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WESTWARD EXPANSION
Term | Definition |
---|---|
California Gold Rush | Period of thousands of people went west to search for gold |
Cattle Drive | when cowboys guided huge herds of cattle north to new railroad lines extending across The Great Plan |
Pony Express | business that delivered mail from Missouri to California in just ten days |
Telegraph | invention that sent messages along wires using electricity |
Samuel B. Morse | developed a way to send telegraph messages |
Transcontinental Railroad | a railroad across the continent linking the Eastern United States to the Western United States |
Union Pacific | began building train track west from Omaha, Most workers were Irish Immigrants |
Central Pacific | began building train tracks east from Sacramento, California. Most workers were Chinese immigrants |
Promontory Point | place in Utah where the Union Pacific met the Central Pacific and connected the transcontinental railroad |
Chinese Immigrants | made up almost 80% of the Central Pacific workers |
Red Cloud | told Union Pacific workers they were scaring away the buffalo |
Gen. William Tecumsah Sherman | warned the Native Americans that nothing would stop the building of the railroads |
Homestead Act of 1862 | law that offered free land to American citizen and immigrant who were willing to start new farms on the Great Plains |
Homesteaders | settlers who claimed land through the Homestead Act |
Sod House | houses made from sod (soil) on the Great Plains |
Sodbusters | the name for farmers on the Great Plains |
Pioneers | new settlers |
Exodusters | thousands of Africans Americans pioneers who moved to the Great Plains and started communities |
Nicodemus, Kansas | a successful community started by exodusters |