RAILROADS, RANCHING AND FARMING I. Railroad Building Pacific Railway Act 1862 1. Indemnity Zone Clause – checkerboard 2. Homesteaders don’t have access Fairness? Transcontinental Railroad 3. Union Pacific and Central Pacific 4. Labor – Civil War vets, Irish; Chinese 5. May 10, 1869 – Promontory Point, UT – golden spike II. Start of the Cattle Industry Boom 1. Open Range + Cowboys - 1865-1885 2. Joseph McCoy & the long drive 3. Railroad – 6 million cattle by 1880 Bust 1. Devil’s Rope – Joseph Glidden 2. Oversupplied market & Overgrazed open range 3. Mother Nature 1885-1887 4. Railroads Big Business & Cattle Ranches III. Farming the Frontier A. Who? Farmers, veterans, Europeans, Exodusters & Old Immigrants B. Challenges Little surface water, no trees, weather Solutions 1. Dry farming, sod, barbed wire, technology Success? 1. Homestead Act 1862 Morrill Land Grant Act 1862 Environmental Effects & Technology Subsistence to commercial farming Bonanza Farming Mother Nature strikes again 1885-87 IV. The Final Frontier A. Oklahoma; Boomers & Sooners – 4/22/89