1 / 7

Settling the Great Plains

Settling the Great Plains. Chapter 13.2. The Government Supports Settlements . Homestead Act (1862) – offered 160 acres of free land to any citizen. Only head of households could apply Intended on settling middle America Stay on the land for 5 years Startup US agriculture again Response

cicely
Download Presentation

Settling the Great Plains

An Image/Link below is provided (as is) to download presentation Download Policy: Content on the Website is provided to you AS IS for your information and personal use and may not be sold / licensed / shared on other websites without getting consent from its author. Content is provided to you AS IS for your information and personal use only. Download presentation by click this link. While downloading, if for some reason you are not able to download a presentation, the publisher may have deleted the file from their server. During download, if you can't get a presentation, the file might be deleted by the publisher.

E N D

Presentation Transcript


  1. Settling the Great Plains Chapter 13.2

  2. The Government Supports Settlements • Homestead Act (1862) – offered 160 acres of free land to any citizen. • Only head of households could apply • Intended on settling middle America • Stay on the land for 5 years • Startup US agriculture again • Response • Many women and freed slaves took advantage of the offer • Exodusters – African-American who moved from the South to Kansas • 1862-1900: 600,000 families received land grants • Corporations bought a majority of the grants for personal gain • 1889 – Act modified to encourage individuals; less businesses • Ended in order to protect the wilderness

  3. Exodusters 1870s 1890s

  4. Settling the Frontier • Hardships for settlers: • Droughts, floods, fires, blizzards • Locust plague • Occasional Native American Raid • Women often did as much manual labor as men • Dugouts and Soddies • Since trees were scarce, settlers built homes from the land • Dugout – House in the side of a ravine or hill • Soddy – Freestanding houses built on blocks of prairie turf • Good for the erratic weather • Bad due to insects and animals

  5. Dugouts & Soddy

  6. Agricultural Education • Morrill Acts (1862 & 1890) – laws enacted to help create agricultural colleges by giving federal land to states • Hatch Act (1887) established experiment stations to inform farmers of new developments. • New techniques, tools, and ideas flourished across the plains, making them the “Breadbasket of the nation” Steel Plow Barbed Wire

  7. Farmers in Debt • Wheat prices dropped making it difficult for farmers to repay their equipment loans • Late 1870s investors come up with Bonanza Farms • Bonanza Farms – An enormous farm where a single crop is grown • These large farms had no flexibility to grow other crops and fail • While smaller farms were able to grow crops, they couldn’t send it anywhere • Railroads eventually extort farmers over shipping prices • Lose - lose situation for everyone • Many Homesteaders bail and head back to the cities.

More Related