Valentina Rueda - Period 2

By valeeruedda

  • 1862

    • the beginning of the civil war
    • the homestead act which gave 160 acres of land free to those who promised to live there for five years
    • the morrill act which encouraged agricultural eduction by providing the establishment of sppecial colleges with land grants from the government

  • 1865

    • the civil war ended

  • 1870

    • bonanzas: sustained wealth and growth
    • there was an explosion in agricultural culture

  • in the late 1870

    • the bonanza farms were created. the bonanza farms were enormous farms including tens of thousands of acres of land.
  • Period: to

    between 1870 and 1900

    • the population of the Great Plains tripled
    • farmers cultivated more land ever before in U.S. history.
    • the Great Plains (area between Mississippi River and Rocky Mountatins) happened, which pushed the Native Americans out of their traditional tribal lands and poured into the basins and foothills of the Rocky Mountainsl

  • 1874

    • Joseph F. Glidden was a farmer from Illinois who invented the barbed wire, which was a strong interwoven metal wire with sharply pointed barbs at close intervals.
    • Barbed wire allowed farmers to seperate and distinguish their property from other famers, settler, and cattle ranchers living and working in the Great Plains.

  • 1879

    • about 6,000 African American known as Exodusters left their homes in Louisiana, Mississippi and Texas to establish new and freer lives in Kansas and Oklahoma.
    • after they farmed or worked as laborers, woman worked in the fields alongside the men or cleaned houses and took in washing to make ends meet.
  • Period: to

    mid 1880's

    • the height of the farming boom came on the heels of the cattle boom that ended

  • 1881

    • Oliver Dalrymple produced more than 600,000 bushels of wheat
  • Period: to

    between 1885 and 1887

    • fermers fenced in parts of the open range.
    • cattlemen fought bitter range wars with the farmers for control of land
    • severe winters and and an especially dry summer destroyed entire cattle herds, ending the cattle boom and ushering the era of the American farmer.
  • Period: to

    between 1885 and 1890

    • rainfall dropped
    • the large-scale growers found it hard to compete with smaller farmers who diversified their crops and cultivated more intensely

  • 1887

    • severe drought cut harvests, and other subsequent droughts wiped out thousands of new farmers on the western plains.
    • Dawes Severalty Act which was designed to free up western land for white settlers and railroad companies by breaking up traditional Native American tribal lands.

  • 1890

    • more than 900 hundred companies manufactured from machinery and scientific agriculture flourished due to new discoveries linking soil minerals and plant growth
    • farming boom ended sharply after 1890

  • 1896

    • many of the large bonanza farms slowly disintegrated
    • Dalrymple went bankrupt

  • 1900

    • the western half of the United States contained almost 30 percent of the population, compared less than 1% just a half century later