Transcript Social Studies

Social Studies
Chapter 18.1
* The boomtowns did not have many women and
children. The women who did travel to
boomtowns often opened businesses or worked
as cooks, laundresses, and entertainers. Some
brought stability to boomtowns by opening
schools or churches.
* Mining booms were often followed by busts that
occurred when most or all of the ore had been
mined and people began to move away. Virginia
City had about 30,000 inhabitants at its peak in the
1870s. By 1900 the town had a population of less
than 4,000.
•
Many boomtowns were completely deserted,
becoming ghost towns. Many former mining
communities that became ghost towns are
still scattered throughout the West.
• Toward
the end of the rush, the mining of gold
and silver gave way to the mining of other
metals. Copper was found in the 1870s in places
such as Montana, Arizona, and New Mexico. In
the 1890s, miners began working zinc and lead
deposits in some of the former silver-mining
towns of Colorado.
• Many of the people who went west to work
or service the mines and get rich, decided
to stay in the West after the mining boom
ended. Many frontier areas that had
gained settlers because of the mining
booms in the West eventually applied for
statehood. Colorado joined the Union in
1876, Montana became a state in 1889,
and Wyoming followed in 1890.
Discussion Question
• How did the discovery of precious metals
in the West help to settle that part of the
country?
Many people who might not have moved to the
West went there to try to strike it rich during the
mining booms. Many other people followed them to
open businesses that served the miners. After the
mining booms, many of these people settled
permanently in the West.
Railroads Connect East and
West
• The mining booms in the West helped
spur development of a transcontinental
railroad system. A transportation system
better than wagon trains and
stagecoaches was needed to get western
ore to factories and markets in the East
and to get goods and supplies from the
East to the people in mining areas of the
West.
•
The search for a transcontinental rail line
began during the 1850s. A northern route was
chosen during the Civil War.
• Two
companies accepted the challenge of building the
first transcontinental railroad: the Union Pacific
Company and the Central Pacific Company.
Railroad companies argued that they should receive free
public land on which to lay track, because railroads
would benefit the whole country.
• They received more than 130 million acres of land in all
from the federal government. This included land for the
tracks, plus 20-to-80-mile-wide strips of land along the
railway. Railroad companies often sold this land to raise
additional money to build the railroads.
•
The Union Pacific began to lay track
westward from Omaha, Nebraska. The Union
Pacific relied mostly on Irish and African
American workers to lay its track. The Union
Pacific laid about 1,038 miles of track, but
covered terrain that was less harsh than the
route of the Central Pacific.
The Central Pacific started at Sacramento,
California, and worked eastward. It hired about
10,000 Chinese workers to lay the track. The
Central Pacific laid about 742 miles of track.
•
•
The workers toiled in difficult conditions. They
worked through the searing summer heat and icy
winter cold, clearing forests and blasting tunnels
through mountains. Construction was completed on
May 10, 1869, when the two sets of track met at
Promontory Point, Utah Territory.
• By 1883 two more transcontinental lines and dozens of
shorter lines connected cities in the West with the rest of
the nation. The railroads allowed the freer and faster
flow of goods and people between East and West. The
building of the railroads boosted the steel industry, coal
production, railroad-car manufacturing, and other
industries. New towns also grew along the railroad
lines.
• The railroads also changed the way
Americans kept time. Before the railroads,
each community kept its own local time.
Because of the demand for sensible train
schedules, the railroads divided the
country into four time zones in 1883, with
each zone exactly one hour apart from the
zones on either side of it. Each community
in a zone kept the same time. Congress
passed a law making these time zones
official in 1918.
Discussion Question
• How did the Western mines spur the
development of a transcontinental railroad
system?
A faster and more efficient transportation
system than stagecoaches and wagons was
needed to get are from the Western mines to
factories and markets in the East and to get
food and other supplies from the East to
people in the mining areas of the West.