IMPORTANT EVENTS FROM 1865-1920

  • Bessemer Process

    The Bessemer process was the first inexpensive industrial process for the mass production of steel from molten pig iron.
  • Discovery of Gold in Pikes Peak

    Breckinridge, South Park, Denver City, Golden City, and Boulder City were all born out of the Pike's Peak Gold Rush.
  • Morrill Land Grant Act

    The Morrill Land-Grant Acts are United States statutes that allowed for the creation of land-grant colleges in U.S. states using the proceeds from sales of federally-owned land.
  • Homestead Act

    To help develop the American West and spur economic growth, Congress passed the Homestead Act of 1862, which provided 160 acres of federal land to anyone who agreed to farm the land.
  • Transcontinental r/r

    The Transcontinental Railroad allowed for more antique transport of people and products/materials; the railroad ran from the East to the West.
  • Battle of Little Bighorn

    Little Bighorn was fought along the ridges, steep bluffs, and ravines of the Little Bighorn River.
  • Farmers Alliance Created

    The Farmers' Alliance was first organized in Texas in the mid-1870s and soon spread to other states and territories.
  • Carlisle School Established

    This was a school designed to turn Indians into the common white man, by forcing them to wear the clothes of the white, and speak only English.
  • Thomsas Edison Invents Light Bulb

    Edison had built his first high-resistance, incandescent electric light. It worked by passing electricity through a thin platinum filament in the glass vacuum bulb, which delayed the filament from melting.
  • Chinese Exclusion Act

    Congress, responding to pressure from unions, passed the Chinese Exclusion Act. This treaty with the Chinese Government banned Chinese emigrants from entering America and called for the deportation of any who arrived after 1880.
  • Edison Lights Up NYC

    Edison provides electricity to the citizens of NYC, and this helped them at night, and with other utilities.
  • Statue of Liberty Built

    The Statue of Liberty was built in France between 1875 and 1884. It was disassembled and shipped to New York City in 1885. The statue was reassembled on Liberty Island in 1886.
  • American Federation of Labor Founded

    The AFL, unlike the KOL, did not focus on national political issues. Instead, it concentrated on gaining the right to bargain collectively for wages, benefits, hours, and working conditions
  • Dawes Act

    Dawes Act (1887) | National Archives
    Also known as the General Allotment Act, the law authorized the President to break up reservation land, which was held in common by the members of a tribe, into small allotments to be parcelled out to individuals.
  • Interstate Commerce Act Passes

    In 1887, Congress passed the Interstate Commerce Act, making the railroads the first industry subject to federal regulation.
  • Alfred T Mahan Writes His book on Sea Power

    Captain Alfred Thayer Mahan, a lecturer in naval history and the president of the United States Naval War College, published The Influence of Sea Power upon History.
  • Sherman Ant-Trust Act Passed

    The Sherman Antitrust Act was passed to address concerns by consumers who felt they were paying high prices on essential goods and by competing companies who believed they were being shut out of their industries by larger corporations.
  • Wounded Knee Massacre

    The slaughter of approximately 150–300 Lakota Indians by United States Army troops in the area of Wounded Knee Creek.
  • Fredrick Jackson Turner Writes Essay of Settling The West

    Defined for many Americans the relationship between the frontier and American culture and contemplated what might follow.
  • Pullman Strike

    The most famous and far-reaching labour conflict in a period of severe economic depression and social unrest was the walkout by Pullman Palace Car Company factory workers after negotiations over declining wages failed.
  • Plessy v Ferguson

    The ruling in this Supreme Court case upheld a Louisiana state law that allowed for equal but separate accommodations for the white and coloured races.
  • Holden v Hardy

    Was a fight for the miners of America, and how often they work, and the hours they put in.
  • Spanish American War Begins

    Began in the aftermath of the internal explosion of the USS Maine in Havana Harbor.
  • Hawaii Is Annexed

    Extended U.S. territory into the Pacific and highlighted results from economic integration and the rise of the United States as a Pacific power.
  • Newlands Reclamation Act

    An Act appropriating the receipts from the sale and disposal of public lands in certain States and Territories to the construction of irrigation works for the reclamation of arid lands.
  • Panama Canal Built

    Throughout the 1800s, American and British leaders and businessmen wanted to ship goods quickly and cheaply between the Atlantic and Pacific coasts.
  • Lochner V New York

    The court held that a New York State statute that prescribed maximum working hours for bakers violated the bakers' right to freedom of contract under the Fourteenth Amendment to the U.S.
  • Pure Food And Drug Act Passed

    Prohibited the sale of misbranded or adulterated food and drugs in interstate commerce.
  • Muller V Oregon

    decision by the United States Supreme Court. Women were provided by state mandate fewer work-hours than allotted to men. The posed question was whether a woman's liberty to negotiate a contract with an employer should be equal to a man's.
  • Founding of The NAACP

    The goals of the NAACP were the abolition of segregation, discrimination, disenfranchisement, and racial violence, particularly lynching.
  • Hepner Act

    action to recover a penalty for importing an alien into the United States to perform labour.