Westward movement in America carried settlers across America, from the Atlantic Ocean to the Pacific Ocean. The westward movement began in the early 1600’s with European settlements along the Atlantic Coast of North America. It continued until the late 1800’s. By that time, the western frontiers of the United States had been conquered.
An abundance of land and other natural resources lured America’s pioneers westward. Fur traders, cattle ranchers, farmers, and miners led the push to the west. Merchants and other business people followed. These hard-working men and women faced great dangers, endured severe hardships, and suffered loneliness and boredom in the hope of making a better life for themselves and their children. Some of them looked to the west for wealth or adventure. Others sought to improve their social position or increase their political power.
The pioneers struggled westward across hills, mountains, and prairies on foot and on horseback. Some floated through the Erie Canal on barges or traveled down rivers on flatboats and steamboats. Others crossed the rugged wilderness in covered wagons. For many pioneers, the Cumberland Gap, the Oregon Trail, and other roads west became paths to opportunity.
The American frontier shifted westward in stages. The first American frontier ran along the Atlantic Coast. Settlers began to cross the Appalachian Mountains after territory west of the mountains came under British control in 1763. During the early 1800’s, the next push westward took settlers into the Great Lakes region, the Mississippi River Valley, and the plains along the Gulf of Mexico. By the mid-1840’s, adventurous pioneers had reached what are now California and Oregon in the Far West. The last frontier was the Great Plains between the Missouri River and the Rocky Mountains. The settlement of that region began in the 1860’s.
In 1890, the U.S. Census Bureau reported that no frontiers remained in the United States. The pioneers had conquered the West.
For descriptions of the life of the people during this period, see Colonial life in America; Pioneer life in America; and Western frontier life in America.
The first frontiers
The earliest settlements.
Colonists from England, the Netherlands, and other European countries began to settle along the Atlantic Coast of North America in the early 1600’s. Jamestown, the first permanent English settlement in North America, was founded in Virginia in 1607. Other early settlements included St Marys City (now St. Mary’s City) in Maryland; Plymouth and Boston in what is now Massachusetts; and New Amsterdam, which was the beginning of New York City.
The promise of owning land attracted many Europeans to the American Colonies. Some settlers were offered free land to develop. Others came as indentured servants. An indentured servant received free passage to America and food, housing, and clothing. In return, the servant agreed to work without wages for a specified period of time, usually four to seven years. At the end of that period, indentured servants received their freedom. Beginning in 1619, Black Africans also were brought to the colonies as indentured servants. Gradually, their periods of service were extended, and they began to be treated as slaves with no chance of freedom.
Some settlers came to America in search of religious freedom. Puritans, Quakers, and members of other groups sought to establish communities in which they could live according to their religious beliefs. Probably the best-known Puritans were the Pilgrims, who founded Plymouth Colony.
From the earliest settlements in Virginia and Maryland, colonists soon advanced inland along the valleys of the James, York, Rappahannock, and Potomac rivers. To the north, rich farmland drew settlers into the Connecticut, Merrimack, and Hudson river valleys. By the late 1600’s, settlers had pushed as far west as the eastern edge of the Piedmont, the hilly uplands at the base of the Appalachian Mountains.
The Old West.
Pioneers next moved into a region often called the Old West. It consisted of the Piedmont, the valleys of the Appalachians, and the back country of New England. In the Old West, fur traders offered Indigenous (native) people weapons and tools in exchange for deer hides, beaver pelts, and other skins and furs. Cattle owners in the Southern Colonies and the two Chesapeake Colonies of Virginia and Maryland found ample grazing lands in the Piedmont for their expanding herds, and cowboys led roundups and cattle drives. Farmers followed the fur traders and cattle ranchers into the Old West, settling in the Shenandoah Valley in Virginia and in the fertile hills and valleys of North and South Carolina.
Many kinds of people came to the Old West. Some owned small farms in the coastal lowlands but sought better land to the west. Others were the landless younger sons and daughters of established families in the East. These colonists were joined by new arrivals from Europe. For example, many German and Scotch-Irish immigrants fled hard times and religious persecution in Europe and settled in Pennsylvania during the early 1700’s.
Settlers from different lands brought their own customs and way of life to the frontier. In the process, they helped create American culture. For example, Scandinavian settlers brought the log cabin to America. Other settlers copied the log cabin throughout the Old West. German gunsmiths in Pennsylvania adapted a European rifle to pioneer needs. The result—the Kentucky rifle—proved essential on the frontier for shooting game and for defense against wild animals.
Regional conflict.
As each frontier became settled, tensions developed between western settlers and colonial governments in the east. The westerners resented paying taxes to distant governments that provided them with few benefits. The easterners viewed the west as a backwoods inhabited by people incapable of governing themselves. At times, disputes between the two groups turned violent. In 1764, Pennsylvania frontiersmen known as “the Paxton Boys” marched on Philadelphia, the colony’s capital. But Pennsylvania statesman Benjamin Franklin persuaded them to turn back. In the Carolinas, a group of westerners known as the “Regulators” assembled to protest high taxes, insufficient representation in colonial government, and other injustices. A battle was narrowly avoided at the Saluda River in South Carolina in 1769. The Regulators fought and lost the Battle of Alamance in North Carolina in 1771.
The French and Indian War (1754-1763).
The next frontier lay beyond the Appalachian Mountains. Both France and the United Kingdom claimed the territory between the Allegheny Mountains—a part of the Appalachians—and the Mississippi River. Their rivalry led to the French and Indian War between the French and the British, along with their Indigenous allies. Indigenous people were commonly called Indians at the time. The British defeated the French and gained nearly all of France’s territory in North America.
The Proclamation of 1763.
A vast territory west of the Appalachians lay open for settlement after the French and Indian War. However, Indigenous groups were prepared to defend their hunting grounds on that land. The British hoped to prevent costly so-called Indian wars by keeping white settlers east of the Appalachians. For that reason, the United Kingdom issued the Proclamation of 1763. The proclamation drew a line through the mountains and forbade white settlements west of the line. It also ordered settlers already there to move back east and required traders in the region to have licenses. Investors in land, farmers, and traders—all eager to take advantage of the new territory—resented the restrictions.
Crossing the Appalachians.
The Proclamation of 1763 halted westward expansion for only a short time. Investors and colonists clamored for more land as the population in the East increased and the amount of available farmland decreased. Treaties negotiated with Indigenous groups in 1768 shifted the proclamation line westward and opened the way for the settlement of what are now West Virginia and southwestern Pennsylvania. Pioneers settled at Fort Pitt (now Pittsburgh) and in river valleys nearby.
Some pioneers marched farther west into what are now eastern Kentucky and Tennessee. Daniel Boone was one of the most famous of those adventuresome pioneers. In 1775, he led a group of woodsmen from Tennessee through the Cumberland Gap into Kentucky. The trail they carved out became known as the Wilderness Road (see Wilderness Road). In Kentucky, Boone founded a settlement called Boonesborough. Other pioneers, such as James Robertson and John Sevier, established frontier communities along the Holston, Watauga, and Clinch rivers in eastern Tennessee. By the time the Revolutionary War began in April 1775, this frontier region swarmed with land speculators and the settlers they had attracted. 
The American Revolution (1775-1783).
During the American Revolution, the British encouraged Indigenous groups to attack American settlements along the western frontier. Many western settlers fled back east. In 1778 and 1779, Virginia sent troops under Lieutenant Colonel George Rogers Clark to strike at the British. Clark captured several settlements under British control in what are now Illinois and Indiana. As a result of Clark’s victories, the United States claimed the area between the Ohio River and the Great Lakes.
After the United States won its independence from the United Kingdom in 1783, it acquired British lands extending west to the Mississippi; north to Canada; and south to Florida, which was then a Spanish territory. Settled areas west of the Appalachians soon became part of the United States. Kentucky joined the Union in 1792, and Tennessee followed in 1796.
Reaching the Mississippi River
After the Revolutionary War ended in 1783, the westward movement carried settlers onto two new frontiers. They were the Old Northwest and the Old Southwest. The Old Northwest extended from the Ohio River north to the Great Lakes and from Pennsylvania west to the Mississippi River. The Old Southwest at first consisted of Kentucky and Tennessee. It gradually expanded south to the Gulf of Mexico.
The Ordinance of 1785.
Congress, eager for revenue from the sale of land in the Old Northwest, adopted the Ordinance of 1785. That law required the government to survey the Old Northwest before selling the land to the public. The territory was divided into townships of 6 miles (9.7 kilometers) square. These townships were further divided into 36 sections, each 1 mile (1.6 kilometers) square, an area that equals 640 acres (259 hectares). The 640-acre units were then auctioned off to the public for a price of at least $1 an acre.
Few farmers could afford to buy as much as 640 acres. Land speculators, such as the Ohio Company and the Scioto Company, grabbed up most of the land. These companies then divided the land into smaller sections and sold them at a profit.
The Northwest Ordinance
of 1787 established a government for the Old Northwest, which then became known as the Northwest Territory. The ordinance also provided for the eventual division of the region into three to five states. Congress appointed the first officials of the territory—a governor, a secretary, and three judges. When the territory reached a population of 5,000 adult males, it could elect an assembly and send a nonvoting delegate to Congress. When any division of the territory reached a population of 60,000, it could apply for statehood. 
The ordinances of 1785 and 1787 paved the way for full-scale migration to the west. The laws also established guidelines for the administration of all U.S. territories. Treaties with the United Kingdom and Spain further encouraged westward migration. Under the terms of the Jay Treaty, signed with the United Kingdom in 1794, the British agreed to abandon the military posts they still occupied in the Northwest Territory. In 1795, the United States signed the Pinckney Treaty with Spain, which then controlled Florida and the mouth of the Mississippi River. The treaty settled a dispute over the northern border of Florida, and it opened the Mississippi River to American traders.
Conflicts with Indigenous groups.
America’s rapid westward expansion led to warfare between European American settlers and Indigenous groups. During the early 1790’s, British traders in the Northwest Territory encouraged Indigenous warriors to attack frontier settlements. A confederacy of Indigenous groups in the Northwest twice fought off U.S. Army expeditions. But they were defeated by Major General Anthony Wayne at the Battle of Fallen Timbers near what is now Toledo, Ohio, in 1794. In the Treaty of Greenville, signed in 1795, a number of Indigenous groups gave up their claim to the southern two-thirds of what is now Ohio and the southeastern part of what is now Indiana. Pioneers rushed into the area. By 1800, the Ohio region had 45,000 settlers. In 1803, Ohio became the first section of the Northwest Territory to achieve statehood.
White settlers soon disregarded the line drawn by the Treaty of Greenville to separate their land from land reserved for Indigenous Americans. As land-hungry pioneers advanced westward, Indigenous leaders were forced to sign many additional treaties, each time giving up more land. In the early 1800’s, the Shawnee chief Tecumseh—aided by his brother, known as the Shawnee Prophet—tried to halt the invasion of white settlers. They worked to organize an alliance of Indigenous tribes from the Great Lakes to the Gulf of Mexico. But Tecumseh’s plans for an alliance were largely destroyed when his forces were defeated at the Battle of Tippecanoe in the Indiana Territory in 1811. 
The War of 1812 briefly interrupted America’s westward expansion. During the war, many tribes in Tecumseh’s alliance sided with the British against the United States. The tribes hoped that a U.S. defeat would allow them to keep their lands. However, two United States victories hastened the downfall of Indigenous American civilization east of the Mississippi River. In 1813, a combined British and Indigenous force suffered defeat at the Battle of the Thames in southern Canada. In 1814, Major General Andrew Jackson led soldiers to victory over Muscogee, or Creek, forces in the Battle of Horseshoe Bend in what is now Alabama.
By the mid-1800’s, the U.S. government had moved almost all of the Indigenous people of the Southeast to the Indian Territory, an area set aside for Indigenous groups west of the Mississippi River. That territory later became almost identical in area with present-day Oklahoma. Thousands of Indigenous people died of starvation and disease on the march to the Indian Territory.
The Old Northwest.
After the War of 1812, westward migration resumed at a brisk pace. By 1820, about 792,000 settlers had made their homes in the Old Northwest.
Pioneers headed to the Old Northwest over rough wagon roads and down the Ohio River. The Erie Canal, completed in 1825, provided another route westward, from the Hudson River to the Great Lakes. It also spurred the economic development of the Old Northwest. The canal allowed westerners to ship farm products efficiently and cheaply to the cities in the East. At the same time, Eastern cities could ship manufactured goods to the rapidly growing farm communities of the Northwest.
Steamboats and railroads encouraged further development of the Old Northwest during the next few decades. Pittsburgh, Louisville, Cincinnati, and other cities along the Ohio River became bustling centers of trade. Chicago and Detroit prospered along the Great Lakes.
The Old Southwest.
The Adams-Onis Treaty, signed with Spain in 1819, gave the United States Florida and the southern strip of Alabama and Mississippi. Thousands of settlers poured into Florida. Pioneers also streamed onto the plains bordering the Gulf of Mexico that formed part of the Old Southwest.
Most of the settlers of the Old Southwest were cotton farmers. Farmers rushed first into western Georgia and then into Alabama and Mississippi after the federal government took over Indigenous lands in those states. Steamboats and an expanding network of roads sped the journey westward. Such cities as Natchez, Mississippi, New Orleans, and St. Louis prospered along the Mississippi River.
The best lands in the Old Southwest were held largely by plantation owners, unlike in the Old Northwest where small farms dotted the land. Plantation owners dominated social and political life in most of the Old Southwest. As a result, the region developed an economy that depended almost entirely on cotton, and it experienced little industrial growth.
Exploring and settling the Far West
Settlers had begun to cross the Mississippi River by the 1820’s. Yet American leaders misjudged the speed at which the nation was moving west. In 1801, President Thomas Jefferson foresaw a far distant time when the continent would be settled from coast to coast. However, pioneers reached California and other regions of the Far West during the 1840’s. 
The Louisiana Purchase.
American settlement of the Far West began after President Thomas Jefferson purchased the Louisiana Territory from France in 1803. For about $15 million, the United States gained 827,987 square miles (2,144,476 square kilometers) of land. The purchase extended U.S. borders from the Mississippi River to the Rocky Mountains.
Before 1801, Spain had controlled the Louisiana Territory. The Spanish posed little threat to U.S. trade and westward expansion. But France, a more powerful and aggressive country, gained control of the territory in 1801. Jefferson feared French interference with U.S. trade along the Mississippi River and through the port of New Orleans. The Louisiana Purchase removed a possibly dangerous enemy from the western border of the United States.
Exploration.
In 1803, Jefferson chose Meriwether Lewis, an Army captain, and William Clark, a former Army officer, to lead an expedition to explore the new territory. Jefferson wanted Lewis and Clark to trace the source of the Missouri River. He hoped that the explorers would find a water route from the Missouri to the Pacific Ocean. Jefferson also wanted the expedition to report on the natural resources and to establish friendly relations with Indigenous groups in the region.
In 1804, Lewis and Clark moved up the Missouri and across the Rockies. They reached the Snake River in the Oregon region in 1805 and followed the Columbia River to the Pacific. The expedition did not find a practical water route to the Pacific. But Lewis and Clark reported that the region was rich in furs, attracting fur traders and trappers to the area.
More government-sponsored expeditions followed the Lewis and Clark expedition. In 1806, Zebulon M. Pike, an Army officer, set out to explore the southern part of the Louisiana Purchase and gather information about neighboring Spanish territory. But he was captured by Spanish troops near the Rio Grande. After his release, Pike supplied the government with valuable information that later helped establish trade relations with Mexican settlements in the area. In 1820, Major Stephen H. Long led a small expedition up the Platte River to the Rocky Mountains. His report found the Great Plains unfit for settlement because it lacked trees and water. Long labeled the region the Great American Desert.
John C. Frémont, an Army surveyor, explored much of the Far West. Beginning in 1842, he led a series of expeditions that surveyed the Oregon Trail and mapped much of the Great Basin region between the Rockies and the Sierra Nevada. Frémont published a report on California, which drew many settlers to the region.
Fur traders and trappers also contributed greatly to the exploration of the Far West. Such well-known “mountain men” as Jim Bridger, Kit Carson, Thomas Fitzpatrick, and Jedediah Smith mapped many areas of the Rockies as they searched for beaver. Carson and Fitzpatrick served as guides on Frémont’s expeditions. Bridger established a trading post that helped supply travelers along the Oregon Trail in what is now Wyoming. Jedediah Smith traveled more of the Far West than anyone of his time. In 1824, he and a few trading partners used South Pass to cross the Rockies. It then became the route of many travelers. In 1826, Smith made the first overland trip to California. 
The Santa Fe Trail.
During the 1820’s, traders also developed a trade network in the Southwest. In 1821, the trader William Becknell blazed the Santa Fe Trail, which extended from Independence, Mo., to Santa Fe in what is now New Mexico. New Mexico was then a province of Mexico. Another branch of the trail, opened in 1822, cut across the Cimarron Desert. It became the more popular route. Caravans of covered wagons journeyed to Santa Fe loaded with manufactured goods to exchange for Mexican silver, furs, and mules. The Santa Fe trade boosted Missouri’s economy. It also made traders and explorers aware that Mexico had only a weak hold on New Mexico and its other northern provinces.
Texas.
In the early 1820’s, the Mexican government gave Stephen F. Austin, a pioneer from Missouri, permission to establish a colony in Texas. Texas belonged to Mexico as a result of the Adams-Onis Treaty of 1819, which defined the western border of the United States. The treaty drew a boundary line that zigzagged northwest from the Gulf of Mexico to the Pacific Ocean.
By 1835, American settlers outnumbered Mexicans in Texas, which made it difficult for Mexico to govern the territory. That year, the Texans rebelled. Texas gained its independence after its army, led by Samuel Houston, defeated the Mexicans at the Battle of San Jacinto in April 1836. Texas was an independent republic until December 1845, when the United States annexed Texas and made it a state.
The Oregon Trail.
As Texans fought for their independence, other Americans looked to the Oregon region with great anticipation. Fur traders and missionaries were the first white settlers to reach the Pacific Northwest. Their glowing reports of fertile valleys attracted thousands of people to the region after 1835. Settlers followed the Oregon Trail. It began at Independence, Mo., and wound westward for about 2,000 miles (3,200 kilometers) across the Great Plains and the Rocky Mountains to the rich valleys of the Oregon region. Pioneer farmers, cattle ranchers, and sheep ranchers journeyed westward along the trail. The first large group of settlers, about 1,000, made the trip in 1843.
Travel on the Oregon Trail required strength and endurance. But the trek was not so lonely or dangerous as described in Western legend. The trail was crowded with wagon trains, army units, missionaries, hunting parties, traders, and even sightseeing tours. Some travelers complained that they sometimes had to stop early in the day to find a good campsite ahead of the crowd. Others spoke of the need to wear masks for protection against the dust kicked up by the heavy traffic. Stories about great numbers of pioneers killed by Indigenous raiders were also exaggerated. Of the 10,000 deaths that occurred on the trail from 1835 to 1855, only 4 percent resulted from attacks by Indigenous people. Such diseases as cholera and smallpox and firearms accidents were the chief causes of death on the trail.
The flood of immigrants to Oregon helped America achieve its territorial ambitions. Since the late 1700’s, the United Kingdom and the United States had had overlapping claims in the Oregon region. The two countries signed a treaty in 1818, agreeing that citizens of both nations could occupy the disputed area. By 1846, however, the growing number of American settlers in the Oregon region caused the British to abandon their hopes of keeping the area. Thus, in the Oregon Treaty of 1846, the United Kingdom gave up its claim to all of the Oregon territory south of the 49th parallel, except for Vancouver Island. That line later became the boundary between the United States and Canada.
The Southwest.
In the Southwest, a border dispute led to war between the United States and Mexico in 1846. The Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo, signed in 1848, ended the Mexican War. The treaty gave the United States more than 525,000 square miles (1,360,000 square kilometers) of land. That huge territory covered all of present-day California, Nevada, and Utah; most of Arizona; and parts of Colorado, New Mexico, and Wyoming. In 1853, in the Gadsden Purchase, the United States bought from Mexico a strip of land that makes up southern Arizona and New Mexico. That purchase was made in part to provide a good southern route for a transcontinental railroad.
By the 1840’s, many Americans believed that it was the destiny of the United States to rule all North America. Those Americans felt they had a mission to spread democracy to the West. The belief in the nation’s inevitable expansion became known as the doctrine of manifest destiny. It encouraged America’s bold and confident expansion westward.
Utah.
Utah became the home of the Mormons, who came there in search of religious freedom. The Mormons had met hostility from non-Mormons in communities from New York to Illinois. In 1846, Brigham Young began leading Mormon settlers west from Illinois. In 1847, a small advance party established a settlement on the shores of the Great Salt Lake in Utah. Within 10 years, about 100 Mormon settlements had been established in what are now California, Idaho, Nevada, Utah, and Wyoming. One of the most remarkable chapters in the westward movement occurred from 1856 to 1860, when about 3,000 Mormons walked across the Great Plains to Utah, pushing their few belongings in handcarts. The Mormons survived in the desert because they successfully irrigated the parched land. By 1852, they had dug about 1,000 miles (1,600 kilometers) of irrigation ditches. See Mormons (The Mormons in Utah).
California.
Reports of fertile valleys and a mild climate attracted a steady stream of pioneers to California during the early 1840’s. In 1848, gold was discovered along the American River at Sutter’s Mill, near what is now Sacramento. News of the discovery spread rapidly, and by 1849, eager gold seekers began pouring into California. The gold rush attracted “Forty-Niners” from all parts of the world. The population of California exploded from about 15,000 in early 1848 to more than 100,000 by the end of 1849. During that time, San Francisco, the gateway to the gold fields, grew tremendously. It changed from a small town to a bustling city almost overnight.
Most people heading for California followed the Oregon Trail across the Rockies and then branched off to the south along the California Trail. Others chose more southerly routes, such as the Santa Fe, Gila River, and Old Spanish trails. Some sailed the Atlantic Ocean south to the Isthmus of Panama, where they crossed over land to the Pacific Ocean and continued the sea voyage to San Francisco. From 1848 to 1855, more than 100,000 people traveled to the mining frontiers by the Panama route. Gold seekers also reached California by sailing around the southern tip of South America.
According to western tradition, miners caught up in gold fever either struck it rich or died in poverty. However, most prospectors did not fit that image. The majority searched for gold for several years and then returned home to their former occupation. Some stayed on in California and became farmers, ranchers, and merchants, greatly contributing to the permanent settlement of the area. Thus, gold rushes helped develop mining regions, though they did not last long in any one area. The process was repeated as prospectors carried their search elsewhere. Gold and silver rushes occurred in Nevada and Colorado in 1859. Gold rushes also drew miners to what is now Montana in 1862 and to what is now South Dakota in 1875.
Settling the Great Plains
The vast Great Plains between the Missouri River and the Rockies remained unsettled until the 1860’s. But as the government gained control of Indigenous lands on the Plains, cattle ranchers and farmers rushed in. By 1890, the conquest of the West had drawn to a close. 
The last wars on the frontier.
After the Civil War ended in 1865, the U.S. Army began to round up the last Indigenous American tribes that freely roamed the western plains. Land-hungry pioneers and expanding railroads wanted to move into the Great Plains from the east. Prospectors searching for gold and silver advanced from the west. But the Plains peoples fought fiercely to keep their hunting grounds and to avoid being confined on reservations.
A series of bitter wars between U.S. troops and Indigenous forces occurred from the 1860’s until 1890. The Sioux rose up in the mid-1860’s, when the government built forts to protect the Bozeman Trail. That route, used by miners, ran through Sioux hunting grounds in Wyoming. Fighting broke out again after the discovery of gold in 1874 brought miners into Sioux territory in the Black Hills of South Dakota. To the south, some members of the Arapaho, Cheyenne, Comanche, Kiowa, and other Plains tribes rebelled against moving to reservations in 1868. Hostilities in the south erupted again in 1871 and reached a climax in the Red River War of 1874-1875. 
One by one, the various Plains tribes were forced to sign treaties that opened their lands to white settlement. The Plains people were then resettled on cramped reservations. The last major battle between the Plains peoples and U.S. soldiers occurred in 1890. That year, the U.S. Army massacred as many as 300 Sioux at Wounded Knee Creek in South Dakota.
Cattle frontiers.
The Great Plains opened to settlers as the government defeated the Plains peoples. Ranchers moved in first. Ranching started in Texas, and it soon turned the Great Plains into a vast cattle empire.
The westward expansion of the railroads contributed to the rise of the cattle industry. Railroads provided transportation to markets in the East. By 1867, the railroad had extended west to Abilene, Kans., which became the first of the western cattle towns. That year, 35,000 cattle arrived in Abilene. By 1871, more than 600,000 cattle entered Abilene. Texas ranchers hired cowboys to drive their herds to the railroads. The cowboys followed the Chisholm Trail, the Western Trail, and other cattle trails north. Herds of livestock soon rumbled into such Kansas cattle towns as Ellsworth, Newton, Wichita, Caldwell, and perhaps the most famous of all, Dodge City.
These boisterous cattle towns gave rise to many western legends about gunfighters and such law officers as Wild Bill Hickok, Wyatt Earp, and Bat Masterson. Although cowboys engaged in much merrymaking after the long cattle drives, reports of violence in these communities have been greatly exaggerated. From 1870 to 1885, only 45 violent deaths were recorded in all of the cattle towns together. 
Ranching and the railroads quickly spread from Texas north and west into Colorado, Wyoming, Montana, and Oregon. In 1869, the Union Pacific and Central Pacific railroads met at Promontory, Utah, providing the nation with its first transcontinental railroad. Many people in the East and in Europe invested money in ranching after hearing reports of the easy money to be made in the cattle industry. However, the resulting overproduction of cattle, the rising costs of ranching, and the severe winter of 1886-1887 combined to bring an end to the cattle boom in the mid-1880’s.
Homesteading on the Great Plains.
Farmers known as homesteaders followed the cattle ranchers onto the Great Plains. The Homestead Act, passed by Congress in 1862, encouraged farmers to move west. This act gave 160 acres (65 hectares) of free land to any person who had lived on the land and improved it for five years. Many farmers came to the Great Plains because they no longer believed the Great American Desert image. The westward expansion of the railroad also was an important factor. The railroads offered land for sale and provided transportation for the western farmer’s products.
Inventions of the 1870’s also contributed to the successful settlement of the Great Plains. The lack of trees and water on the Plains presented difficulties for the western farmer. But barbed wire, first sold in 1874, provided a cheap substitute for the wood fence. Improved windmills allowed settlers to bring up water from far underground, and they became common sights on small farms by the 1890’s. In addition, improvements in farm machinery produced more efficient plows and other machines that enabled the Plains farmer to cultivate large areas.
Closing of the frontier.
The surge of eager homesteaders across the Great Plains left only the Indian Territory untouched. But white settlers demanded that the government make this area—now Oklahoma—available to them. In 1889, the government opened a large section of the Indian Territory that was not assigned for reservations. A wild land rush followed as thousands of pioneers scrambled for the best lots. Similar land rushes occurred in following years as more and more of the Indian Territory was opened to white settlement. But the conquest of the West had drawn to a close. In 1890, the Census Bureau declared in a report that no frontiers remained in the United States. The population west of the Mississippi River had grown remarkably—from 6,877,000 in 1870 to 16,775,000 in 1890.
Results of the westward movement
Patterns of migration.
For almost 300 years, the westward movement influenced American history. However, the westward flow of people was not constant. Migration halted when hostilities with Indigenous groups or wars with other nations made the frontiers unsafe. But once peace was restored, pioneers resumed their westward march. People also tended to migrate during prosperous times, when money was available. During periods of depression, migration often slowed to a trickle. Sometimes, as in the case of the Great Plains, technology spurred settlement. The invention of barbed wire and improvements in the windmill and in farm machinery helped open the Great Plains to settlers.
The frontier influence.
The frontier was more than a place on a map. It was an experience that shaped many American institutions and ideas. The frontier environment presented challenges that produced creative solutions. For example, frontier settlements were much less complex than the established communities of the East. As a result, pioneers set up simple forms of government that met frontier needs. Similarly, the elaborate social customs of the East gave way to the simpler pleasures of barn dances and cornhusking contests.
The frontier experience promoted democracy. Established leaders rarely migrated from the East, and so the frontier brought a wide range of people into government. Class lines also blurred in frontier societies. It became difficult to distinguish a permanent upper or lower class because anyone might strike it rich or suffer a setback. The frontier’s abundant resources were equally available to all.
The frontier experience also encouraged the development of certain “American” characteristics. Frontiers were isolated places, and so pioneers had to make many items they might otherwise have traded for or bought. They built their own houses and barns and produced their own food. They made their own candles, clothing, furniture, pots, tools, and other necessities. As jacks of all trades, pioneers became inventive and self-reliant. In addition, frontiers offered opportunities for success to those who worked hard. As a result, pioneers tended to be optimistic about the future and concerned with material wealth. Boastfulness and self-confidence emerged as frontier traits as well.
Unfortunately, the pioneers also became extremely wasteful because they lived among such plentiful natural resources. Pioneers cut down vast areas of forests, lost large amounts of gold and other minerals in careless mining operations, and exhausted the soil.
The continual pursuit of a better life made Americans more restless than their European ancestors. The French historian Alexis de Tocqueville remarked that in America “a man builds a house to spend his old age, and he sells it before the roof is on… . He brings a field into tillage and leaves other men to gather the crops; he embraces a profession and gives it up; he settles in a place, which he soon afterwards leaves to carry his changeable longings elsewhere.” As people moved from place to place, they lost their attachment to a specific region. They began to identify more with the nation as a whole and to see themselves as “Americans.” In that way, the westward movement promoted nationalism. Many historians believe that such frontier traits as nationalism, inventiveness, and optimism survive in the American character today.
