US History 1865-1920

  • Bessemer Process

    The Bessemer Process was the first inexpensive industrial process that allowed for the mass production of steel.
  • Discovery of Gold in Pikes Peak

    In the first week of July 1858, Green Russell and Sam Bates found a small placer deposit near the mouth of Little Dry Creek that yielded about 20 troy ounces (622 grams) of gold, the first significant gold discovery in the Rocky Mountain region.
  • Homestead Act

    provided 160 acres of federal land to anyone who agreed to farm the land.
  • Morrill Land grant act

    The stipulation that African Americans were to be included in the United States Land-Grant University Higher Education System without discrimination.
  • Transcontinental r/r completed

    The completion of the Transcontinental Railroad on May 10, 1869, is recognized as one of our country's biggest achievements and one of mankind's biggest accomplishments.
  • Battle of little bighorn

    The battle was a momentary victory for the Lakota and Cheyenne. The death of Custer and his troops became a rallying point for the United States to increase their efforts to force native peoples onto reservation lands.
  • Farmers alliance created

    The Farmers' Alliance was first organized in Texas in the mid-1870s and soon spread to other states and territories in the South and Midwest. One of the group's main goals was to form cooperatives. Farmers set up cooperatively owned retail stores and marketing organizations.
  • Thomas 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.
  • Carlisle school established

    Carlisle Indian Industrial School in Carlisle, Pennsylvania, opened in 1879 as the first government-run boarding school for Native American children.
  • Edison lights up NYC

    His company flipped the switch on his Pearl Street power station on September 4, 1882, providing hundreds of homes with electricity.
  • Chinese exclusion act

    It was the first significant law restricting immigration into the United States
  • 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.
  • american federation of labor founded

    it concentrated on gaining the right to bargain collectively for wages, benefits, hours, and working conditions.
  • Interstate commerce act passed

    “to Regulate Commerce with foreign Nations, and among the several States”
  • Dawes act

    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 parceled out to individuals.
  • Sherman ant-trust act passed

    was the first Federal act that outlawed monopolistic business practices.
  • Jacob Riis published his book of photos

    He began making the photographs that would be reproduced as engravings and halftones in How the Other Half Lives, his celebrated work documenting the living conditions of the poor, which was published to widespread acclaim in 1890.
  • Alfred T Mahan writes his book on sea power

    According to Mahan, victory at sea is only possible through an appropriate fleet concentration, which is accompanied by the fact that the fleet is never divided
  • Wounded knee massacre

    It marked the definitive end of Indian resistance to the encroachments of white settlers.
  • Plessy v Ferguson

    Homer Plessy, a mixed-race man, deliberately boarded a whites-only train car in New Orleans
  • Fredrick Jackson Turner writes essay of settling the west

    Historian Frederick Jackson Turner believed that the strength and vitality of the American identity lay in its land and vast frontier.
  • Pullman strike

    widespread railroad strike and boycott that severely disrupted rail traffic in the Midwest of the United States in June–July 1894.
  • Holden v hardy

    A US labor law case in which the US Supreme Court held a limitation on working time for miners and smelters as constitutional.
  • Spanish American War begins

    The Spanish–American War began in the aftermath of the internal explosion of USS Maine in Havana Harbor in Cuba, leading to United States intervention in the Cuban War of Independence.
  • Hawaii is annexed

    America's annexation of Hawaii in 1898 extended U.S. territory into the Pacific and highlighted results from economic integration and the rise of the United States as a Pacific power.
  • Phillipines islands are annexed

    The United States paid Spain $20 million to annex the entire Philippine archipelago. The outraged Filipinos, led by Aguinaldo, prepared for war. Once again, MacArthur was thrust to the fore and distinguished himself in the field as he led American forces in quashing the rebellion.
  • Sinclair’s the Jungle written

    Upton Sinclair wrote The Jungle to expose the appalling working conditions in the meat-packing industry.
  • Newlands Reclamation act

    The Reclamation Act of 1902 is a United States federal law that funded irrigation projects for the arid lands of 20 states in the American West
  • U-boats created

    The boats Nordenfelt I and Nordenfelt II, built to a Nordenfelt design
  • Panama Canal is built

    The Panama Canal is an artificial 82 km waterway in Panama that connects the Atlantic Ocean with the Pacific Ocean and divides North and South America.
  • Lochner v New York

    The Court decided that New York did not have the right to make a law interfering with the right of an employer to make a contract with workers.
  • Pure Food and drug act passed

    The Pure Food and Drug Act of 1906 prohibited the sale of misbranded or adulterated food and drugs in interstate commerce and laid a foundation for the nation's first consumer protection agency
  • Muller V Oregon

    A U.S. Supreme Court case in which the Court considered whether a state could limit the amount of hours a woman could work while not also limiting the hours of men.
  • Hepner act

    the forfeiture and liability to pay double the value of the goods received, concealed, or purchased
  • Founding of the NAACP

    The National Association for the Advancement of Colored People is a civil rights organization in the United States, formed in 1909 as an interracial endeavor to advance justice for African Americans
  • Federal Reserve act

    The 1913 Federal Reserve Act created the Federal Reserve System, known simply as "The Fed." It was implemented to establish economic stability in the U.S. by introducing a central bank to oversee monetary policy.
  • Clayton Antitrust act

    The Clayton Act prohibits price discrimination. This is the act of selling the same product to different buyers and charging different prices based on who is purchasing the goods.
  • Ford Motor company's first full assembly line starts

    The Ford Motor Company team decided to try to implement the moving assembly line in the automobile manufacturing process. After much trial and error, in 1913 Henry Ford and his employees successfully began using this innovation at our Highland Park assembly plant.
  • 17th amendment

    allowing voters to cast direct votes for U.S. senators
  • Beginning of the first world war

    Austria-Hungary declares war on Serbia, beginning World War I.
  • Lusitania Sunk

    After a second explosion – the cause of which is still debated – the ship quickly sank.
  • US enters WWI

    the U.S. Senate voted in support of the measure to declare war on Germany.
  • Selective Service act

    Congress passed the Selective Service Act, which authorized the Federal Government to temporarily expand the military through conscription.
  • 18th amendment

    Prohibited the “manufacture, sale, or transportation of intoxicating liquors".
  • WWI ends

    after more than four years of horrific fighting and the loss of millions of lives, the guns on the Western Front fell silent.
  • 19th amendment

    granted women the right to vote.
  • Immigration quota act

    The Immigration Act of 1924 limited the number of immigrants allowed entry into the United States through a national origins quota.
  • National origins act

    federal law that prevented immigration from Asia and set quotas on the number of immigrants from Eastern and Southern Europe.
  • Scopes trial

    The Scopes Trial, also known as the Scopes Monkey Trial, was the 1925 prosecution of science teacher John Scopes for teaching evolution in a Tennessee public school, which a recent bill had made illegal.