Wild West

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In the beginning moving West was the majority of the barriers and obstructions that the setters had to face. Indian attacks, blizzards, tornadoes, flash floods and just being ill prepared among and numerous other hard ships took many settlers lives and were tough to over come. The journey was across a uniform, dusty, wind-swept, treeless nothingness. The temperatures would very a lot between 110 and below freezing. Not to mention that there was no trees for shade or cover from the storms.
In this book there is a lot of first hand diaries, artifacts and photographs that show how it was in the 1800’s and how hard it really was to make the trip to the west and live there. This book is about how the west was won. It is also about emigrants from China and Europe, slaves that had just been freed, teachers from New England schools, and just some farm boys or opportunist from the south and mid west. They all found out that the west was so enormous and commendatory. They could not believe this native land was so immense and enormous. One reason for heading west was the Homestead Act, which would give deserving people sites or land to individuals who stayed on there land for five years.
There were six main Trails that they took; the Oregon Trail, the Santa Fe Trail, Mormon Trail, Gila River Trail, California Trail and the Old Spanish Trail.
Some people even came out West on the Transcontinental Railroad that was recently built. The settlers could even buy the land on the plains from the Rail Company. The rail road company had been granted great tracks of land by the United States government on both sides of the railroad and was later sold to settlers. The Native Americans suffered from this flow of people from the east and this would change their lives forever. There were many struggles and the quest to just stay alive is why today we call it the “Wild West”. Especially when a good number of them were dishonest scoundrels or just drifters and adventurers. Plus, most of them were armed.
The first thing the settlers needed to get done was to dig a well. Well digging was very hard job and often had to be done many times because they would run dry or they just couldn’t hit water. For the families that just arrived getting a crop in was another one of the many important chores.

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