Western Expansion In The Nineteenth-Century

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In the time between 1860 and 1900, many American settlers made their way across the western plains in search of a new future for generations to come. This experience was deemed the Western Expansion. Also another term that would describe this period would be Manifest Destiney. The term Manifest Destiney was coined in the 19th-century and is the belief that the expansion of the US and exploration of natural resources was justified under the US constitution. As more Americans settled the West, the lands they inhabited were established in territories. Both before and after the Civil War, people were exploring and settling in the Western parts of the United States. Settlers were pouring into California and Oregon discovering new sources of …show more content…

A faster system of mobility allowed for the connection of towns and cities and allowed a path for families to settle across the west. The California gold rush was a major factor in westward migration. The mining company allowed for people from all areas of the US to try and make it big by mining for gold. Men would pack up their families in search of a brighter tomorrow. Women often performed housework that allowed mining families to subsist in often difficult conditions, a significant portion of the mining workforce were single men without families dependent on service industries in nearby towns and cities. During this time, there is a record of around 100,000 pilgrims that settled these lands during the time of the gold rush. The income from the migration specifically regarding the gold rush estimated at around $25.5 million (Source). This was less than Half of what outside parties that moved in search of gold had invested in this …show more content…

The settlement of a new region was exiting and offered and sense of change that many American citizens would find appealing. Mining families were adventurous in the fact that they risked everything in order to test their luck in search for gold and silver. Farming families would migrate to a new unfamiliar region in order to try and succeed in the agriculture business. Even cattle ranchers would spend two to three months migration loads of livestock in order to be able to cultivate new land. The adventure that followed the western migrations created a new world that resulted in the expansion of the United States and for new opportunities for all US

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