A Brief History of the United States

by John Bach McMaster

As the railroad progressed, the overland coaches plied between the ends of the two sections, their runs growing shorter and shorter till, when the road was finished, the overland stagecoach was discontinued.

THE HOMESTEAD LAW.—When the Union Pacific and Central Pacific railroads were chartered, they were given immense land grants; [8] but in the same year (1862) the Homestead Law was enacted. Under the provisions of this law a farm of 80 or 160 acres in the public domain might be secured by any head of a family or person twenty-one years old who was a citizen of our country or had declared an intention to become such, provided he or she would live on the farm and cultivate it for five years. [9] Between 1863 and 1870, 103,000 entries for 12,000,000 acres were made. This showed that the people desired the land, and was one reason why no more should be given to corporations.

NORTHERN PACIFIC RAILROAD.—In 1864 Congress had chartered a railroad for the new Northwest, and had given the company an immense land grant. But building did not begin till 1870. All went well till 1873, when a great panic swept over the country and the road became bankrupt. It then extended from Duluth to Bismarck. Two years later the company was reorganized, and the road was finished in 1883. [10]

WHEAT FIELDS OF DAKOTA.—During the panic certain of the directors of the road bought great tracts of land from the company, paying for them with the railroad bonds. On some of these lands in the valley of the Red River of the North an attempt was made to raise wheat in 1876. It proved successful, and the next year a wave of emigration set strongly toward Dakota. In 1860 there were not 5000 people in Dakota; in 1870 there were but 14,000, mostly miners; in 1880 there were 135,000.

PRAIRIE HOMES.—These newcomers—homesteaders, as they were often called— broke up the prairie, planted wheat, raised sheep and cattle, and lived at first in a dugout, or hole dug in the side of a depression in the prairie. This was roofed (about the level of the prairie) with thick boards covered with sods. After a year or two in such a home the settler would build a sod house. The walls, two feet thick, were made of sods cut like great bricks from the prairie. The roof would be of boards covered with shingles or oftener with sods, and the walls inside would sometimes be whitewashed. Near watercourses a few settlers found enough trees to make log cabins.

[Illustration: LOG CABIN WITH SOD ROOF.]

THE RANCHES.—Stretching across the country from Montana and Dakota to Arizona lay the grass region, the great ranch country, where herds of cattle grazed and were driven to the railroads to be taken to market. In later years this became also the greatest sheep-raising and wool-producing region in the Union.

BUFFALOES AND INDIANS.—With the building of the railroads and the coming of the settlers the reckless slaughter of the buffalo and the crowding of the Indians began. [11] To-day the buffalo is as rare an animal in the West as in the East; and after many wars and treaties with the Indians, they now hold less than one hundredth of the land west of the Mississippi.

[Illustration: CUSTER'S FIGHT.]

MECHANICAL PROGRESS.—The period 1860 to 1880 was one of great mechanical and industrial progress. During this time dynamite and the barbed-wire fence were introduced; the compressed-air rock drill, the typewriter, the Westinghouse air brake, the Janney car coupler, the cable car, the trolley systems, the electric light, the search light, electric motors, the Bell telephone, the phonograph, the gas engine, and a host of other inventions and mechanical devices were invented. To satisfy the demands of trade and commerce, great works of engineering were undertaken, such as twenty years before could not have been attempted. The jetties constructed by James B. Eads in the South Pass at the mouth of the Mississippi, to force that river to keep open its own channel; the steel-arch railroad bridge built by Eads across the Mississippi at St. Louis; the Roebling suspension bridges over the Ohio at Cincinnati and over the East River at New York; and the successful laying of the Atlantic cable (1866) by Cyrus W. Field, are a few of the great mechanical triumphs of this period.