Image source: Source 4
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The West DevelopsAlthough the vast majority of The West still lay uncharted, many communities began to emerge throughout the Frontier. After America turned its attention westward, it wasn't long before railroads, mail routes, urban areas, and industry began to manifest themselves in the new land. Consequently, millions of people emigrated from all over the world – even from areas as remote as China and Japan – to take part in this exciting period of American history in which everyone could capitalize on the opportunities out West without having to face the constricted society of the East.
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Below is an illustration by artists Cooke and Lacounte, depicting 9 separate scenes common to the lifestyle of a vagabond looking for gold on the California coast. The top right panel, for example, depicts the toiling process of mining for gold in the hills. Similar to gambling today, the lure of striking it rich out West was too enticing for the greedy settlers to pass up. The inherent lawlessness of The Frontier made mining for gold like the "Wall Street" or the "stock market" of The West (Source 1).
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Drawn around 1850, this illustration depicts the mining process in the California gold mines during the infamous "Gold Rush". Thousands came in search of wealth, however, the actual mining process was tedious, tiring, and hard to find any actual gold with. Most toiled on their own until companies of men began to form and develop mining systems – rendering searching alone irrelevant (2).
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"More than 40,000 Chinese immigrants arrived in California during the 1850s...When work on the Transcontinental railroad began, neither Union Pacific nor Central Pacific wanted to hire these immigrants...due to the general prejudices of the time. However, by the time the Union Pacific and Central Pacific met in 1869...Chinese immigrants made up over 90% of Central Pacific's workforce."
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The Native Americans were not the only ones taken advantage of during the immigration West. This article discusses the thousands of Chinese workers that came from across the Pacific to America (through California) in the 1800s to work on the Transcontinental Railroad – a project attempting to connect the East and West through railways. Although many originally came in search of gold, they were quickly recruited by the Union Pacific who was in desperate need of laborers to work on the dangerous railways. For instance, the Chinese workers, who were considered disposable, often had to use massive amounts of dynamite to blow holes through cliffsides. This lesser treatment of Chinese immigrants that began on The Frontier led to the strong anti-Asian sentiment in the West that lingered for almost a century after the close of The West (3).
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The illustration to the right depicts the famous moment in which the Union and Pacific railroads came together – uniting the West and the East. In the drawing, the engineers are meeting and shaking hands while celebrating the historic feat. In many ways, this event is seen as the beginning of "the end" of The Frontier out west. By connecting the people and goods of the East to that of the West, however beneficial to commerce, the railroad effectively diminished the untamed nature of The West and shrunk the mystery that was The Frontier exponentially.
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This article discusses "The Oregon Trail", a video game introduced in 1985 that allowed the player to live the experience of an American settler moving West – traveling the harrowing Oregon Trail. The game presented you with a series of choices and circumstances, often unfortunate, that made making it to Oregon in one piece quite challenging – simulating the actual struggles and situations those moving West really faced. Although the game was first played long after the conclusion of the Western Frontier, it's mainstream popularity garnered a lot of attention to the history of the early Frontier (5).
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"While playing, three learning goals seem to emerge.
- Understanding the sheer amount of difficulty that traveling the Oregon Trail entailed.
- The names of different towns, forts, and rivers that existed on the trail back in the 19th century.
- Facts about the history of the trail itself."
This illustration is of the mail routes established when civilization began to spread West. It was a challenge to establish sufficient mail routes that could allow communication between the vast West and the Eastern States. However, the completion of the Union-Pacific railroad coupled with the vast number of emerging cities and communities across the West prompted the need for sufficient mail routes. This was one of many major steps in the gradual modernization of the Frontier (6).
#1: Cooke and Lacounte. (Scene Related to the Gold Rush). 1852. Calisphere,
content.wisconsinhistory.org/utils/ajaxhelper/. Accessed 16 Nov. 2016. #2:Anthony and Baker. How the California Mines Are Worked. 1850. Calisphere, calisphere.org/item/ark:/13030/tf3779p1x5/. Accessed 16 Nov. 2016. #3:"Chinese Immigration and the Transcontinental Railroad." United States Citizenship, 2016, www.uscitizenship.info/Chinese-immigration-Transcontinental- railroad/. Accessed 20 Nov. 2016. |
#4"Chinese Immigration and the Transcontinental Railroad." United States
Citizenship, 2016, www.uscitizenship.info/Chinese-immigration-and-the- Transcontinental-railroad/. Accessed 20 Nov. 2016. #5:Trombley, Brendon. "Deconstructing Learning Games: The Oregon Trail." Institute of Play, 3 Nov. 2014, www.instituteofplay.org/2014/11/ deconstructing-learning-games-the-oregon-trail/. Accessed 16 Nov. 2016. #6: Boyd, E.D. Map of Part of the United States Exhibiting the Principal Mail Routes West of the Mississippi River. 1867. World Digital Library, www.wdl.org/en/ item/13500/#q=westward+expansion. Accessed 17 Nov. 2016. |