Big Ideas

• Moving to new places changes the people, land, and culture of the new place as well as the place they left.

• Technology has many different types of consequences, depending on how people use that technology.

• Conflict causes change.

Georgia Performance Standards

• SS5H3: The student will describe how life changed in America at the turn of the century.

• Describe the role of the cattle trails in the late 19th century; include the Black Cowboys of Texas, the Great Western Cattle Trail, and the Chisholm Trail.

• Describe the impact on American life of the Wright Brothers (flight), George Washington Carver (science), Alexander Graham Bell (communication), and Thomas Edison (electricity).

• Explain how William McKinley and Theodore Roosevelt expanded America’s role in the world; include the Spanish American War and the building of the Panama Canal.

• Describe the reason people emigrated to the United States, from where they emigrated, and where they settled.

Physical Features of the West

• As the country became “smaller”, people traveled west and came upon numerous physical

features of the United States which were new and exciting.

Let’s embark on a scavenger hunt to try and locate some of these physical features.!

1. The Grand Canyon

2. The Salton Sea

3. The Great Salt Lake

4. The Mojave Desert

The Cattle Drives

• In the 1860’s cattle was so abundant in Texas that one cow would sell for only $___.00.

• This same cattle could be sold in the Northern and Eastern United States for about $40.00 a piece.

This is called: ______________________

So what would you have done if you were a Texas cattle rancher?

The only problem was…

…the railroads did not cross into Texas. The closest ___________ (a town where railroad tracks begin or end) were hundreds of miles away.

The Cattle Drives

• The solution was…

http://www.pbs.org/weta/thewest/program/episodes/five/cowboys.htm

http://www.nebraskastudies.org/0500/frameset_reset.html?http://www.nebraskastudies.org/0500/stories/0502_0100.html

…to “drive” the cattle to places like Abilene, Kansas so they could be put on trains and shipped to stockyards in

the northern and eastern part of the United States.

The most popular trail was the

_____________________, which started in San Antonio, Texas and ended in Kansas.

http://www.bcr.org/cdp/exhibits/westerntrails/cattle/index.html

Another popular trail was the _____________________, which start in Bandera,

Texas and ended in Ogallala, Nebraska.

The Chisholm Trail

• In 1867, Joseph G McCoy established a cattle-shipping terminal in Abilene, Kansas.– He knew that $2.00 Longhorns in Texas were

worth almost 10 times as much in the North,– He was the 1st to exploit the expanding

railroads to move the cattle to distant

markets.

* Did you know a dollar in 1860 was worth the equivalent of around $26.00 in today’s economy?

So what does McCoy have to do with the Chisholm Trail?

• In order to reach McCoy’s shipping yard cattle drivers used Jesse Chisholm’s trail which extended from Wichita, Kansas across the Indian Territory (now known as Oklahoma) to the Red River.

• Millions of Longhorn cattle travelled along the Chisholm Trail in only a few short years

Major Cattle Trails and Railroads

Various Names for the Chisholm Trail

• The Abilene Trail• The Cattle Trail• The Eastern Trail• The Great Texas Cattle Trail• The Kansas Trail• McCoy’s Trail

_____ of an Era for the Chisholm Trail

• By the late 1880’s, driving cattle north from Texas was no longer_____________ and declined rapidly.

• Almost as quickly as the route to Abilene was established, the era of open-range

cattle driving came to a close.

Oh, the Many Reasons• Reliance on the Chisholm Trail began to decline

in the 1870’s for a number of reasons.– The construction of new rail lines to Texas– The development of ______________and the

establishment of homestead laws that closed off the open range

– A public demand for better grades of beef– An oversupply of Longhorns which overran the

market– Texas fever quarantines in Kansas and Missouri

The Great Western Cattle Trail

• Another famous cattle trail used in the 1800’s for movement of cattle to markets in the East.

• Ran west and roughly _____________ to the Chisholm Trail.

Cattle Trails and Railroads

Began at Bandera, Texas and ended in Dodge City, Kansas

Also Known As:

• The Western Trail• The Dodge City Trail• The Old Texas Trail

Sweet Beginnings

• In 1874 Captain John T. Lytle and several cowboys set out with 3,500 head of Longhorn cattle to take advantage of the North’s desire for beef.

• The trail they blazed would become known as the Great Western Cattle Trail.

If This Trail Could Talk

• Over 7 million cattle and horses passed through Texas and Oklahoma to the railheads in Kansas and Nebraska.

• The Great Western Cattle Trail is responsible for developing the __________________ industry as far

north as Wyoming and Montana.

Life on the Trail

• A typical head would move 10-12 miles a day and included the trail boss, a wrangler, and a cook.

• The drive from South Texas to Kansas took about 2 months at a cost of $1000 in wages and provisions.

• At the end of the trail, cattle sold for $_________ to $35.00 per head.

Life on the Drives

• What was life like for the cowhands who worked on these cattle drives?

http://www.cartermuseum.org/collections/smith/

The End of The Cattle Drives

• The cattle drives only lasted for about _______ years.

What do you think were

some causes for the end of

this important era for the West?

1. The Homesteaders of the Great Plains region were getting upset that the

cattle were trampling their new land and their crops.

a) to keep the cattle drives off of their land they put up fences with ________________________________

2. The railroads began to grow. Railroads were built in Texas in the 1870’s,

ending the need for cattle drives to northern railheads.

3. Many cattle died during the abnormally cold winter of 1886-1887.

Black Cowboys

• Many African –Americans had just found freedom from slavery due to the 13th Amendment. For African Americans, the Old West represented a new home, a new

beginning, and a new opportunity to enjoy freedom, which they so desperately wanted.

http://www.blackcowboys.com/blackcowboys.htm

Nat Love

Bill Picket

Black Cowboys of Texas

• 1/3 of cowboys were either Mexican or African American.

Websites

• http://www.pbs.org/weta/thewest/resources/archives/

Resources

• http://www.sonofthesouth.net/texas/westward-expansion-map.htm• http://www.ncgold.com/goldrushtown/photoalbum/early_photography_people/01people.jpg

• http://images.google.com