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The Jamestown settlement in the Colony of Virginia was the first permanent English settlement in the America -
Between 1775 And 1783, the 13 original colonies united against Great Britain in the American Revolutionary War -
The United States Declaration of Independence, formally The unanimous Declaration of the thirteen united States of America, is the pronouncement adopted by the Second Continental Congress meeting in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, on July 4, 1776. -
The treaty of Paris signed in Paris by Great Britain and the United States of America in September 1783 officially ended the American Revolutionary War.
The treaty set the boundaries between the British Empire in North America and the USA. -
Louisiana Purchase was a French property which was sold by Napoleon because he needed money to finance his European wars.
Later Louisiana Purchase took the names “the Great plains”. -
Exploration and settlement began immediately after the purchase, and President Thomas Jefferson commissioned Lewis and Clark to map the territory and find a water route to the Pacific Ocean.
Lewis & Clark left St Louis in May 1804, reached the Pacific Ocean in November 1805 and were back in St Louis in 1806. -
President Andrew Jackson wanted the land to be settled by the white farmers. In 1830 he signed the Indian Removal Act.
The series of relocations, where the migrants endured hunger, disease and exhaustion, was called the “Trail of Tears.” This devasting journey cost the lives of about 4000 Cherokees. -
Between 1840 and 1880 : the Oregon trail is a 2,200-mile (3,500 km) historic wagon route and emigrant trail stretching between Missouri and Oregon or California which was used by about 400,000 settlers. An artist named Albert Bierstadt illustrated this trail as a peaceful place in the Frontier area. -
Between 1846 and 1847 : The Donner Party was a group of American settlers / pioneers who migrated from the Midwest to California by wagon train. They got stranded on their way to California in late 1846. They ended up trapped by heavy snow in the Sierra Nevada Mountain range, and some of them eventually resorted to cannibalism for survival.
Only 45-6 of the original 89 emigrants survived and reached California. -
The California Gold Rush ran from 1848 to 1855 in Sierra Nevada and North Carolina. Over 300,000 people rushed to the area to pan for gold. These people were known as the ‘forty-niners’ and most of them arrived in 1849. The Gold Rush was the largest mass-migration in US history; It had such an impact that settlements and roads had to be built and it resulted in California becoming its own State (nicknamed the Golden State). -
The Homestead Act of 1862 was signed by US President Abraham Lincoln on the 20th of May 1862. In 1862, the Homestead Act granted voluntary pioneers 160 acres of land for free if they lived on it for five years. It promoted settlement, as well as development of the American West but because of it Native Americans lost much of their land. -
A. Lincoln signs the Railroad Act in 1863.
The Transcontinental Railroad connected the East with the West of the US. Two companies were tasked with the project (the Central-Pacific-East- and the Union Pacific- West)
In spite of the Civil War (1861-1865), he started the construction of the railway in order to unify the nation. -
The painting of John Gast realized in 1872 represents the East of the US as a model of civilisation, thanks to railways, telegraph, ships... Lady Columbia, the female personification of America, led settlers to the west which is shown as an ominous place.
She embodies the central figure holding knowledge and progress in her hand in order to justify settlers's actions and appears as a message of God. It is an epitome of the westward expansion.