OK Land Rush

Are the best things in life for free? What's the best thing you've ever got for free?

At precisely twelve noon on September 16, 1893 a cannon's boom unleashed the largest land rush America ever saw. Carried by all kinds of transportation - horses, wagons, trains, bicycles or on foot - an estimated 100,000 raced to claim plots of free land in an area of northern Oklahoma Territory known as the Cherokee Strip. There had been a number of previous land rushes in the Territory - but this was the big one.

'As the expectant home-seekers waited with restless patience, the clear, sweet notes of a cavalry bugle rose and hung a moment upon the startled air. It was noon. The last barrier of savagery in the United States was broken down. Moved by the same impulse, each driver lashed his horses furiously; each rider dug his spurs into his willing steed, and each man on foot caught his breath hard and darted forward. A cloud of dust rose where the home-seekers had stood in line, and when it had drifted away before the gentle breeze, the horses and wagons and men were tearing across the open country like fiends. The horsemen had the best of it from the start. It was a fine race for a few minutes, but soon the riders began to spread out like a fan, and by the time they had reached the horizon they were scattered about as far as eye could see. Even the fleetest of the horsemen found upon reaching their chosen localities that men in wagons and men on foot were there before them. As it was clearly impossible for a man on foot to outrun a horseman, the inference is plain that Oklahoma had been entered hours before the appointed time.'    -Harper's Weekly 33 (May 18, 1889): 391-94.

How did the Homestead Act encourage settlement of the new Western frontier?

Who were the real Sooners and why should the Oklahoma football team change their name?

What was appealing about Oklahoma?  Would you want to live there?  Why?

In 1890 the national census concluded there was no longer a square mile of the US that wasn't settled.  According to Historian Frederick Jackson Turner's  'Frontier Thesis' the closing of the American Frontier means the gradual decline of our Democracy.  Do you think the United States needs to continue to expand?  If not why? If so where?

The Golden Spike

Can you spot the differences in these two pictures?

Completing the last link in the First Transcontinental Railroad with a spike of gold was the brainchild of David Hewes, a San Francisco financier and contractor. The spike had been manufactured earlier that year especially for the event by the William T. Garratt Foundry in San Francisco. Two of the sides were engraved with the names of the railroad officers and directors. A special tie of polished California laurel was chosen to complete the line where the spike would be driven. The ceremony was originally to be held on May 8, 1869 (the date actually engraved on the spike), but it was postponed two days because of bad weather and a labor dispute that delayed the arrival of the Union Pacific side of the rail line. On May 10, in anticipation of the ceremony, Union Pacific No. 119 and Central Pacific No. 60 (better known as the Jupiter) locomotives were drawn up face-to-face on Promontory Summit, separated only by the width of a single tie. The golden spike was made of 17.6-karat(73%) copper-alloyed gold, and weighed 14.03 ounces (436 g). It was dropped into a pre-drilled hole in the laurel ceremonial last tie, and gently tapped into place with a silver ceremonial spike maul.

Why was this railroad necessary for the United States' Manifest Destiny?

How would it effect/ change our nation's future?

Why do you suppose Chinese, Irish, and African American workers aren't given more credit for it;s completion?

All Aboard!

Folk music, trains, and railroads would hardly exist in this country without one another. Some of the greatest American folk songs of all time can be traced back to the building of the railroads, the advent of train travel, and, of course, the riding of the rails during the Depression—when working class men and immigrants traveled on trains in search of work.

You may know our nation's railroads were built primarily by African-Americans and immigrants (particularly Irish immigrants). It was grueling work made more tolerable by the presence of music (similarly to the way field calls and African-American folk songs developed out of the slave tradition).

In the case of "I've Been Working on the Railroad," the telling line is "...all the livelong day." These men really did back-breaking work beyond the hours of labor now acceptable in our society.

From Crazy Train to Peace Train, songs about trains are still popular today...

HOW MANY CAN YOU THINK OF?

Transcontinental RR

 Where did you go on your Summer Vacation? If you could have gone anywhere, where would you have traveled? How would you get there? Plane, train, automobile?

I bet that most of you did not take the train. There was a time however when the train was not only the preferred form of transportation in America; IT WAS THE ONLY FORM OF TRANSPORTATION.

As you watch this clip focus on the social and the economic factors that influenced rail travel in the United States.

What challenges did building the Transcontinental Railroad pose?

Oregon Trail

 

Try taking a journey by covered wagon across 2000 miles of plains, rivers, and mountains.  Try!  On the plains, will you slosh through mud and water-filled ruts or will you plod through dust six inches deep?   How will you cross the rivers?   If you have money you might take a ferry if there is one.  Or you could ford the river and hope you and your wagon aren't swallowed alive!  What about supplies?  Well, if you're low on food you can hunt.  You might get a buffalo... you might.  And there are bears in the mountains.  At the Dalles, you can try navigating the Columbia River, but if running the rapids with a makeshift raft makes you queasy, better take the Barlow Road.  If for some reason you don't survive, your wagon burns, or thieves steal your oxen, or you run out of provisions, or you die of cholera-- don't give up!  Try again.

Manifest Destiny

1) What does this famous painting symbolize?  Who painted it?

2) What opportunities and conflicts emerged as Americans moved westward?

3) Which groups depicted in this image were most likely positively affected by westward expansion?

  4) Which were most likely negatively affected?

In Chapter 12 we will discover how westward expansion in the late 1800s affected several groups of people. Many of these groups saw new opportunities for jobs, prosperity, freedom, and land ownership open up before them, while others were denied these same opportunities.  

Home On the Range

“Home on the Range” appears to have been written in 1885 by a group of prospectors in a cabin near Leadville, Colorado. It was popular throughout the Southwest in the 1880s and 1890s and is now recognized as the state song of Kansas.

Oh, give me a home where the buffalo roam

Where the deer and the antelope play

Where seldom is heard a discouraging word

And the skies are not cloudy all day

How often at night when the heavens are bright
I see the light of those flickering stars
Have I laid there amazed and asked as I gazed
If their glory exceeds that of love

The red man was pressed from this part of the west

It's not likely he'll ever return

To the banks of Red River where seldom if ever

His flickering campfires still burn

Home, home on the range

Where the deer and the antelope play

Where seldom is heard a discouraging word

And the skies are not cloudy all day

1. Do you think the settlement of this region had a more positive effect or a more negative effect on the person or people who wrote this song? How can you tell?

2. Do you think the settlement of this region had the same effect on all the different groups of people who lived there? Why or why not?

Was Roy Rogers, 'King of the Cowboys,' from the West? Does Ohio have a State song?

Here is a picture of my Grammy Ulrey, Roy Rogers, and his famous horse Trigger circa 1943.
Giddy Up!