of a partner in '79. I'd sing and he'd answer, and we'd keep it up like that for two hours. But he was killed by lightning."
Teddy Blue Abbott

After up to four straight months in the saddle, often in the same clothes every day, eating every meal at the chuck wagon, drinking nothing but coffee and water, the cowboy's job was finally done -- he was paid for his work, and turned loose in town.

Cowboys were big spenders, but while businesses profited, all the cowtowns soon became wilder than their permanent residents liked.

The Marshal has posted up printed notices, informing all persons that the ordinance against carrying firearms or other weapons in Abilene will be enforced. That's right. There's no bravery in carrying revolvers in a civilized community.
Abilene Chronicle

Gun control ordinances were common; cowboys who insisted on carrying their six-shooters in town risked fines and imprisonment. To make sure the laws were obeyed, some cowtowns resorted to hiring notorious gunmen -- Wyatt Earp, Bat Masterson, and Wild Bill Hickok -- to keep the peace.

Morally, as a class, cowboys are foulmouthed, blasphemous, drunken, lecherous, utterly corrupt. Usually harmless on the plains when sober, they are dreaded in towns, for then liquor has an ascendancy over them.
Cheyenne Daily Leader

One by one, the cowtowns would declare themselves off-limits to the Texas herds and the cowboys who came with them.

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From the southernmost tip of Texas, cattle trails pointed north -- the Shawnee, the Chisholm, the Western, the Goodnight-Loving. They all led to railheads, where the cattle were loaded into freight cars bound for eastern markets.

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1) By 1874 most Plains' Indians had already been forced to live on reservations.

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1) By 1874 most Plains' Indians had already been forced to live on reservations.

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The Plains' Indians had lost their livelihood when the railroad came (s. above); many other tribes of the South had forcefully been relocated and gathered together in reservations as a consequence of the Indian Removal Act of 1830.

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2) The Dawes Act of 1887 sealed the fate of Native American culture.

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2) The Dawes Act of 1887 sealed the fate of Native American culture.

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- Get informed about the Dawes Act and note down in your own words what it said.
- Analyze the pictures (#3a+b) below and put them in relation to what you found out about the Dawes Act.

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4) The NCAI is the homepage of an organization by Native Americans for Native Americans.

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4) The NCAI is the homepage of an organization by Native Americans for Native Americans.

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- Go to the homepage and look up some of the tribes that you got to know during this session (the Kiowa, Cheyenne, Pawnee...). What information do you find about their history?
- What are the current concerns of Native Americans? Just browse the current events/news sections to find out.

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Featured
October 8, 2019

Featured
August 28, 2019

Featured
August 23, 2019

Oct 16, 2019
Fairbanks, AK 99701

Oct 20, 2019 - Oct 25, 2019
Albuquerque Convention Center, Albuquerque, NM

Embassy of Tribal Nations
1516 P Street NW, Washington, DC 20005
Phone: (202) 466-7767, Fax: (202) 466-7797

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Featured October 8, 2019 Featured August 28, 2019 Featured August 23, 2019 Oct 16, 2019 Fairbanks, AK 99701 Oct 20, 2019 - Oct 25, 2019 Albuquerque Convention Center, Albuquerque, NM Embassy of Tribal Nations 1516 P Street NW, Washington, DC 20005 Phone: (202) 466-7767, Fax: (202) 466-7797

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From 1820 to 2013, 79 million people obtained lawful permanent resident status in the United States. The interactive map below visualizes all of them based on their prior country of residence. The brightness of a country corresponds to its total migration to the U.S. at the given time.

Use the controls at the bottom to stop / resume the animation or to move back and forth in time.

Two Centuries of U.S. Immigration (1 dot = 10,000 people)

Over time, the sources of immigration trace a clear path across the world.

Through most of the 1800's, immigration came predominantly from Western Europe (Ireland, Germany, the U.K.). Toward the end of the century, countries further east in Europe (Italy, Russia, Hungary) took over as the largest source of migration. Beginning in the early 1900's, most immigrants arrived from the Americas (Canada, Mexico). And the last few decades have seen a rise in migration from Asia. The same trends are clear looking at the history of New York City's foreign born population.

Here are the largest immigration "waves" charted over time, showing the progression.

While it may seem that immigration over the last few decades has been higher than ever before, the picture looks very different when viewed relative to the size of the U.S. population.

Here is the same chart, with the immigration shown as a percentage of the U.S. population.

Of my four grandparents, one is of Japanese descent, two are from Europe (a Polish Jew and an Italian Catholic), and one is native American. So genealogy and immigration flows have long been fascinations of mine.

What I think is particularly interesting about immigration to the U.S. is that each "wave" coming in from a particular country has a story behind it - usually escaping persecution (e.g. Jews escaping Russia after the May Laws were enacted, the Cuban Revolution) or major economic troubles (e.g. the Irish Potato Famine, the collapse of southern Italy after the Italian Unification).

There are plenty of dark spots on United States' history, but the role it has played as a sanctuary for troubled people across the world is a history I feel very proud to be a part of.

If you would like to read more about what caused each of these groups to come to the U.S., this graphic summarizes some of the major events.
If you liked this map, sign up to be notified of new Metrocosm posts Credit:

Here is everyone who's emigrated to the U.S. since 1820 (1 dot = 10,000 people) https://t.co/SaQFzv4Rgv https://t.co/CqijaH8a1n

- Max Galka (@galka_max) May 4, 2016

Embed as HD video:
My latest project, Elementus, aims to bring transparency to the cryptocurrency market. Check out our blog for some crypto-related data visualizations.

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Here's Everyone Who's Immigrated to the U.S. Since 1820

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Facebook Twitter Google+ LinkedIn34.7Kshares From 1820 to 2013, 79 million people obtained lawful permanent resident status in the United States. The interactive map below visualizes all of them based on their prior country of residence. The brightness of a country corresponds to its total migration to the U.S. at the given time.

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U.S. Immigration Since 1820 | Kids Discover Online

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Immigration by nationality + explanation

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Immigration by nationality + explanation

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Over the coming centuries, millions of people from around the globe were attracted to this New World that came to be the US for a chance at a better life.

Today, more than 1 in 8 Americans are immigrants, and almost all are descendants of those born in foreign lands.
Produced by Alex Kuzoian.

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Animated map shows the history of immigration to the US

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Over the coming centuries, millions of people from around the globe were attracted to this New World that came to be the US for a chance at a better life. Today, more than 1 in 8 Americans are immigrants, and almost all are descendants of those born in foreign lands.