Infobox settlement
thumb|Deadwood circa 1890s
Image:Deadwood13.jpg|thumb|A photograph of Deadwood in 1876.
 General view of the Dakota Territory gold rush town from a hillside above.
thumb|The Gem in 1878
Image:Cyark Deadwood Bullock Clark.jpg|thumb|Photo-textured 3D laser scan image of Bullock-Clark Building, 616-618 Main Street (1894)
Image:Cyark Deadwood Hickock.jpg|thumb|Possible current location of the original Nuttal & Mann's saloon where Wild Bill Hickok was killed, 624 Main Street, Deadwood
Deadwood, named for the dead trees found in its gulch, is a city in and the county seat of Lawrence County, South Dakota, United States.
 The population was 1,380 as of the 2000 census.
  The city includes the Deadwood Historic District, a National Historic Landmark District, whose borders may be the city limits.
Deadwood's European settlement, which began in the 1870s, has been described as illegal, since it lay within the territory granted to Native Americans in the 1868 Treaty of Laramie.
 The treaty had guaranteed ownership of the Black Hills to the Lakota people, and disputes over the Hills, which have reached the United States Supreme Court on several occasions, are ongoing.
 However, in 1874, Colonel George Armstrong Custer led an expedition into the  Hills and announced the discovery of gold on French Creek near present-day Custer, South Dakota.
 Custer's announcement triggered the Black Hills Gold Rush and gave rise to the lawless town of Deadwood, which quickly reached a population of around 5,000.
In early 1876, frontiersman Charlie Utter and his brother Steve led a wagon train to Deadwood containing what were deemed to be needed commodities to bolster business, including gamblers and prostitutes, which proved to be a profitable venture.
  Demand for women was high, and the business of prostitution proved to be a good market.
 Madam Dora DuFran would eventually become the most profitable brothel owner in Deadwood, closely followed by Madam Mollie Johnson.
 Businessman Tom Miller opened the Bella Union Saloon in September of that year.
Another saloon was the Gem Variety Theater opened April 7, 1877 by Al Swearengen who also controlled the opium trade in the town.
 After the saloon was destroyed by a fire and rebuilt in 1879, it burned down again in 1899, causing Swearengen to leave the town.
The town attained notoriety for the murder of Wild Bill Hickok, and remains the final resting place of Hickok and Calamity Jane, as well as slightly less notable figures such as Seth Bullock.
 It became known for its wild and almost lawless reputation, during which time murder was common, and punishment for murders not always fair and impartial.
 The prosecution of the murderer of Hickok, Jack McCall, had to be sent to retrial because of a ruling that his first trial, which resulted in an acquittal, was invalid because Deadwood was an illegal town.
 This moved the trial to a Lakota court, where he was found guilty and then hanged.
As the economy changed from gold rush to steady mining, Deadwood lost its rough and rowdy character and settled down into a prosperous town.
 In 1876 a smallpox epidemic swept through the camp, with so many falling sick that tents had to be set up to quarantine them.
 Also in that year, General George Crook pursued the Sioux Indians from the Battle of Little Big Horn on an expedition that ended in Deadwood, and that came to be known as the Horsemeat March.
 The Homestake Mine in nearby Lead was established in 1877.
A fire on September 26, 1879, devastated the town, destroying over 300 buildings and consuming everything belonging to many inhabitants.
 Without the opportunities of rich untapped veins of ore that characterized the town's early days, many of the newly impoverished left town to try their luck elsewhere.
A narrow gauge railroad, the Deadwood Central Railroad, was founded by Deadwood resident J.K.P. Miller and his associates in 1888, in order to serve their mining interests in the Black Hills.
  The railroad was purchased by the Chicago, Burlington and Quincy Railroad in 1893.
  A portion of the road between Deadwood and Lead was electrified in 1902 for operation as an interurban passenger system, which operated until 1924.
  Apart from a portion from Kirk to Fantail Junction, which was converted to standard gauge, the railroad was abandoned in 1930.
  The remaining section was abandoned by the successor Burlington Northern Railroad in 1984.
Some of the other early town residents and frequent visitors included Al Swearengen, E. B. Farnum, Charlie Utter, Sol Star, Martha Bullock, A. W. Merrick, Samuel Fields, Dr. Valentine McGillycuddy, the Reverend Henry Weston Smith, and Wild Bill Hickok.
Another major fire in September 1959 came close to destroying the town.
 About 4,500 acres were burned and an evacuation order was issued.
 Nearly 3,600 volunteer and professional firefighters, including personnel from the Homestake Mine and Ellsworth Air Force Base, worked to contain the fire, which resulted in a major regional economic downturn.
The entire town was designated a National Historic Landmark in 1961.
 Gambling was legalized in Deadwood in 1989 and immediately brought significant new revenues and development.
 The pressure of development may have an effect on the historical integrity of the landmark district.
Deadwood is located at .
According to the United States Census Bureau, the city has a total area of 3.8 square miles (9.8 km²), all of it land.
Deadwood has been assigned the ZIP code 57732 and the FIPS place code 15700.
In the summer, there are numerous trails for hiking, mountain biking, and horse back riding.
 The northern end of the George S. Mickelson Trail starts in Deadwood and runs south through the Black Hills to Edgemont.
 Several man made lakes, including Sheridan Lake, provide fishing and swimming.
 Spearfish Canyon to the north has many places to rock climb.
During the winter there are two ski areas just a few miles outside of nearby Lead, SD - Terry Peak and Deer Mountain.
'The Midnight Star' casino in Deadwood is owned by American film actor Kevin Costner.
 International versions of many of his films' posters line its walls.
 Deadwood's history and inhabitants are the foundation of Pete Dexter's 1986 novel, Deadwood, in which Charles Utter, Wild Bill Hickok, and Calamity Jane are the central characters.
 The town's early history forms the basis for the storyline of the HBO TV series named Deadwood.
 In the Star Trek: The Next Generation episode 'A Fistful of Datas', the holodeck program that Worf, his son Alexander, and Deanna Troi participate in takes place in 19th century Deadwood.
 The Tales from Deadwood series of novels by Mike Jameson, published by the Berkley Publishing Group, are set in  Deadwood and feature Wild Bill Hickok, Calamity Jane, Al Swearengen, and other historical figures.
 In Flashman and the Redskins, the eponymous hero, an acquaintance of Wild Bill Hickok, ends his adventure in Deadwood in 1876, shortly before Hickok's death.
 Season 1 of the 1960's TV show Adam 12: in episode 14, 'The Long walk', an old man was found who reminisced about his early life in Deadwood SD.
As of the census of 2000, there were 1,380 people, 669 households, and 341 families residing in the city.
  The population density was 365.4 people per square mile (141.0/km²).
  There were 817 housing units at an average density of 216.3/sq mi (83.5/km²).
  The racial makeup of the city was 95.87% White, 1.88% Native American, 0.36% Asian, 0.65% from other races, and 1.23% from two or more races.
 Hispanic or Latino of any race were 2.75% of the population.
 29.8% were of German, 9.6% Irish, 9.5% English, 9.5% Norwegian and 8.7% American ancestry according to Census 2000.
There were 669 households out of which 20.5% had children under the age of 18 living with them, 37.7% were married couples living together, 10.9% had a female householder with no husband present, and 48.9% were non-families.
 40.1% of all households were made up of individuals and 14.6% had someone living alone who was 65 years of age or older.
  The average household size was 2.01 and the average family size was 2.71.
In the city the population was spread out with 19.3% under the age of 18, 8.7% from 18 to 24, 27.3% from 25 to 44, 27.8% from 45 to 64, and 16.8% who were 65 years of age or older.
  The median age was 42 years.
 For every 100 females there were 93.8 males.
  For every 100 females age 18 and over, there were 92.6 males.
The median income for a household in the city was $28,641, and the median income for a family was $37,132. Males had a median income of $28,920 versus $18,807 for females.
 The per capita income for the city was $17,673.
  About 6.9% of families and 10.8% of the population were below the poverty line, including 19.4% of those under age 18 and 8.3% of those age 65 or over.
 KBHB 810
 KKLS 920
 KDSJ 980
 KTOQ 1340
 KBFS 1450
 KRCS 93.1
 KKMK 93.9
 KSQY 95.1
 KZZI 95.9
 KOUT 98.7
 KFXS 100.3
 KDDX 101.1
 KFMH 101.9
 KYDT 103.1
 KIQK 104.1
 KOTA-TV Ch.
 3 ABC
 KCLO Ch.
 16 CBS
 KNBN Ch.
 21 NBC
 KBHE-TV Ch.
 26 PBS
 KEVN-TV Ch.7 Fox
Philip S. Van Cise, (b. 1884 - d. 1969); Colorado district attorney.
Jim Scott, (b. 1888 - d. 1957); played with the Chicago White Sox.
Ward Lambert, (b. 1888 - d. 1958); a college basketball coach, mostly with Purdue University.
Angelo Rizzuto (b. 1906 - d. 1967); photographer
Carole Hillard, (b. 1936 - d. 2007); Lieutenant Governor of South Dakota 1995-2003.
 Died 2007.
Cris Williamson (b. 1947); singer/musician.
Amy Hill (b. 1953) is a Japanese-Finnish-American actress.
 (creative commons-licensed photos, laser scans, panoramas), data from a DHPC/CyArk partnership
Category:Black Hills
Category:Cities in South Dakota
Category:Lawrence County, South Dakota
Category:American Old West
Category:County seats in South Dakota
Category:American folklore
da:Deadwood (South Dakota)
de:Deadwood (South Dakota)
fr:Deadwood (Dakota du Sud)
ht:Deadwood, Dakota disid
nl:Deadwood (South Dakota)
pl:Deadwood (Dakota Południowa)
pt:Deadwood (Dacota do Sul)
sv:Deadwood, South Dakota
vo:Deadwood (South Dakota)
Dodge City is a city in and the county seat of Ford County, Kansas, USA. It was named after Colonel Richard Irving Dodge.
 The population was 25,176 at the 2000 census.
  The city's name is well known to generations of Americans, as the long-running old-time radio and television Western drama program Gunsmoke was set in Dodge City.
thumb|left|Buffalo Hunter Ralph Morrison who was killed and scalped December 7, 1868 near Fort Dodge Kansas by Cheyennes.
 A Lt Reade of the 3rd Infantry and Chief of Scouts John O.
 Austin in background. Photograph by William S. Soule.
 An original print and story can be found here at 
The first settlement in the area that became Dodge City was Fort Mann.
  Built by civilians in 1847, Fort Mann was intended to provide protection for travelers on the Santa Fe Trail.
  Fort Mann collapsed in 1848 after an Indian attack.
  In 1850, the U.S. Army arrived to provide protection in the region and constructed Fort Atkinson on the old Fort Mann site.
  The army abandoned Fort Atkinson in 1853.
  Military forces on the Santa Fe Trail were reestablished further north and east at Fort Larned in 1859, but the area around what would become Dodge City remained vacant until after the Civil War.
  In 1865, as the Indian Wars in the West began heating up, the army constructed Fort Dodge to assist Fort Larned in providing protection on the Santa Fe Trail.
  Fort Dodge remained in operation until 1882.
The town of Dodge City can trace its origins to 1871 when rancher Henry J. Sitler built a sod house west of Fort Dodge to oversee his cattle operations in the region.
  Conveniently located near the Santa Fe Trail and Arkansas River, Sitler's house quickly became a stopping point for travelers.
  With the Santa Fe Railroad rapidly approaching from the east, others saw the commercial potential of the region.
  In 1872, just five miles (8 km) west of Fort Dodge, settlers platted out and founded the town of Dodge City.
  George M.
 Hoover established the first bar in a tent to service thirsty soldiers from Fort Dodge.
  The railroad arrived in September to find a town ready and waiting for business.
  The early settlers in Dodge City traded in buffalo bones and hides and provided a civilian community for Fort Dodge.
  However, with the arrival of the railroad, Dodge City soon became involved in the cattle trade.
Image:WyattEarpBatMasterson.jpg|righ|thumb|200px|Deputies Bat Masterson and Wyatt Earp in Dodge City, 1876.
 The scroll on Earp's chest is a cloth pin-on badge
The idea of driving Texas longhorn cattle from Texas to railheads in Kansas originated in the late 1850s but was cut short by the Civil War.
  In 1866, the first Texas cattle started arriving in Baxter Springs in southeastern Kansas by way of the Shawnee Trail.
  However, Texas longhorn cattle carried a tick that spread splenic fever among other breeds of cattle.
  Known locally as Texas Fever, alarmed Kansas farmers persuaded the Kansas State Legislature to establish a quarantine line in central Kansas.
  The quarantine prohibited Texas longhorns from the heavily settled, eastern portion of the state.
With the cattle trade forced west, Texas longhorns began moving north along the Chisholm Trail.
  In 1867, the main Cow Town was Abilene, Kansas.
  Profits were high, and other towns quickly joined in the cattle boom.
  Newton in 1871; Ellsworth in 1872; and Wichita in 1872.
  However, in 1876 the Kansas State Legislature responded to pressure from farmers settling in central Kansas and once again shifted the quarantine line westward, which essentially eliminated Abilene and the other Cow Towns from the cattle trade.
  With no place else to go, Dodge City suddenly became Queen of the Cow Towns.
200px|thumb|right|A monument to the days of the great cattle drives stands in downtown Dodge City.
A new route, known as the Great Western Cattle Trail, or Western Trail, branched off from the Chisholm Trail to lead cattle into Dodge City.
  Dodge City became a boomtown, with thousands of cattle passing annually through its stockyards.
  The peak years of the cattle trade in Dodge City were from 1883 to 1884, and during that time the town grew tremendously.
  In 1880, Dodge City got a new competitor for the cattle trade from the border town of Caldwell.
  For a few years the competition between the towns was fierce, but there were enough cattle for both towns to prosper.
  Nevertheless, it was Dodge City that became famous, and rightly so because no town could match Dodge City's reputation as a true frontier settlement of the Old West.
  Dodge City had more famous (and infamous) gunfighters working at one time or another than any other town in the West, many of whom participated in the Dodge City War of 1883.
  It also boasted the usual array of saloons, gambling halls, and brothels established to separate a lonely cowboy from his hard-earned cash, including the famous Long Branch Saloon and China Doll brothel.
  For a time in 1884, Dodge City even had a bullfighting ring where Mexican bullfighters imported from Mexico would put on a show with specially chosen longhorn bulls.
As more agricultural settlers moved into western Kansas, pressure on the Kansas State Legislature to do something about splenic fever increased.
  Consequently, in 1885 the quarantine line was extended across the state and the Western Trail was all but shut down.
  By 1886, the cowboys, saloon keepers, gamblers, and brothel owners moved west to greener pastures, and Dodge City became a sleepy little town much like other communities in western Kansas.
Dodge City is located at  on the High Plains in southwestern Kansas.
 The Arkansas River flows east through the city.
 Dodge City lies above the world’s largest underground water system, the Ogallala Aquifer, and is only  from the eastern edge of the Hugoton Natural Gas Area.
According to the United States Census Bureau, the city has a total area of 12.7 square miles (32.9 km²), of which 12.6 square miles (32.7 km²) is land and 0.1 square miles (0.3 km²) (0.86%) is water.
Dodge City tops the list of windiest U.S. cities with an average speed of .
As of the census of 2000, there were 25,176 people, 8,395 households, and 5,968 families residing in the city.
 The population density was 1,995.8 people per square mile (770.9/km²).
 There were 8,976 housing units at an average density of 711.6/sq mi (274.8/km²).
 The racial makeup of the city was 71.43% White, 1.94% African American, 0.69% Native American, 2.37% Asian, 0.15% Pacific Islander, 20.82% from other races, and 2.61% from two or more races.
 Hispanic or Latino of any race were 42.87% of the population.
There were 8,395 households out of which 41.1% had children under the age of 18 living with them, 55.1% were married couples living together, 10.3% had a female householder with no husband present, and 28.9% were non-families.
 23.5% of all households were made up of individuals and 9.6% had someone living alone who was 65 years of age or older.
 The average household size was 2.94 and the average family size was 3.46.
In the city the population was spread out with 31.2% under the age of 18, 12.3% from 18 to 24, 30.0% from 25 to 44, 16.5% from 45 to 64, and 10.0% who were 65 years of age or older.
 The median age was 29 years.
 For every 100 females there were 106.7 males.
 For every 100 females age 18 and over, there were 104.2 males.
The median income for a household in the city was $37,156, and the median income for a family was $41,672.
 Males had a median income of $26,881 versus $22,064 for females.
 The per capita income for the city was $15,538.
 About 11.1% of families and 13.9% of the population were below the poverty line, including 17.4% of those under age 18 and 9.1% of those age 65 or over.
The elementary and high school population is served by the Dodge City Public Schools district.
Dodge City Community College serves first and second year college students, and the community at large.
  The campus, which encompasses a lake and jogging trail, sits on  in northwest Dodge City.
  It boasts an online student newspaper, a television station, an astronomy center with two telescopes, an electron microscope, and the third largest athletic training room in the state of Kansas.
  It is the only college or university in the state of Kansas operating both FM and AM radio stations.
  Enrollment is approximately 2,000 students each semester.
Dodge City has a minor-league basketball team, the Dodge City Legend.
  The Legend is a member of the United States Basketball League (USBL).
  The Legend have won three championship titles in the USBL.
From 1970 to 1980, the annual Boot Hill Bowl post-season college football game was played in Dodge City.
  The bowl was sanctioned by the National Association of Intercollegiate Athletics and featured schools such as Washburn University and Emporia State University.
  The last game was played on November 21, 1980.
thumb|left|200px|Today, Dodge City maintains part of its downtown as a tourist attraction.
Santa Fe Trail Remains (also known as Santa Fe Trail Ruts), located nine miles (14 km) west of Dodge City on US 50, is a two-mile (3 km) section of the former  long Santa Fe Trail that is the 'longest continuous stretch of clearly defined Santa Fe Trail rut remains in Kansas.'
  It was declared a National Historic Landmark in 1963.
  There are other sections of Santa Fe Trail ruts that are listed on the National Register of Historic Places.
The 19th century buildings of historic Front Street were demolished in an 'urban renewal' project in 1970.
Dodge City (Amtrak station)
Dodge City Regional Airport
U.S. Route 50
U.S. Route 283
Newspapers
The Dodge City Daily Globe, daily
The High Plains Journal, weekly
The Southwest Kansas Register, weekly, published by the Roman Catholic Diocese of Dodge City
The following radio stations are licensed to Dodge City:
AM
FM
 Dennis Hopper, actor and film-maker
 Lila Leeds, actress
 David Laurin Ricken, bishop of Roman Catholic Diocese of Cheyenne
A number of famous names associated with the American West have either passed through Dodge City or made it a temporary residence.
  Some of these include:
 Sean James From Saint Louis, Missouri  
 Clay Allison
 Charlie Bassett
 Chalkley Beeson, state legislator
 William L. Brooks
 Robert H. Chilton
 Jim Courtright
 George Armstrong Custer
 James Earp
 Morgan Earp
 Virgil Earp
 Wyatt Earp
 Eddie Foy
 Charles Goodnight
 Doc Holliday
 Turkey Creek Jack Johnson
 Nat Love
 Frank Loving
 Bat Masterson
 Ed Masterson
 James Masterson
 Dave Mather
 Tom Pickett
 Levi Richardson
 Dave Rudabaugh
 Luke Short
 Charles Siringo
 Bill Tilghman
 Libby Thompson
 Texas Jack Vermillion
 John Joshua Webb
One of the downtown streets in present-day Dodge City is called Gunsmoke Street, so named because of Dodge City's serving as the setting of the long-running television western Gunsmoke.
Dodge City is featured in the computer game Gun.
 Dykstra, Robert R.
 The Cattle Towns.
  Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1968.
 ISBN 0-8032-6561-1
 Miner, Craig.
 West of Wichita: Settling the High Plains of Kansas, 1865-1890.
 Lawrence: University Press of Kansas, 1988.
  ISBN 0-7006-0364-6 
 Vestal, Stanley.
 Dodge City: Queen of Cowtowns: 'the Wickedest Little City in America' 1872-1886.
 Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1998.
 ISBN 0-8032-9617-7
Category:Ford County, Kansas
Category:Cities in Kansas
Category:County seats in Kansas
Category:Settlements established in 1847
Category:American Old West
Category:Micropolitan areas of Kansas
bg:Додж Сити
da:Dodge City
de:Dodge City
es:Dodge City
fr:Dodge City
io:Dodge City, Kansas
it:Dodge City
ht:Dodge City, Kansas
mr:डॉज सिटी
nl:Dodge City (Kansas)
ja:ドッジシティ (カンザス州)
no:Dodge City
pl:Dodge City (Kansas)
pt:Dodge City (Kansas)
fi:Dodge City
sv:Dodge City
vo:Dodge City (Kansas)
Infobox Settlement
thumb|left|Tombstone in 1881
thumb|Ed Schieffelin in Tombstone in 1880
In the summer of 1877 prospector Ed Schieffelin was working the hills east of the San Pedro River in the southeast portion of the Arizona Territory, when he came across a vein of very rich silver ore in a high plateau called Goose Flats.
 When Schieffelin filed his mining claim he named it 'The Tombstone', after a warning given him by a passing soldier.
 While telling the soldier about his rock collecting experiences, the soldier told him that the only rock he was likely to collect among the waterless hills and warring Apaches of the area would be his own tombstone.
The town of Tombstone was founded in 1879, taking its name from the mining claim, and soon became a boomtown.
 Fueled by mineral wealth, Tombstone was a city of 1000 by the beginning of 1881, and within another year Tombstone had become the seat of a new county (Cochise County) with a population between 5,000 and 15,000, and services including refrigeration (with ice cream and later even ice skating), running water, telegraph and limited telephone service, and a newspaper aptly named the Tombstone Epitaph.Capitalists and businessmen moved in from the eastern U.S. Mining was carried out by immigrants from Europe, chiefly Ireland and Germany.
 An extensive service industry (laundry, construction, restaurants, hotels, etc.)
 was provided by Chinese and other immigrants.
thumb|left|Ed Schieffelin monument
Without railroad access the increasingly sophisticated Tombstone was relatively isolated, deep in  a Federal territory that was largely unpopulated desert and wilderness.
 Tombstone and its surrounding countryside also became known as one of the deadliest regions in the West.
 Uncivilized southern gangs from the surrounding countryside, known as 'cow-boys', were at odds with the northern capitalists and immigrant miners who ran the city and mines.
 On October 26, 1881 this situation famously exploded in the Gunfight at the O.K. Corral, leading to a continued family and political feud that resulted in multiple deaths.
On December 25, 1881 the Bird Cage Theater opened, and in 1882 the New York Times reported that 'the Bird Cage Theatre is the wildest, wickedest night spot between Basin Street and the Barbary Coast.'
Since Tombstone was in the desert, a company built a pipeline to supply the town with water.
 No sooner was this pipeline built than Tombstone's silver mines struck water.
As a result of relative lack of water and quick wooden construction, Tombstone experienced major fires in June 1881 and May 1882.
 The second fire was particularly destructive and signaled the end of the classic old boomtown mining city.
 After the mid-1880s, when the silver mines had been tapped out, the main pump failed, causing many mines to be flooded with deep groundwater, and Tombstone declined rapidly.
 The U.S. census found it had fewer than 1900 residents in 1890, and fewer than 700 residents in 1900.
The 1900 census was a minimum, however, and Tombstone was saved from becoming a ghost town after the decline of silver mining, partly by its status as the Cochise County seat.
 Even the county seat was later moved by popular vote to nearby Bisbee in 1929.
 However, the classic Cochise County Courthouse and adjacent gallows yard in Tombstone is preserved as a museum.
Tombstone is home to perhaps the most famous graveyard of the Old West, Boot Hill.
 Buried at the site are various victims of violence and disease in Tombstone's early years, including those from the O.K. Corral.
 Boot Hill (also known as the old city cemetery) was also the destination for bad-men and those lynched or legally hanged in Tombstone.
 Admission to this historic site is free and donations are accepted.
Saloon ladies on Allen Street in 2006|thumb|left
The lot in which the historic gunfight at the O.K. Corral occurred in 1881 is also preserved, but this has been walled off, and admission is charged.
 However, since much of this street fight occurred in Tombstone's Fremont Street (modern Highway 80), much of this site is also viewable without admission charge.
According to Guinness, the world's largest rosebush was planted in Tombstone in 1885 and still flourishes today in the city's sunny climate.
 This Lady Banksia rose now covers  of the roof on an inn, and has a  circumference trunk.
Image:ownwspok.jpg|thumb|Newspaper coverage of the fight at the O.K. Corral
Currently, tourism and western memorabilia are the main commercial enterprises; a July 2005 CNN article notes that Tombstone receives approximately 450,000 tourist visitors each year.
 This is about 300 tourists/year for each permanent resident.
 In contrast to its heyday, when it featured saloons open 24 hours and numerous houses of prostitution, Tombstone is now a staid community with few businesses open late.
Performance events help preserve the town's wild-west image and expose it to new visitors.
 Helldorado Days is Tombstone's oldest festival, and celebrates the community's wild days of the 1880s.
 Started in 1929, the festival is held on the third weekend of every October (loosely corresponding to the date of the O.K. Corral gunfight) and consists of gunfight reenactment shows, street entertainment, fashion shows and a family-oriented carnival.
 Meanwhile, Tombstone's Main Event: A Tragedy At The OK Corral (2007), a stage play by Stephen Keith, presents the cowboys' perspective of the events leading up to the shootout and is presented inside the actual OK Corral.
thumb|Allen Street
thumb|Daily reenactment of the famous fight
The Tombstone Historic District is a National Historic Landmark District.
  The town's focus on tourism has threatened the town's designation as a National Historic Landmark District, a designation it earned in 1961 as 'one of the best preserved specimens of the rugged frontier town of the 1870s and '80s.'
 In 2004, the National Park Service (NPS) declared the designation threatened, seeking to work with the community to develop an appropriate stewardship program.
 The inappropriate alterations to the district cited by the NPS include:
 Placing 'historic' dates on new buildings
 Failing to distinguish new construction from historic structures
 Covering authentic historic elevations with inappropriate materials 
 Replacing historic features instead of repairing them
 Replacing missing historic features with conjectural and unsubstantiated materials
 Building incompatible additions to existing historic structures and new incompatible buildings within the historic district
 Using illuminated signage, including blinking lights surrounding historic signs 
 Installing hitching rails and Spanish tile-covered store porches when such architectural features never existed within Tombstone
Tombstone is located at  (31.715940, -110.064827).
According to the United States Census Bureau, the city has a total area of 4.3 square miles (11.1 km²), all land.
USCensusPop
Boot Hill (or Boothill) is the name for any number of cemeteries, chiefly in the American West.
  During the 19th century it was a common name for the burial grounds of gunfighters, or those who 'died with their boots on' (i.e., violently).
  Also, Boot Hill graves were made for people who died in a strange town without assets for a funeral, known more formally as pauper's graves.
Image:TombstoneGraves.JPG|thumb|right|Graves of Billy Clanton, Frank McLaury and Tom McLaury in Boothill Graveyard, Tombstone, Arizona.
The most notable use of the name Boot Hill is at the Boothill Graveyard in Tombstone, Arizona.
Formerly called City Cemetery, the plot features the graves of Billy Clanton, Frank McLaury and Tom McLaury; the three men killed during the famed Gunfight at the O.K. Corral.
Currently the Boothill Graveyard is open to the public and a popular stop for tourists visiting Tombstone.
 Located on the northwest corner of the town, the graveyard is believed to hold over 300 persons, 205 of which are recorded.
 This was due to many Chinese and Jewish immigrants being buried without record.
Boothill Graveyard is referenced in many movies including Tombstone, Wyatt Earp and 1957's Gunfight at the O.K. Corral, during which it was repeatedly sung over the recurring title theme song by Frankie Laine.
 In the later half of the movie Laine changes the theme to:
Boot Hill cemeteries can be found in a number of towns, including:
Anamosa, Iowa
Billings, Montana
Bonanza, Custer County, Idaho
Bodie, California
Calico, California
Canyon City, Oregon
Columbia, California
Cripple Creek, Colorado
Deadwood, South Dakota
Dodge City, Kansas
El Paso, Texas
Guthrie, Oklahoma
Hays, Kansas
Idaho City, Idaho
Leadville, Colorado
Livermore, California
Ogallala, Nebraska
Pioche, Nevada
Riley Camp, Quay County, New Mexico
Seney Township, Michigan
Tascosa, Oldham County, Texas
Tilden, Texas
Virginia City, Montana
Virginia City, Nevada
Boot Hill was also the name given by the prisoners to the cemetery at the Japanese-run Batu Lintang POW and civilian internment camp in Kuching, Sarawak, Borneo during World War II.
Cowboy action shooting
Frontier
Western movie
Potter's field
 Dodge City, Kansas
, from a Library of Congress website
Category:Cemeteries in the United States
Category:American Old West
it:Collina degli stivali
sv:Boot Hill
Image:Judge Roy Bean.jpg|thumb|250px|right|Judge Roy Bean’s Saloon in Langtry, Texas
A Western saloon is a kind of bar particular to the Old West.
 Saloons served such customers as fur trappers, cowboys, soldiers, gold prospectors and miners, and gamblers.
 The first saloon was established at Brown’s Hole, Wyoming, in 1822, to serve fur trappers.
 The popularity of saloons in the nineteenth-century American West is attested to by the fact that even a town of 3,000 residents, such as 1883’s Livingston, Montana, boasted 33 saloons.
Among the more familiar saloons were First Chance Saloon in Miles City, Montana; the Bull’s Head in Abilene, Kansas; the Arcade in El Dorado, Colorado; the Holy Moses in Creede, Colorado; the Long Branch in Dodge City, Kansas; the Birdcage Theater (also a saloon) in Tombstone, Arizona; and Judge Roy Bean’s Saloon in Langtry, Texas.
 Many of these establishments remained open 24 hours a day, seven days a week.
The earliest saloons were often nothing more than tents or shacks that served homemade whiskey that included such ingredients as “raw alcohol, burnt sugar and .
 . . chewing tobacco” and was known by such names as “Tanglefoot, Forty-Rod, Tarantula Juice, Taos Lightning, Red Eye, and Coffin Varnish.” Other offerings included “Cactus Wine, made from a mix of tequila and peyote tea, and Mule Skinner, made with whiskey and blackberry liquor.
 The house rotgut was often 100 proof, though it was sometimes cut by the barkeep with turpentine, ammonia, gun powder or cayenne”. Some saloons prided themselves on homemade beer and it was not always served at room temperature.
By way of entertainment, saloons offered dancing girls dressed in somewhat-revealing strapless dresses with feather boas, some of whom occasionally or routinely doubled as prostitutes (these girls were often addressed as 'Miss ___').
 Many saloons offered Faro, poker, brag, three-card monte, and dice games.
 Other games were added as saloons continued to prosper and face increasing competition.
 These additional games included billiards, darts, and bowling.
 Some saloons even included piano players, can-can girls, and theatrical skits.
Among the anecdotes of the American West, several concern incidents that took place in or outside saloons.
 One such incident occurred at The Bull’s Head Saloon in Abilene, Kansas.
 When the tavern’s owner, Phil Coe, outraged the townspeople by painting a bull, complete with an erect penis, or pizzle, on the outside wall of his tavern, Wild Bill Hickok, the marshal at the time, threatened to burn the saloon to the ground if the offending animal was not painted over.
 Instead, he hired some men to do the job, which angered Coe.
 When Coe sought to settle the matter with gunplay, Wild Bill proved too fast and accurate an adversary.
Wild Bill, also a professional gambler, was later killed (on August 2, 1876) by Jack McCall in Saloon No. 10 in Deadwood, South Dakota, as Wild Bill was playing cards.
 His hand—aces and eights, according to tradition—has become known as “the dead man’s hand.”
According to the Reader's Digest's Story of the Great American West, Tom Mix, who later became an actor starring in a series of Hollywood films about the Wild West, was a bartender at the Blue Bell Saloon in Guthrie, Oklahoma.
 Mix’s fellow residents included fellow actor and comedian Will Rogers; William Wrigley, the inventor of Wrigley’s chewing gum; and prohibitionist Carry Nation.
thumb|250px|right|Wyatt Earp's Northern Saloon, Tonopah, Nevada, circa 1902
Wyatt Earp, lawman, Faro dealer, and gambler, also owned several saloons, outright or in partnership with others.
 In 1884, Earp and his brothers Warren and James bought a circus tent in which they “opened a saloon called The White Elephant.
 An advertisement in a local newspaper suggests gentlemen 'come and see the elephant''.
 In 1899, Earp and C.E. Hoxsie built the Dexter Saloon in Nome, Alaska and Earp opened the Northern Saloon in Tonopah, Nevada, circa 1902.
 Earp also owned and operated a saloon and gambling hall in the Gaslamp Quarter of San Diego, California that has since been converted into a restaurant, Roger’s On Fifth, by its owner, former San Diego mayor Roger Hedgecock.
Television Westerns, which were especially popular in the 1950s and 1960s, featured such fictional saloons (sometimes based on actual ones) as The Silver Dollar Saloon (Bonanza), The Long Branch Saloon (Gunsmoke), and The Last Chance Saloon (The Rifleman).
 Anti-Saloon League
Category:American Old West
thumb|300px|The Frisco Store in Lower Frisco Plaza
The Frisco Shootout was an Old West gunfight that occurred in October,1884, in the town of Lower San Francisco Plaza (now Reserve), Elfego Baca arrested a drunk cowboy named Charlie McCarty. Baca flashed his badge at McCarty after deputizing himself as a peace officer and took Charlie's gun.
 After Bill Milligan, the owner of the bar, refused to press charges against Charlie, Baca took him hostage.
 The McCarty's fellow cowboys attempted a peaceful negotiation of his release, but Baca refused and opened fire on the negotiator, the foreman to the Jon Slaughter Ranch, and killed him.
 Baca took refuge in the house of Geronimo Armijo.
 After bringing in Deputies and Justices of the peace from surrounding towns, Baca was forced to bring Charlie back to the Justice of the peace for a trial and in turn was the assurance of Baca's safety.
 Justice of the peace Ted White granted Charlie's freedom.
 After the verdict, Elfego Baca ran out of the courtroom still in possession of McCarty's gun. Bert Hearne, a rancher from Spur Lake Ranch, was summoned to bring Baca back to the Justice for questioning in the murder of Jon Slaughter's foreman.
 After Baca refused to come out of the adobe jacal, Hearne broke down the door and commanded Baca come out with his hands up.
 Not soon after that, shots volleyed from the jacal and hit Hearne in the stomach, resulting in death.
 A standoff with the cowboys ensued and some 80 cowboys gathered to attack the house.
 Allegedly, the cowboys fired more than 4,000 shots into the house, until the adobe building looked like Swiss cheese.
 Incredibly, not one of the bullets struck Baca.
 (The floor of the home is said to have been slightly lower than ground level; thus Baca was able to escape injury.)
 During the siege, Baca shot and killed four of his attackers and wounded eight others.
 After about 33 hours,and roughly 1,000 rounds of open fire,  the battle ended when a friend convinced Baca to surrender.
 When they had left, Baca walked out of the house unharmed.
In May 1885, Baca was charged with murder for the death of the one of the Jon Slaughter's foreman and Bert Hearne.
 He was jailed to await his trial.
 In August 1885, Baca was acquitted after the door of Armijo’s house was entered as evidence.
 It had more than 400 bullet holes in it.
 The incident became known as the Frisco Shootout.
 Rumor has it that Elfego Baca's defense attorney had false documentation proving Baca's legal deputization because Baca's biography suggests he deputized himself just before the arrest of Charlie McCarty.
On May 24, 2008 the Elfego Baca Foundation opened a memorial in Reserve, New Mexico in honor of Baca.
 .
 GhostTowns.com
 . Legends of America website.
Category:History of New Mexico
Category:American Old West
Category:Catron County, New Mexico
Category:American Old West gunfights
The Enid-Pond Creek Railroad War (Oklahoma Territory, 1893-1894) pitted the citizens of two United States designated county seats against the Rock Island Railroad.
thumb|350px|'L' and 'O' counties, Cherokee Outlet, 1894
In the late 1880s, the Rock Island Railroad built a rail line into Indian Territory, entering near Caldwell, Kansas, and following the Chisholm Trail.
 At part of the infrastructure, the company established railroad stations near several of the existing stage stations along the trail.
 Two of the stations, Pond Creek, built at Pond Stage Stand on Round Pond Creek, and Enid, built at Skeleton Station near the Skeleton Ranch headquarters, would became involved in a controversy between the railroad and the Department of the Interior.
The troubles began when the Interior Department set about opening the Cherokee Strip to settlement.
 Hoping to lessen the problem of county seat wars, a common event in newly settled areas of the American West, the Department divided the strip into counties and assigned them county seats.
 They picked Pond Creek in 'L' County and Enid in 'O' County.
 Following the Interior Department's announcement of the official county seats, several citizens of the Cherokee Nation exercised their options to select their land allotments in the Cherokee Outlet, and chose them at the two town sites.
 Railroad officials were accused of conspiring with the Indians to speculate on town development, so officials in the Interior Department moved the government approved towns to different locations nearby.
A land run opened the Cherokee Outlet in 1893, and settlers, mainly from Kansas, occupied all four town sites; railroad Pond Creek, government Pond Creek, railroad Enid (North Enid), and government Enid (South Enid).
 The Rock Island responded to the government's action by refusing to stop trains at the government towns.
 Citizens in the government towns at first applied political pressure to get the railroad to provide service, and the Oklahoma Territorial government and U.S. House of Representatives backed them up.
 But the U.S. Senate took the railroad's side and refused to act.
 Government officials then notified the Rock Island that they had to furnish mail service to the two government towns.
 Rock Island responded by installing a hook to pick up and deliver mail, without slowing their trains.
 When the mail pouches broke open, citizens accused the railroads of purposely strewing their mail along
the tracks.
With the stalemate in Washington and intransigence by the railroads, citizens of both government towns began direct actions.
 Enid passed an ordinance setting a speed limit on trains passing through town; the Rock Island ignored it.
 Citizens in both government towns began attempting to flag down trains, placed dummies on the tracks, and then left wagons and debris across the rails.
With no relief by Washington or by the railroads, citizens began direct action.
 In June 1894, citizens of Pond Creek tore up about a hundred yards of track and wrecked a freight train.
 No one was killed, but by then citizens of both South Enid and Pond Creek were taking potshots at trains passing through.
 By July citizens were placing bombs on the tracks, and, in the most drastic action of all, unknown persons sawed partially through a number of supports on the trestle near Enid, wrecking an unscheduled freight train preceding the scheduled passenger train.
U.S. Marshals and troops from Fort Reno and Fort Supply were sent in to restore order and patrol the railroad right-of-way, but violence continued.
Finally the U.S. Senate decided to move and on August 8, 1894, President Grover Cleveland signed an act (28 Stat.
 263) requiring railroads 'to establish and maintain passenger stations and freight
depots at or within one-fourth of a mile of the boundary limits of
all town sites established prior to August 8, 1894, in said
Territories.'
Railroad Pond Creek was renamed Jefferson and relocated to higher ground; government Pond Creek (often called Round Pond by the Rock Island) remained but the Grant County seat (formerly 'L' County) was eventually moved to Medford.
Railroad Enid became North Enid; government Enid, or South Enid, became simply Enid, the county seat of Garfield County (formerly 'O' County).
The Butterfield Overland Despatch was a mail and freight service operating across the Great Plains of America in the 1860s.
Due to increased travel to Colorado after the discovery of gold there, David A. Butterfield, backed by New York capital, organized a joint-stock express and passenger carrying service between the Missouri River and Denver.
 In July 1865, the route via the Smoky Hill River was surveyed and soon thereafter coaches were in operation. Ben Holladay, acting for a competing organization, bought the Butterfield Overland Despatch in March 1866, when Eastern express companies threatened to take it over and establish a service between the Missouri River and Sacramento, California.
Butterfield Overland Mail (an unaffiliated company with similar name)
Root, Frank.
 (1901) The Overland Stage to California.
 Topeka, Kansas: W.Y. Morgan.
Category:American Old West
Category:History of Kansas
right|thumbnail|Pioneers Crossing the Plains of Nebraska
Image:WagonTrn.jpg|thumb|1912 re-enactment of a pioneer wagon train in Utah 
A wagon train is a group of wagons traveling together.
 In the American West, individuals traveling across the plains in covered wagons banded together for mutual assistance.
 Although most trains elected a captain and created by-laws, in reality the captain had little authority.
 His role was largely confined to getting everyone moving in the morning and selecting when and where to camp at night.
Overland emigrants discovered that smaller groups of twenty to forty wagons were more manageable than larger ones.
 Membership in wagon trains was generally fluid and wagons frequently joined or left trains depending on the needs and wishes of their owners.
 An accident or illness, for instance, might force someone to fall behind and wait for the next train, or an emigrant might 'whip up' to overtake a forward train after a quarrel.
Although 'train' suggests a line of wagons, when the terrain permitted the wagons would often fan out and travel abreast to minimize the amount of dust each wagon encountered.
At night, wagon trains were often formed into a circle (a 'laager') for shelter from wind or weather and corral the emigrants' animals in the center to prevent them from running away or being stolen by Native Americans.
 While Native Americans might attempt to raid horses under cover of darkness, they rarely attacked a train; wagons were seldom circled defensively, contrary to popular belief.
Although wagon trains are associated with the Old West, the Trekboers of South Africa also traveled in caravans of covered wagons.
 Today, covered wagon trains are used to give an authentic experience for those desiring to explore the West as it was in the days of the pioneers and other groups traveling before modern vehicles were invented.
 Cavalcade
 Conestoga wagon
 Convoy
 Covered wagon
Stewart, George R.
 The California Trail: An Epic With Many Heroes.
 New York: McGraw-Hill, 1962.
Unruh, John D., Jr. The Plains Across: The Overland Emigrants and the Trans-Mississippi West, 1840-60. Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1993.
Van der Loeff, A. Rutgers.
 Children on the Oregon Trail
Category:American Old West
Category:History of United States expansionism
Category:Wagons
de:Train (militärisch)
Alma is an unincorporated community in Catron County, New Mexico, United States, north of Glenwood and south of Reserve.
Sergeant James C.
 Cooney was transferred to Fort Bayard, near Silver City, New Mexico in 1870.
 While scouting for the 8th U.S. Cavalry north of Mogollon and east of Alma, he discovered silver ore in the Mogollon Mountains.
 He began working the claim after leaving the Army in 1876.
 After laying out a town in the early 1870s, the town was bought by a Captain Birney, who named it 'Alma' for his mother.
 In 1882 the U.S. Post Office opened in Alma, lasting until 1931.
The town was home of Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid's infamous Wild Bunch gang for a short period.
 They worked at the nearby WS ranch.
 Reportedly, the foreman and ranch manager were very happy with the Wild Bunch's work since the rustling stopped while they were employed at the ranch.
 Tom Ketchum, Harvey Logan and William Antrim, Billy the Kid's stepfather, also lived in Alma at some point.
 Artist Olaf Wieghorst once worked on the Cunningham Ranch near Alma.
The 'Alma Massacre' involved a raid on United States settlers' homes around Alma on April 28, 1880.
 During the event Chiricahua Apache tribal members were led by Victorio.
 They attacked a silver mine in the Mogollon mountains, killing 3 men including retired Sergeant James C.
 Cooney, the mine boss; a Mr Taylor was shot in the leg.
 The Apaches then killed 35 sheepherders in a nearby area.
 The event was ended by the arrival of U.S. Army troops from Fort Bayard.
 In April 1980, Earth First!
 erected a monument in the Gila Wilderness to honor Victorio's massacre.
Alma has a cemetery with more than 100 burials dating from the 1880s to present.
 Catron County has been a site for the contentious re-introduction of the Mexican Gray Wolf to the American Southwest.
 In 2000, a wolf was reported to have been seen 'hanging around' a school bus stop serving a local elementary school.
 Stanley, F.
 (1960) The Alma Story.
 Reed, O. (2005)  Albuquerque Tribune.
 12/22/05.
  The town website.
  website.
 .
Category:Unincorporated communities in Catron County, New Mexico
Category:American Old West
Alma Massacre
vo:Alma (New Mexico)
Category:History of United States expansionism
Category:Military history of the United States
Category:Massacres by Native Americans
The U.S. Camel Corps was a mid-nineteenth century experiment by the United States Army in using camels as pack animals in the Southwest United States.
While the camels proved to be well-suited to travel through the region, their unpleasant disposition and habit of frightening horses is believed to be responsible for their failure to be adopted as a mode of transportation in the United States.
The idea of using camels for military transport in the US dated back to 1836, when second lieutenant George H. Crossman began pressuring the United States Department of War to use camels in campaigns against Native Americans in Florida.
 It was not until after the U.S.-Mexican War (1846–1848) that the idea was taken seriously.
Newly-appointed Secretary of War Jefferson Davis (lobbied partially by adventurer Josiah Harlan) found the Army to be in need of a solution to its transportation problems in the western US.
 The rough terrain and dry climate was seen as being too rough on the horses and mules used by the Army, and camels provided a possible solution.
On, March 3, 1855, the US Congress appropriated $30,000 for the project.
 Major Henry C.
 Wayne, a promoter of the idea, was assigned to procure the camels.
 On June 4, 1855, Wayne departed New York City on board USS Supply, under the command of then-Lieutenant David Dixon Porter.
The ship crossed the Atlantic Ocean, and purchased camels at ports in North Africa (sources differ as to exactly where).
 On April 29, 1856, Supply arrived at Indianola, Texas with thirty-three camels and five Arabian drivers.
 The camels were to be transferred to a shallow draft boat the Fashion for unloading at the wharf in Indianola.
 Large swells made the transfer impossible and both ships had to go to the mouth of the Mississippi River to find calmer waters for the transfer.
 The Fashion arrived back at Indianola and unloaded the camels on May 14, 1856.
On June 4, 1856, light loads were placed on the camels and they were taken to Camp Verde via Victoria and San Antonio.
The Benson Syndicate was an organized crime organization in the western United States involved with General Land Office land surveying fraud, and headed by one John A Benson (1845-1910), a former school teacher and later a reputable deputy land surveyor.
  
The syndicate operated from the Rocky Mountains to the Pacific, was most active in California and headquartered in San Francisco, active from about 1875 to 1898, and was at its peak from 1883 to 1886.
  In California alone, at least 40 individuals were involved, and very probably more.
 Its modus operandi was to generate supposed demand for public land surveys (see Public Land Survey System) using fictitious land patent applications, followed by incomplete, shoddy, and/or outright fictitious surveys.
  These surveys were 'performed' under contract to individual deputy surveyors, some of whom were not even aware that surveying contracts existed in their names, having been induced by Benson to sign blank papers which were later turned into contracts and other legal documents by Benson or his associates.
  Other times people with minimal--or no--surveying experience and/or lacking proper qualifications as deputy surveyors performed the work without the contracted surveyor ever being involved on the ground, which was patently illegal.
  Often, an area under contract was surveyed only to the extent that was necessary to create plausible, but fabricated, survey plats and field notes for the remainder of the area.
  
Other times, entire contracted areas, usually consisting of more than one township (approx 36 square miles), were fabricated by syndicate members, with little or no work on the ground at all (see below).
Benson's organization infiltrated into very high levels of the government, and syndicate members in governmental positions as well as members of congress made the group's schemes possible.
  For example, in California at least two Surveyors General in the 1880s approved numerous fraudulent survey results and approved requests for government payment that were 200 to 700 percent of the originally estimated survey cost, which the government paid.
  
Theodore Wagner was especially notorious in this regard, and his appointment as California Surveyor General coincided with a large increase in the group's activities and power.
 Others approved contracts that had originally been rejected (after inspection by independent government examiners), without evidence or assurance that the surveys had been properly corrected or completed.
  Also, at least one such examiner in California was part of the syndicate, attempting to gain payment for some rejected surveys via bogus field 'exminations' (which were themselves rejected upon further examination by others as the extent and ingenuity of the syndicate's activities became known over time).
 Banks were also involved, providing the money for the deposits and performance bonds required by the government, in exchange for a cut of the enormous profits generated.
 The banks later also paid for the syndicate's defense attorneys in trials brought by the government in its ten year effort to convict the syndicate members and recover funds paid for fraudulent work.
The Annual Report of the Commissioner of the General Land Office for 1887, pages 25-26, provides this summary of the group's activities:
'In April last the United States grand jury at San Francisco returned forty one indictments for perjury and conspiracy in connection with fraudulent surveys of the public lands...The operations of this syndicate were not confined to California, but extended to the States of Nevada, Oregon and Colorado, and the Territories of Arizona, New Mexico, Idaho, Montana, Utah, and Washington.
  Its purpose was to control all surveying contracts in these States and Territories under the deposit system, to manufacture settlers' applications for surveys, to file in the offices of the surveyors-general fictitious field notes of surveys and alleged surveys, and to draw from the Treasury of the United States large sums of money on fraudulent surveying accounts.'
'The principal portion of the contracts were let in the names of thirty-four alleged deputy surveyors, of whom three were 'dummies', two were intimately connected with the surveyor-general who approved the bulk of the contracts, and the remainder were relatives, partners, associates, or employees of the head of the syndicate.
  There was paid to the order or purported order, of these thirty-four pretended deputy surveyors upwards of $1,000,000, all of which went into the treasury of the syndicate, the parties used as tools being paid stated salaries by the syndicate for the use of their names and services.
  Three of the alleged deputies, to whom upwards of $190,000 appears from official records to have been paid, have sworn that their names were used without their knowledge, that they never had a surveying contract, and never received the amounts shown as paid them, and one swears that he never did a day's work in his life at land surveying and knows nothing of the business.'
'Every expedient known to legal ingenuity has been resorted to by defendants and their confederates to avoid and defeat trials on the indictments found, but it is hoped and expected that at the next term of the court the trial and merrited conviction of guilty parties to this stupendous scheme of fraud, perjury, and public robbery which has been deveolped, will be secured.'
From the 1888 Annual Report, pages 186-187, is this summary of a fictitious survey of three townships in the high Sierra Nevada southeast of Yosemite National Park:
'Township 7 South, Range 25 East and Township 8 South, Ranges 24 and 25 East, Mount Diablo Meridian:  These townships are very rough, intersected by deep canyons and very steep, almost impassable mountains, in part covered with dense chaparral.
  Six weeks before the deputy claims to have commenced his surveys, all the people who live there in the summer are driven out by the snows, all business is suspended, and the mountain country abandoned.
  A comparison of the original field notes, transcript notes, plats and report of the examiner, shows that at the season of the year (from December 1 1884 to January 3 1885) when the deputy pretends to have made the surveys, the deep snows made the survey at that time impossible; that in the original notes (which are now in this office) much is omitted that is found in the transcripts and data supplied from memory, or rather made up; that disregarding clerical errors the transcripts are not in any sense copies of the original notes; that triangulations omitted in originals are audaciously given in detail in the transcripts, just as if they had really been made in the field, that the high speed, more than 6 miles per day, at which it is pretended the work was executed, surpasses belief when we take into consideration the nature of the ground, and bear in mind that the surveying was done during the shortest days of the year; that the deputy gives descriptions of erroneous bearing trees where no such trees, eit
  The conclusion is that the deputy did not make the surveys of these townships according to his field notes and that the notes are in large part fictitious and fraudulent.'
It was implausible survey results such as these, as well as the sworn testimony of disenchanted employees or associates that led to the recognition of the widespread fraud of Benson's group.
  Beginning in about 1886, contracts held by certain surveyors thought to be aligned with Benson were not paid by the government, leading to various lawsuits.
  In 1887, forty one federal indictments for conspiracy and perjury were brought against Benson and several others.
  However the trials, in federal district court, did not occur until 1892, in which all were found innocent on legal technicalities.
  However their actual guilt was clear to everyone familiar with the facts, and surveyors associated with Benson had difficulty getting work.
  Because of this, Benson proposed what came to be known as the 'Benson Compromise' in 1895 to the California Surveyor General, which proposed to correct or finish the survey work on several contracts that had never been paid out when government examiners found the work bogus.
  This compromise was accepted by the government, but little of this corrected work is reported to have been accepted by the Surveyor General.
 Millard, Bailey, 1905.
  The West Coast Land Grafters, Everybody's Magazine, vol 12 no 5.
 Stephen A. D.
 Puter, 1908.
  'Looters of the Public Domain' 
 Uzes, Francois D. 1977.
 Chaining the Land, A History of Surveying in California, chapter 6. Landmark Enterprises Inc.
 United States General Land Office, 1885-88 Annual Report of the Commissioner, .
 Zink, John S. 1991.
  Benson and Associates: Guilty Until Proved Innocent?
  Surveying and Land Information Systems 51(4):211-215.
Oregon land fraud scandal 
Francis J.
 Heney
Category:Organized crime groups in the United States
Category:Fraud
Category:American Old West
Image:ApachePassCochiseBascomMeeting.jpg|thumb|250px|Blue dot represents where US Army Lieutenant George N. Bascom met Apache leader Cochise in Apache Pass on February 5, 1861.
The Bascom Affair is considered to be the key event in triggering the 1860s Apache War.
 The Apache Wars were fought during the nineteenth century between the U.S. military and many tribes in what is now the southwestern United States.
 The triggering incident took place in 1861 in the area known as Arizona and New Mexico.
The Bascom Affair began on January 27, 1861, when non-Apache Indian parties raided the ranch of John Ward at Sonoita Creek, stealing several livestock and kidnapping Ward's 12-year-old stepson Felix Ward.
 Ward complained about the raid to the nearby military authority, Lieutenant Colonel Morrison, the commandant of Fort Buchanan, Arizona, who directed Lieutenant George Nicholas Bascom and a large group of infantry to attempt to recover the boy. Bascom and his men were unable to locate the boy or the tribe.
  Bascom determined that the raid was done by Apache Indians.
  Morrison ordered Bascom to use whatever means necessary to punish the kidnappers and recapture the boy. Bascom, Ward, and 54 soldiers journeyed east to the Apache Pass, arriving on February 3, 1861, and met Sergeant Daniel Robinson, who would accompany them for the rest of the expedition.
 Bascom convinced an Indian leader named Cochise to meet with him.
 Suspicious of Bascom's plans, Cochise brought with him his brother Coyuntwa, two nephews, his wife, and his two children.
 At the meeting, Cochise claimed he knew nothing of the affair.
 Doubting the Indian's honesty, Bascom attempted to imprison him and his family in a tent to be held hostage, but Cochise was able to escape with only a leg wound.   Bascom met Cochise at Apache Pass and captured him.
 Cochise escaped and Bascom captured five members of Cochise's family in retaliation, prompting Cochise to lay ambushes and capture four Americans whom he offered to trade for his family members.
On February 5, 1861, Cochise delivered a message to Bascom pleading for the release of his family, but Bascom refused and told Cochise that they 'would be set free just so soon as the boy was released.'
 The following day, Cochise and a large party of Apaches attacked a group of Americans and captured three hostages, offering them in exchange for his family, but Bascom maintained that he would accept nothing other than the return of the boy and cattle.
 On February 7, 1861, Cochise and his men attacked Bascom's soldiers while they were fetching water.
According to recent sources, Cochise was known for his truthfulness and integrity and Bascom's accusations were false.
Cochise fled to Sonora.
 On the way, he killed the American prisoners and left their remains to be discovered by Bascom.
 Several days later, Bascom hanged Cochise's brother and nephews before he and his soldiers began their journey home.
The moment when Cochise discovered his brother and nephews dead has been called the moment when the Indians (the Chiricahua in particular) transferred their hatred of the Spanish colonists to the Americans.
 Cochise's revenge in the form of numerous raids and murders were the beginning of the 25-year-long Apache Wars.
The 'Army on the Frontier' is a term applied to the activities of the United States Army stationed near the frontier settlements from the beginning of national existence until about 1890, the end of the settlers' frontier.
The principal functions performed by the U.S. Army were: 
 guarding the frontier settlements from hostile Indians; 
 aiding the settlement of the West by developing and protecting the communication between the older settlements and the frontier, by exploring the West, constructing roads and defending the overland trails, water routes and later telegraph and railroad lines; 
 policing the frontier until the civil governments could maintain order.
The western movement of settlers brought conflict with the Indians.
 Scores of Indian wars and campaigns were fought by the Army.
 Some of the more notable Indian wars were: the Northwest Indians, 1790-95 and 1811-13; Seminole Wars in Florida, 1817-18, 1835-42 and 1856; Black Hawk War, 1832; Sioux War, 1862-1867; War of the Plains Indians, 1863-69; Sioux and Cheyenne War of 1876-79; and Apache Wars, 1861-90.
 These wars were fought by the regular infantry and cavalry regiments, occasionally aided by state militia and volunteers.
The frontier soldiers were usually stationed in posts at strategic points defending the routes of communications, settlements and Indian reservations.
 The strength of this army, about one half of the Regular Army in time of peace, ranged from 1,423 troops in 1790 in the Northwest Territory to over 26,000 in 1868, which was the height of the Indian wars on the Great Plains.
 The frontier posts had, on average, a garrison of 200 troops.
By 1867, over 100 posts were scattered throughout the West.
 As the Indian wars ended after 1870, these posts were rapidly abandoned.
 The army's supplies were carried by boats, steamboats, ox and mule trains, pack mules and horses and later by railroads, which stimulated the development of trade, farming and ranching.
 The difficulty of supplying these remote Army posts encouraged farming and urban enterprises around the posts, the beginning of permanent settlements.
 The daily life of the frontier soldier was a hardy one.
 The soldiers built their shelter, escorted travelers, emigrants, and wagon trains on the trails, aided and protected surveying parties, constructed thousands of miles of trails and roads, supplied needy emigrants, patrolled trails and railroad lines, guarded river navigation, protected government and private property from hostile Indians and outlaws, assisted and fed friendly Indians, fought hostile Indians and gave police assistance to the weak civil authorities on the frontier.
 Their shelters were usually log, stone, adobe or sod huts constructed largely by their own labor.
 The hardships of the soldiers, the miserable quarters, inferior food and the lonely life encouraged many desertions.
The Army on the Frontier disagreed with the Bureau of Indian Affairs and the frontier civil authorities over the Indian policy.
 The frontiersmen in general demanded the destruction or removal of the Indians (see Indian removal).
 The Indian Bureau attempted to protect the Indians, and the Army to coerce them.
When the Indians revolted, the U.S. Army made war upon the entire Indian tribe, punishing the innocent with the guilty, even to the extent of killing women and children in raids on villages or camps.
 The Indian Bureau and the Army officials accused each other of being responsible for the Indian wars.
 Dictionary of American History by James Truslow Adams, New York: Charles Scribner's Sons, 1940
Category:United States Army
Category:American Old West
Category:Military history of the United States
Image:The Gem Theater.gif|right||thumb|280px|The Gem Theater circa 1878.
 The man in the buggy at left is thought to be Al Swearengen.
The Gem Theater was a saloon in Deadwood, South Dakota, owned by Al Swearengen.
 Swearengen and the Gem (as the Gem Saloon) are both portrayed in the HBO television show, Deadwood.
Swearengen opened the Gem Variety Theater on April 7, 1877, at the corners of Wall and Main streets, to entertain the population of the mining camp with 'prize fights' (as was customary with Swearengen's previous establishment the Cricket Saloon, no prizes were actually involved), stage acts consisting of comedians, singers and dancers, and, primarily, prostitutes.
Swearengen recruited his prostitutes in the same manner as it is still carried out in many places today; advertising legitimate stage, cleaning, or waitressing jobs in his theater to desperate young women and advancing them the money for their (one way) trip; then, when they arrived, forcing them into what was essentially indentured servitude as prostitutes.
 Those who balked were first threatened with demands for repayment of the funds advanced to them for the trip; if that failed, they were threatened with beatings, and if that failed they were beaten and physically forced to submit to Swearengen's demands.
 Many still resisted, but those who escaped this fate could only find themselves in no better situation, as penniless women with no source of income, alone in a rough and rowdy mining camp, and with the constant threat of Swearengen's men hanging over them.
 Many grew sick and died from lack of proper nutrition and shelter, while many others committed suicide.
In any event, the Gem prospered, bringing in an average of $5,000 a night, even reaching as high as $10,000.
 Swearengen forged alliances with many of Deadwood's most prominent citizens, buying himself immunity from legal or other problems.
 His immunity even extended to the notoriously upright and incorruptible Marshall Seth Bullock, who did not have the political clout to extend his campaign to clean up the town as far as the lower regions of Main Street, which remained Swearengen's territory.
The front of the Gem consisted of a bar, and the 'theater' area; in the back were the rooms for the prostitutes.
 Day to day operations were managed a staff including Dan Doherty and Johnny Burns (both portrayed in Deadwood, although the real-life individuals were reputed to be much more brutal to the prostitutes than seen in the series, as was Swearengen himself).
 Customers also frequently brutalized the women, even to the point of killing them.
The violence in the Gem was not confined to the prostitutes, with the saloon being a frequent site of gunfights between drunken patrons; and in one memorable instance, the memoirs of John S. McClintock reported a prostitute named 'Trixie' having shot a large hole through the skull of a man who astounded everyone by surviving for another half an hour.
 (This incident is portrayed in the first episode of the series, truth being at least as strange as fiction).
The Gem was damaged by fire in the summer of 1879 and repaired, but then very soon destroyed in a major fire that devastated the town on September 26, 1879.
 Swearengen built an even larger and more grand establishment, reopening in December of 1879 to adulation as the finest theater ever seen in Deadwood.
In 1899, however, the Gem burned down once again, and a penniless Swearengen declined to rebuild and left for Colorado.
 Despite the Gem's history as Deadwood's longest-lived entertainment institution, its support by so many of the town power brokers over the years, and the glowing tributes in the press after the rebuilt Gem was unveiled, after its demise it was reviled in the press as an evil institution and a town shame.
Category:American Old West
Category:Lawrence County, South Dakota
Category:Drinking establishments in the United States
de:Gem Theater
nl:Gem Theater
thumb|right|300px|The meeting of the lines on May 10, 1869.
The 'Golden Spike' (aka 'The Last Spike') is the ceremonial final spike driven by Leland Stanford to join the rails of the First Transcontinental Railroad across the United States connecting the Central Pacific and Union Pacific railroads on May 10, 1869 at Promontory Summit, Utah.
Image:OP-19492.jpg|thumb|right|Ex-Virginia and Truckee Railroad No. 119, a 4-4-0 steam locomotive, rides atop a Union Pacific Railroad flatcar as it stops in Ogden, Utah on May 9, 1969 just prior to the 100th anniversary of the completion of the First Transcontinental Railroad.
thumb|right|The Jupiter leads the train that carried Leland Stanford, one of the 'Big Four' owners of the Central Pacific Railroad, and other railway officials to the Golden Spike Ceremony.
thumb|right|The current site of the Golden Spike National Historic Site, with replicas of No. 119 and the Jupiter facing each other to re-enact the driving of the Golden Spike.
Completing the last link in the Transcontinental Railroad with a spike of gold was the brainchild of David Hewes, a San Francisco financier and contractor.
  The spike had been manufactured earlier that year especially for the event by the William T. Garratt Foundry in San Francisco.
  Two of the sides were engraved with the names of the railroad officers and directors.
  A special tie of polished California laurel was chosen to complete the line where the spike would be driven.
  The ceremony was originally to be held on May 8, 1869 (the date actually engraved on the spike; see below), but it was postponed two days because of bad weather and a labor dispute that delayed the arrival of the Union Pacific side of the rail line.
On May 10, in anticipation of the ceremony, Union Pacific No. 119 and Central Pacific No. 60 (better known as the Jupiter) locomotives were drawn up face-to-face on Promontory Summit, separated only by the width of a single tie.
 It is unknown how many people attended the event, estimates run from as low as 500 to as many as 3,000 government and railroad officials and track workers were present to witness the event.
Before the last spike was driven, three other commemorative spikes, presented on behalf of the other three members of the Central Pacific's Big Four who did not attend the ceremony, had been driven in the pre-bored laurel tie:
a second, lower-quality gold spike, supplied by the San Francisco News Letter was made of $200.00 worth of gold and inscribed: With this spike the San Francisco News Letter offers its homage to the great work which has joined the Atlantic and Pacific Oceans.
a silver spike, supplied by the State of Nevada; forged, rather than cast, of 25 ounces of unpolished silver.
a blended iron, silver and gold spike, supplied by the Arizona Territory, engraved: Ribbed with iron clad in silver and crowned with gold Arizona presents her offering to the enterprise that has banded a continent and dictated a pathway to commerce.
 (Source: Deseret Morning News, Salt Lake City, April 24, 2007)
The golden spike was made of 17.6-karat(73%) copper-alloyed gold, and weighed 14.03 troy ounces (436 g).
  It was dropped into a pre-drilled hole in the laurel ceremonial last tie, and gently tapped into place with a silver ceremonial spike maul.
 The spike was engraved on all four sides:
The Pacific Railroad ground broken January 8th 1863, and completed May 8th 1869.
Directors of the C.
 P. R. R. of Cal.
 Hon.
 Leland Stanford.
 C.
 P. Huntington.
 E. B. Crocker.
 Mark Hopkins.
 A. P. Stanford.
 E. H. Miller Jr.
Officers.
 Hon.
 Leland Stanford.
 Presdt. C.
 P. Huntington Vice Presdt.
 E. B. Crocker.
 Atty.
 Mark Hopkins.
 Tresr. Chas Crocker Gen.
 Supdt.
 E. H. Miller Jr. Secty. S. S. Montague.
 Chief Engr.
May God continue the unity of our Country, as this Railroad unites the two great Oceans of the world.
 Presented by David Hewes San Francisco.
A second golden spike, exactly like the one from the ceremony, was cast and engraved at the same time.
 It was held, unknown to the public, by the Hewes family until 2005.
 This second spike is now on permanent display, along with Thomas Hill's famous painting The Last Spike, at the California State Railroad Museum in Sacramento.
thumb|left|The Last Spike (1881) by Thomas Hill
With the locomotives drawn so near, the crowd pressed so closely around Stanford and the other railroad officials that the ceremony became somewhat disorganized, leading to varying accounts of the actual events.
 Contrary to the myth that the Central Pacific's Chinese laborers were specifically excluded from the festivities, A.J. Russell stereoview #539 shows the 'Chinese at Laying Last Rail UPRR' (8 Chinese laid the last rail, and three of these men, Ging Cui, Wong Fook, and Lee Shao, lived long enough to also participate in the 50th anniversary parade.
  At the conclusion of the ceremony, the Chinese participating were honored and cheered by the CPRR officials.)
  To drive the final spike, Stanford lifted a silver spike maul and drove the spike into the tie, completing the line.
  
Immediately afterwards, the golden spike and the laurel tie were removed and replaced with a regular iron spike and normal tie.
 At exactly 12:47 p.m., the last iron spike was driven, finally completing the line.
 Stanford and Hewes missed the spike, but the single word 'done' was nevertheless flashed by telegraph around the country.
 In the United States, the event has come to be considered one of the first nationwide media events.
After the ceremony, the Golden Spike was donated to the Stanford Museum (now Cantor Arts Center) in 1898.
 The last laurel tie was destroyed in the fires caused by the 1906 San Francisco earthquake.
thumb|right|The Utah state quarter design.
Image:CP steam loco.jpg|thumb|CP # 60
Image:UP steam loco.jpg|thumb|UP # 119
Although the Promontory event marked the completion of the transcontinental railroad line, it did not actually mark the completion of a seamless coast-to-coast rail network.
 Because no railroad bridge yet existed over the Missouri River between Council Bluffs, Iowa and Omaha, Nebraska, passengers were required to cross the river by boat until 1872, when a bridge was built across the Missouri River.
 In the meantime, the coast-to-coast rail link was completed in August 1870 in Strasburg, Colorado by the completion of the Denver extension of the Kansas Pacific Railway.
In 1904 a new railroad route called the Lucin Cutoff was built by-passing the Promontory location to the south.
  By going west across the Great salt Lake from Ogden, Utah to Lucin, Utah, the new railroad line shortened the distance by 43 miles and avoided curves and grades.
  Main line trains no longer passed over Promontory Summit.
In 1939, following the premiere of the Cecil B. De Mille motion picture Union Pacific in Omaha and Council Bluffs a gold-colored concrete spike  in height was unveiled on 9th Avenue in Council Bluffs on the approximate location of milepost 0.0 of the First Transcontinental Railroad.
  
In 1942, the old rails over Promontory Summit were salvaged for the war effort; the event was marked by a ceremonial 'undriving' of the last iron spike.
 The original event had been all but forgotten except by local residents, who erected a commemorative marker in 1943.
 The years after the war saw a revival of interest in the event; the first re-enactment was staged in 1948.
In 1957, Congress established the Golden Spike National Historic Site to preserve the area around Promontory Summit as closely as possible to its appearance in 1869.
 The site contains working replicas of the locomotives present at the original ceremony, which are drawn up face-to-face each Saturday during the summer for a re-enactment of the event.
For the May 10, 1969 centennial of the driving of the last spike, the High Iron Company ran a steam powered excursion train round trip from New York City to Promontory.
 The Golden Spike Centennial Limited transported over 100 passengers including, for the last leg into Salt Lake City, actor John Wayne -- whose movie, True Grit, premiered at Salt Lake City's 
Capitol Theater on May 9.
 The Union Pacific Railroad also sent a special display train and the US Army Transportation Corp sent a steam powered 3-car special from Fort Eustis, Virginia.
On May 10, 2006, on the anniversary of the driving of the spike, Utah announced that its state quarter design would be a depiction of the driving of the spike.
 The Golden Spike design was the conception of Syracuse, Utah Junior High School special education students under the direction of instructor Scott Price.
 The design was selected as the winner from among several others by Utah's governor, Jon Huntsman, Jr., following a period during which Utah residents voted and commented on their favorite of three finalists.
Cornerstone
Last Spike (Canadian Pacific Railway)
The U.S. Army officially employed Navajos as U.S. Army Indian Scouts between 1873 and 1895, which included the Apache Wars.
 Generally speaking, they were signed up at Fort Wingate for 6 month enlistments.
 In the period 1873 - 1885, there were usually 10 to 25 scouts attached to units.
 Army records indicated that in the Geronimo campaign of 1886 there were 3 companies of Navajo scouts (about 150 men) as part of the 5,000 man force General Miles put in the field.
 In 1891 they were enlisted for 3 years.
 The Navajos employed as scouts were merged into regular units of the US Army in 1895.
 At least one person served almost continuously for over 25 years.
300-400 Navajos served enlistments as Indian Scouts.
 Most of them came from the south eastern part of the reservation and the checkerboard area.
 Over 125 Navajo Scouts or their spouses received pensions in the 1920-40s.
After the Long Walk of the Navajo, US Army records indicate that Major William Redwood Price of the 8th Cavalry gave permission for 15 Navajo to join him on a trip from Fort Wingate to Camp Apache in April 1871 but they were not 'scouts'.
 In January 1873 authorization was given 'to enlist and discharge 50 Indian Scouts' in the New Mexico Territory.
 Major Price employed at least 25 Navajos in that first enlistment at Fort Wingate and they were very busy until their discharge in August of 1873.
Most of the scouts came from the south eastern part of the reservation and the checkerboard area.
 Some men repeated their enlistments.
 Navajos reported that Mariano (Hastiin li'tso'ts'ósí) told the Navajos if they did not want to be Scouts they would have to move out of this non-reservation country; so they agreed to become Scouts.().
Lt.
 Col P. T. Swaine reported on 21 November 1876 to the District of New Mexico that he had an '...interview with the Chief Mariano through whose influence the last Scouts were (obtained).'
 On 1 June 1877 Lt.
 Henry Wright 9th Cavalry, Commanding Scouts reports that he 'enlisted 21 Navajo Indians to serve as Scouts selecting them from about 100 who presented themselves for enlistment, they are young and able men and well mounted.'
 The Army continued to employ Navajos as scouts through 1895.
The scouts out of Fort Wingate were active.
 They skirmished with Victorio in 1876, 1877 (Florida Mountains, NM) again in 1879 (Las Animas Creek, NM) and 1880.
 With Lt.
 Henry Wright, Scout Jose Chavez was commended for bravery in a 1877 action and was still in the US Army in 1891 at Ft.
 Wingate.
 They were used by General George Crook in finding Juh, Nana and Geronimo in 1881-1886.
 General Nelson A. Miles put 150 Navajos in the field as part of his 5,000 troop deployment against Geronimo in 1886.
Navajo Scouts accompanied the Army when it investigated many civilian-Navajo confrontations.
 For example, just a list of actions between June 14 and September 28 1883 shows 5 different Navajo Reservation related activities.
 Lt Parker with 10 Enlisted men and 2 Scouts went up to the San Juan River to separate Navajos and citizens who encroached on Navajo land.
  Lt.
 Guy with 17 Enlisted men and 2 Scouts and Capt.
 Smith & Lt.
 Tyler with 56 Enlisted and 5 scouts helped the Indian Agent deal with unhappy Navajo Chiefs.
 This involved Manulieto, Torlino, Grando Muncho and 50 armed Navajos who  were upset by raids of citizens and other tribes on their people and livestock.
  In another action: Lt Lockett with 42 enlisted and no scouts were joined by Lt.
 Holomon at Navajo Springs.
  Evidently citizen Houck and/or Owens had murdered a Navajo Chief's son and 100 armed Navajos were looking for them.
 It is evident from these 4 months of military reports from the field that the officers tended to trust the Navajo version of events.
   
Navajo Scouts were used in 1891 when over 60 armed Hopi were prepared to fight to prevent their children being sent away to boarding school.
  There was a reference in a 1891 military report, that the reporting officer knew Navajos since 1853 and  commanded 50 Navajo's (these would not be Scouts) in Bonneville Gila's 1856 campaign against the Apaches and had complete confidence in their friendship.
In the late 1920s scouts became eligible for pensions.
  Many men were enlisted under nicknames and had lost their discharge papers.
  These men gave depositions about their service and vouched for others to Crown Point Indian Agent S. F. Stacker and Pension Examiner C. R. Franks in the late 1920s to early 1940s.
Apaches are the better known as 'Indian Scouts' in this period due to their use against Geronimo.
 However as Mariano predicted, Navajo Scout service contributed to the post Long Walk expansion of the Eastern side of the Navajo Reservation.
Category:American Old West
Category:Navajo tribe
Category:Wars involving the indigenous peoples of North America
Category:Native American history
The Willamette Cattle Company was formed in 1837 by pioneers in the Willamette Valley of present day Oregon, United States.
 The company was formed with the express purpose of purchasing cattle in California to bring to Oregon Country.
 In that Mexican possession, the group led by Ewing Young procured nearly 750 head of cattle and 40 horses and drove these animals overland north to Oregon Country.
Prior to the activities of the Willamette Cattle Company, virtually all cattle in the region were owned by the Hudson's Bay Company (HBC).
In order to perpetuate that lucrative monopoly the HBC only leased cattle, never selling the animals and all calves born would be owned by the HBC.
In order to circumvent that monopoly residents of the valley, including some former employees of the HBC, were drawn together by Lieutenant William A. Slacum.
 The lieutenant had arrived via the brig Loriot and became aware of the cattle situation amongst the pioneers.
They would then drive the cattle overland north to the Willamette Valley and distribute the cattle proportional to the amount invested into the company by each investor.
 The group arrived first in San Francisco in March, but were told permission for the purchase of any cattle would need to be from the civil governor located in Santa Barbara.
 In June the enterprise had procured the cattle and started driving them north to Oregon Country.
Those investing in the Willamette Cattle Company:
Complete list: Ewing Young, Calvin Tibbets, James A. O'Neil,
Cimarron is a village in Colfax County, New Mexico, United States.
 The population was 917 at the 2000 census.
Philmont Scout Ranch, an extensive 'high-adventure base' operated by the Boy Scouts of America, is located just west of Cimarron.
 The Chase Ranch (famous for its heart-shaped brand and allegedly the Marlboro Man's place of origin), Ted Turner's Vermejo Park Ranch , the CS Ranch , the UU Bar Ranch (formerly the property of Waite Phillips), the Elliott Barker State Wildlife Area, the Valle Vidal, and Carson National Forest are also located in the Cimarron area.
left|thumb|250px|Entrance to new Cimarron High School building
The village is a pioneer of the four-day school week, which it originally implemented in the early 1970s, during a time of rising fuel and utility prices.
thumb|left|250px|Sign directs motorists to Old Aztec Mill in Cimarron
thumb|left|250px|Old Mill Museum, built 1864
To avoid the rocky and mountainous Raton Pass, wagon traffic used the Cimarron Cutoff of the Santa Fe Trail during the 1840s.
 Thereafter, Mountain Branch near Raton Pass became more popular with traders, immigrants, gold-seekers, and government supply trains.
South of Cimarron is Palisades Sill, with high cliffs surrounding a modest flow of the Cimarron River.
250px|right|thumb|Cliffs of Palisades Sill
250px|right|thumb|Mountainview Cemetery in Cimarron
250px|right|thumb|Scenic mountain drive east of Cimarron
250px|right|thumb|Cree-Mee Drive-In restaurant in Cimarron
In 1842, Lucien B. Maxwell, a fur trapper, came to the Beaubien-Miranda Ranch in northern New Mexico and courted and married Luz Beaubien, one of the owner's six daughters.
  He eventually inherited the ranch and built a huge mansion in 1858 on the future town site.
  
Lucien B. Maxwell built the Aztec Mill in 1864.
 It is preserved as  the Old Mill Museum, operated by the Cimarron Historical Society.
  The museum's collection includes working mill parts, Native American tools, weapons and pottery; Maxwell Land Grant paperwork and documents, and other materials as well.
Cimarron was officially chartered in 1861 and was named for the Spanish word used to describe a mustang, meaning 'wild' and 'unbroken'.
 Cimarron was the county seat of Colfax County beginning in 1872, when it replaced Elizabethtown.
 At that time Cimarron was a stage stop on the Mountain Branch of the Santa Fe Trail.
 In 1881, the county seat was moved to Springer, a town on the Atcheson, Topeka, and Santa Fe Railroad.
 It was during this time that Lucien Maxwell sold the Maxwell Land Grant to a group of investors, with the resultant Colfax County War in which more than two hundred persons were killed.
As a tribute to many dedicated crew members, USS Cimarron's key artifacts were donated to Cimarron, since it is the closest village to the Cimarron River's headwaters at Eagle Nest, New Mexico.
 Her ship's bell became the village high school's bell.
Cimarron is located at  (36.509467, -104.915496).
According to the United States Census Bureau, the village has a total area of 1.9 square miles (4.9 km²), all of it land.
As of the census of 2000, there were 917 people, 382 households, and 255 families residing in the village.
 The population density was 479.5 people per square mile (185.4/km²).
 There were 449 housing units at an average density of 234.8/sq mi (90.8/km²).
 The racial makeup of the village was 77.54% White, 0.11% African American, 1.09% Native American, 0.11% Asian, 17.23% from other races, and 3.93% from two or more races.
 Hispanic or Latino of any race were 58.89% of the population.
There were 382 households out of which 34.0% had children under the age of 18 living with them, 49.2% were married couples living together, 8.1% had a female householder with no husband present, and 33.0% were non-families.
 29.1% of all households were made up of individuals and 13.6% had someone living alone who was 65 years of age or older.
 The average household size was 2.40 and the average family size was 2.89.
In the village the population was spread out with 27.0% under the age of 18, 7.6% from 18 to 24, 25.1% from 25 to 44, 24.1% from 45 to 64, and 16.1% who were 65 years of age or older.
 The median age was 40 years.
 For every 100 females there were 106.5 males.
 For every 100 females age 18 and over, there were 102.7 males.
The median income for a household in the village was $27,875, and the median income for a family was $30,677.
 Males had a median income of $26,125 versus $19,792 for females.
 The per capita income for the village was $14,248. About 9.1% of families and 12.5% of the population were below the poverty line, including 16.1% of those under age 18 and 8.6% of those age 65 or over.
Cimarron Historic District
Ernest Thompson Seton - story-teller
St. James Hotel (Cimarron, New Mexico)
Villa Philmonte - Built in 1926 by oil magnate Waite Phillips
Category:Colfax County, New Mexico
Category:Villages in New Mexico
Category:Philmont Scout Ranch
Category:American Old West
Category:Santa Fe Trail
Category:New Mexico communities with Hispanic majority populations
de:Cimarron (New Mexico)
nl:Cimarron (New Mexico)
vo:Cimarron (New Mexico)
A county seat war is a phenomenon that occurred in the American West as it was being settled.
  As new towns sprang up and county lines were drawn, there was intense competition for the status and tax benefits bestowed by becoming a county seat.
  These 'wars' often involved nothing more than lining up at the ballot box, but sometimes partisans for a particular town would resort to intimidation or violence.
 The fight between Coronado and neighboring Leoti in western Kansas is considered the bloodiest occurrence of this phenomenon.
 Other violent county seat wars include the Hay Meadow Massacre.
Another county seat war, this also in Kansas, resulted in the dissolution of a county.
 Eminence and Ravanna fought over the privilege of being the county seat for Garfield County.
 When people in the county suggested the county be surveyed, it was found that it was too small to be a legal county under a Kansas law established in the late 1800s (Wyandote County had been founded before this law was passed).
 Garfield County was dissolved and annexed into Finney County, which is why that county has a panhandle.
Mason, Henry F.
  The Kansas Historical Quarterly 2:1 (February 1933) 45-65.
 (retrieved from  August 29, 2006)
Category:American Old West
Category:Political history of the United States
thumb|400px|Hay meadow at Wild Horse Lake
The Hay Meadow Massacre, July 25, 1888, was the most violent event of the Stevens County, Kansas, county seat fight.
In July 1888, Sam Robinson, the marshal of Hugoton and a group of men supporting Hugoton for the county seat planned an outing in No Man's Land just south of the county.
 Ed Short, the marshal of Woodsdale and Woodsdale supporter, learned of the outing and gathered some men of the opposing faction.
 They caught up with Robinson, but he escaped.
 Short feeling they needed more help, sent for reinforcements.
 Sheriff John M. Cross, also a Woodsdale booster, and four others headed out to search for the Hugoton party.
 Not finding them, they camped for the night on a hay meadow at Wild Horse Lake.
Meanwhile, Robinson's friends had organized a group of Hugoton supporters with the intentions of rescuing him.
 They met Robinson and returned to the strip.
 Locating the Woodsdale camp at the hay meadow, they surrounded the Sheriff's party and killed four of them and injured the fifth.
 The Hugoton party, thinking they had killed all of Woodsdale group, returned saying that they had killed the party in a shootout.
 However, the surviving member and a group of haymakers that witnessed the event stated that the Woodsdale party had been captured, disarmed, and executed.
The state militia was called out and the Hugoton men arrested, but it soon turned out that no court had jurisdiction in No Man's Land.
 Eventually the case was tried before the United States Court for the Eastern District of Texas, at Paris (United States v. C.
 E. Cook.
 Orin Cook, Capt.
 C.
 E. Frease, Johnnie Jackson, Ed Boudin, John Colbert, et al.).
 Seven men were convicted of murder and sentenced to death.
 On appeal, however, the Supreme Court held that the Paris court had no jurisdiction and no sentence was carried out.
Butler, Ken.
 .  (retrieved August 19, 2006)
Mason, Henry F.
  The Kansas Historical Quarterly 2:1 (February 1933) 45-65.
 (retrieved from  August 19, 2006)
Williams, Robert L. , Chronicles of Oklahoma 18:1 (March 1940) 3-11 (retrieved August 19, 2006)
Category:History of Kansas
Category:History of Oklahoma
Category:American Old West
Category:Stevens County, Kansas
Category:Texas County, Oklahoma
Trick roping is an entertainment or competitive art involving the spinning of a lasso or lariat.
 It is particularly associated with wild west shows or western arts in the United States.
The lasso is a well known-tool of American cowboys, who developed rope spinning and throwing skills in using lassos to catch animals.
 Cowboys developed various tricks to show off their prowess with the lasso and demonstrations of these tricks evolved into entertainment and competitive disciplines.
There is a well-established repertoire of tricks that can be divided into three fundamental categories: 'flat loop', 'vertical loop' and 'butterfly'.
 In addition there are thrown loop tricks and tricks that involve the use of two ropes.
 Among the vertical loop tricks is the 'Texas Skip', which involves the performer spinning the lasso in a wide loop in a vertical plane and jumping through the loop from one side to the other on each rotation.
Actor Will Rogers, known for his roles as a cowboy, was an exponent of trick roping.
The First Dragoon Expedition of 1834 (also called the Dodge-Leavenworth Expedition) was the first official contact between the American government and the Plains Indians.
The United States Dragoon Regiment left Fort Gibson, Indian territory,on June 20, 1834, under the command of General Henry Leavenworth.
 The expedition made slow progress at first, slowed by the Cross Timbers, summer heat, sickness, and death—one hundred fifty of the five hundred men would die.
 The expedition stopped at Camp Leavenworth where Gen.
 Leavenworth, sick and injured from a buffalo hunt, sent the troops on ahead under the command of Colonel Henry Dodge.
 Leavenworth would die on July 21.
 On July 16 the expedition encamped at Camp Commanche leaving 75 sick men, including the artist George Catlin, with Dodge and the rest of his men continuing on.
On July 21, Dodge and the remaining men reached a Toyash Village (Wichita Indians) at Devils Canyon.
 There, Dodge exchanged prisoners, traded, and secured peace treaties with several of the Plains tribes.
 The expedition returned to Ft.
 Gibson August 15, 1834.
Note: The Second Dragoon Expedition was from Fort Leavenworth to the Rocky Mountains in 1835.
United States Regiment of Dragoons
Shirk, George H. ',' Chronicles of Oklahoma 28:1 (January 1950) 2-41 (retrieved August 16, 2006).
Perrine, Fred S. ',' Chronicles of Oklahoma 3:3 (September 1925) 2-215 (retrieved August 16, 2006).
Wheelock, T.B., 'Journal of Col.
 Dodge's Expedition from Ft.
 Gibson to Pawnee Pict Village.'
 American State Papers, Class V, Military Affairs, (Washington, 1860) , pp. 373-382.
Category:History of Oklahoma
Category:American Old West
thumb|right|200px|Map accompanying Dodge's report to Congress
The Second Dragoon Expedition  of 1835 (also called the Dodge Expedition) left Fort Leavenworth, Indian territory May 29, 1835, charged with contacting the Indian tribes across the Central Plains to the Rockies as far west as the Mexican border.
 Traveling first up the Platte River they made contact with the Otoe, Omaha, Grand Pawnee, and Arickaree tribes.
 Continuing south along the front range of the Rockies, they reached Bent's Fort on August 6.
 At Bent's Fort the expedition held councils with the Arapahoes, Cheyennes, Black Feet, Gros Ventres, and others.
 The Dragoons then followed the Santa Fe Trail eastward, arriving at Fort Leavenworth on September 16, 1835.
Note: The First Dragoon Expedition was from Fort Gibson to the Southern Plains in 1834.
United States Regiment of Dragoons
Dodge, Henry.
 Journal of the March of a Detachment of Dragoons, Under the Command of Colonel Henry Dodge, During the Summer of 1835.
 American State Papers.
 Class V. Military Affairs.
 Volume VI. 24th Cong, 1st Session, H. Doc., 138.
 (Serial Set 21).
 1836.
Hildreth, James.
 Dragoon Campaigns to the Rocky Mountains: Being a History of the Enlistment Organization and First Campaigns of the Regiment of U S Dragoons.
 New York: Wiley & Long, 1836.
Category:History of Colorado
Category:History of Kansas
Category:History of Nebraska
Category:American Old West
Image:Wpdms deseret utah territory legend.png|thumbnail|right|300px|The boundaries of the provisional State of Deseret (orange) as proposed in 1849.
 The area of the Utah Territory as organized in 1850 is shaded in pink.
The State of Deseret was a provisional state of the United States, proposed in 1849 by Mormon settlers in Salt Lake City.
 The provisional state existed for slightly over two years and was never recognized by the United States government.
 The name derives from the word for 'honeybee' in the Book of Mormon.
When members of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (the Mormon pioneers) settled in the Salt Lake Valley near the Great Salt Lake, they wished to set up a government that would be recognized by the United States.
Initially Brigham Young, President of the Church, intended to apply for status as a territory, and sent John Milton Bernhisel eastward to Washington, D.C. with the petition for territorial status.
  Realizing that California and New Mexico were applying for admission as states, Young changed his mind and decided to petition for statehood.
In March 1849, realizing that they did not have time to follow the usual steps towards statehood, Young and a group of church elders quickly drafted a state constitution based on that of Iowa, where the Mormons had temporarily settled, and sent the legislative records and constitution back to that state for printing, since no printing press existed in the Great Basin at the time.
  They then sent a second messenger with a copy of the state's formal records and constitution to meet up with Bernhisel in Washington, D.C. and petition for statehood rather than territorial status.
The provisional state was a bold proposal, encompassing most of the territory that had been acquired from Mexico the previous year as the Mexican Cession.
It comprised roughly all the lands between the Sierra Nevada and the Rockies, and between the border with Mexico northward to include parts of the Oregon Territory, as well as the coast of California south of the Santa Monica Mountains (including the existing settlements of Los Angeles and San Diego).
 It included the entire watershed of the Colorado River (excluding the lands south of the border with Mexico), as well as the entire area of the Great Basin.
The proposal encompassed nearly all of present-day Utah and Nevada, large portions of California and Arizona, and parts of Colorado, New Mexico, Wyoming, Idaho, and Oregon.
The proposal was crafted specifically to avoid disputes that might arise from existing settlements.
 At the time of its proposal, the existing population of the area, including Southern California, was sparse, since most of the California settlement had been in the northern gold rush areas not included in the provisional state.
 Likewise, the border with New Mexico did not reach the Rio Grande, in order to avoid becoming entangled in the existing disputes of the western border of Texas.
Moreover, the proposal encompassed lands largely known to be inhospitable for cultivation, thus avoiding conflict over the issue of the expansion of slavery.
The proposal for the state was largely considered too ambitious to succeed in Congress, even disregarding the controversy over Mormon practices such as polygamy.
 Nevertheless, in 1849 President Zachary Taylor, eager to avoid disputes as much as possible, sent his agent John Wilson westward with a proposal to combine California and Deseret as a single state, which would have the desirable effect of decreasing the number of free states entered into the Union, and thus preserving the balance of power in the Senate.
In the absence of other authority, the provisional government of Deseret became the de facto government of the Great Basin.
 Three sessions of the General Assembly, a bicameral state legislature, were held.
 In 1850, the legislature appointed judges and established a criminal code.
 Taxes were established on property and liquor, and gambling was outlawed.
 The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints was incorporated, and a militia, based on the Nauvoo Legion, was formed.
The legislature initially formed six counties, which covered only inhabited valleys.
 These 'valley counties' initially encompassed only a small portion of the area of Deseret and were expanded as settlement grew.
According to most descriptions, the Deseret flag was similar to the flag of the State of Utah, but as it was not standardized, multiple other secular and religious alternatives were also used.
In September 1850, as part of the Compromise of 1850, the Utah Territory was created by Act of Congress, encompassing a portion of the northern section of Deseret.
February 3, 1851, Brigham Young was inaugurated as the first governor of the Utah Territory.
 On April 4, 1851 the General Assembly of Deseret passed a resolution to dissolve the state.
 On October 4, the Utah territorial legislature voted to re-enact the laws and ordinances of the State of Deseret.
After the establishment of the Utah Territory, the Latter-day Saints did not relinquish the idea of a 'State of Deseret'.
  From 1862 to 1870, a group of Mormon elders under Young's leadership met as a shadow government after each session of the territorial legislature to ratify the new laws under the name of the 'State of Deseret.'
  Attempts were made in 1856, 1862, and 1872 to write a new state constitution under that name based on the new boundaries of the Utah Territory.
The idea of creating a state based on Mormonism began to dissolve after the coming of the railroad, which opened the territory to many non-Mormon settlers, particularly in the western areas of the territory.
 The driving of the golden spike completed the first transcontinental railroad at Promontory Summit in 1869.
 Officials from the Utah Territory and leaders of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (Mormon), were not involved in the festivities of the day, as neither organization had been involved in funding the railroad effort.
 Council of Fifty
 Deseret Alphabet
 List of United States territories that failed to become states
 Mormon colonies in Mexico
 Mormon Corridor
 Theodemocracy
 Utah War
 Allen, James B. and Leonard, Glen M.
 The Story of the Latter-day Saints.
  Deseret Book Co., Salt Lake City, UT, 1976.
 ISBN 0-87747-594-6.
  (PDF scans of 1849 printing)
  Compiled by Linda Thatcher
  Edward Leo Lyman, Utah History Encyclopedia
Category:Great Basin
Category:Former regions and territories of the United States
Category:American Old West
Category:History of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints
Category:History of Utah
Category:Utah Territory
Category:Proposed states and territories of the United States
Category:Defunct Latter Day Saint organizations
Category:1849 in the United States
Category:Nauvoo Legion
es:Estado de Deseret
fr:État du Deseret
mwl:Stado de Deseret
pt:Estado de Deseret
ro:Statul Deseret
Infobox Weapon
A coach gun is a double-barrel shotgun, generally with barrels approximately 18' in length placed side by side (SxS).
  The name comes from the use of such shotguns on stagecoaches by shotgun messengers in the American Wild West and during the Colonial period of Australia.
The term 'Coach gun' was coined in 1858 when Wells, Fargo & Co.
 began regular stagecoach service from Tipton, Missouri to San Francisco, California and issued shotguns to its drivers for defense along the perilous 2,800 mile route..
 Modern coach guns are manufactured by Stoeger (Brazil), Boito (Brazil), Baikal (Russia) (which is now being distributed by Remington under the name Spartan Gunworks), Huglu Armsco (Turkey), Khan (Turkey).
 Diamond (Turkey), Rossi (Italy), and a variety of Chinese companies for US distribution through Century International Arms and Interstate Armscorp.
Modern coach guns are commonly encountered in Cowboy action shooting competitions, among collections of Western guns, as home-defense weapons, and even as 'scrub guns' for hunting grouse, woodcock, rabbit, hare, and/or wild pig in scrub, bush or marshlands, where the 24'+ barrels of a traditional shotgun would prove unwieldy..
  
Coach guns are similar to sawn-off shotguns but differ in that coach guns manufactured after 1898 are offered as new with 18' barrels and 26' overall length, and meet legal requirements for civilian possession in the USA, Australia, and New Zealand.
 In the United Kingdom, however, shotguns must have a minimum barrel length of 24' to be eligible for ownership on a Shotgun Certificate, and shotguns with barrels under this length (which includes Coach guns) must be obtained on the more stringent Firearms Certificate.
  Some modern coach guns feature internal hammers as opposed to the traditional external hammers.
In the late 19th and early 20th centuries, a shotgun messenger was a private 'express messenger' and guard, especially on a stagecoach but also on a train, in charge of overseeing and guarding a valuable private shipment, such as particularly the contents of a strongbox (on a stagecoach) or safe (on a train).
 The express messenger for stagecoaches typically rode in a seat on top of the coach, next to the driver (this was usually on the driver's left, since stage drivers typically sat on the right).
  In the Old West of the 1880s, if a stagecoach had only a driver and no Wells Fargo messenger, this meant the coach carried no strongbox, and was thus a less interesting target for 'road agents' (bandits).
Wells Fargo Co.
 express messengers typically carried a short (or sawn-off) 12- or 10-gauge double-barrelled shotgun, loaded with buckshot.
 This was a most effective weapon in use against pursuing riders.
 Such weapons were sometimes referred to as 'messenger shotguns' or, more commonly, 'coach guns' (a name still used today).
 To some extent these weapons also carried over to use by private guards in trains with strongboxes or safes, where they were again effective.
Like 'gunslinger', the actual term 'riding shotgun' first appeared in fiction about the Old West, dating back as far as the 1905 book The Sunset Trail, by Alfred Henry Lewis.
 See also 'calling shotgun' which dates from use in autos to about 1954, at a time it was being used in the popular TV series Gunsmoke.
Category:American Old West
Category:American folklore
Turnersville is a town located in Coryell County, Texas approximately  west of Waco, Texas and approximately  north-northeast of Gatesville, Texas.
  The town sits approximately two miles southwest of the intersection of FM217 and FM182 at 31° 30' 00'N, 097° 37' 30'W  The Middle Bosque River flows through the center of town while the Goldy's Branch flows just north of town.
  The two branches come together less than 1/2 mile east of the community and continue east southeast to Lake Waco.
the following text is taken from an article written by Essie Brim Leach for the Handbook of Texas Online
Both the Chisholm Trail and Bosque trail were supposed to have gone through the area.
 In 2004 the Lone Tree, one of the oldest landmarks in the county, still stood two miles east of the townsite.
 In the 1860s it guided travelers, settlers, and cow drivers to a plentiful water supply, a flowing spring on the open prairie of lush rangeland, abundant with buffalo, deer, turkey, horses, and longhorn cattle.
 The town that eventually developed at this spring, where all travelers camped, was named after Cal Turner, who settled there to shoe horses and repair wagons.
 Thus his blacksmith shop was the first business in town.
 By 1868 the original Presbyterian church also served the community as a school.
 A post office named Turnersville opened there in 1875.
 The first postmaster was Joseph M. Black, who later donated five acres of land for a cemetery.
 In 1885 Turnersville had a population of 300, served by a school, three churches, a gristmill, a cotton gin, and some eight other businesses.
 That year a Masonic lodge was established.
 The town shipped primarily grain and cotton.
 Turnersville prospered from 1895 to around 1916, largely because of the local cotton economy.
 In 1916 it had 162 residents, Methodist, Baptist, Presbyterian, and Disciples of Christ churches, and some ten businesses, including a newspaper called the Advance.
 The Turnersville population steadily declined during the later 1900s.
 In 1968 the school was closed.
 The post office was closed in 1987, but a new fire station was built in 1988.
 By 1989 the town reported 155 residents and four businesses.
 At this time Turnersville still has an active cemetery association, which sponsors an annual homecoming on the Sunday before Memorial Day in May.
 The town still includes a seed and fertilizer company, a construction company, a grain elevator, and a community center, and several local farms and ranches and let's not forget the last active church in town the Baptist Church, (www.tvillebaptist.com)  The towns children currently go to either the Jonesboro ISD or the Gatesville ISD.
Turnersville sits on the Washita geological group.
  Major formations within the area include Buda limestone, Del Rio clay, Georgetown limestone, including beds equivalent to Kiamichi clay at base.
Category:Towns in Texas
Category:Coryell County, Texas
Category:American Old West
Apache scouts (U.S. Army Indian Scouts) came from different Apache tribes or bands.
   Most of their service was in the Apache wars of the 1870s to 1890s, where they were the eyes and ears of the US military and sometimes the cultural translators  for the various Apache bands and the US military.
  
Image:SieberAL1874.jpg|thumb|right|200px|Albert Sieber, Chief of Scouts, (February 1874) in Arizona; Photo: Flanders & Penelon, Photographic Artists.
There has been a great deal written about Apache scouts, both as part of US Army reports from the field and more colorful accounts written after the events by non-Apaches in newspapers and books.
  Non-Apache civilians were also employed by the military as scouts.
  Men such as Al Sieber and Tom Horn were sometimes in charge of small groups of 'Indian scouts'.
  
As was the custom in the US Military, scouts were enlisted with Anglo nicknames or single names.
 Typical military field reports generally list the military unit, officers, sometimes  the civilian scouts and the number enlisted men and scouts that were attached.
  Many Apache scouts received citations for bravery.
  
It is important to note that Apaches were lumped together as a group by outsiders.
 However,  while they may have shared many similar customs and language, they defined themselves by loose bands which tended to be associated with a geographical area.
 A band was semi nomadic and had clan and kinship ties with neighboring groups.
   Thus, a Western Apache band did not have many ties to a Mescalero (eastern) band and might be very distrustful.
 Apache Scouts were usually grouped in operational units by band.
Tonto scouts were recruited to assist General Crook find Delshay group of Tonto Apache (Western Apaches) who fled the Verde reservation in 1873-74.
  Apaches from the Yumas, Mohaves, and Tonto bands were enlisted.
 Crook's Chief of Scouts, Albert Sieber always seemed to have his Tonto scouts with him through the Apache Wars.
White Mountain scouts served with Company B (Lt Gatewood) from Ft.
 Apache in 1885-6.
General Crook had high praise for this group which is composed of several bands.
 'Chiricahuas were the most subordinate, energetic, untiring and, by odds, the most efficient of their command' (Crook Resume of Operations quoted in Conquest of Apacheria p 364).
  These scouts were sent to Florida by General Miles, along with those who they tracked for 16 months (1885-86), as if these Apache Scouts were hostiles to be punished.
 They were kept captive under nominal arrest as prisoners of war, along with the rest of Geronimo's band whom they'd helped the Army track down, for 26 years before finally being released.
Warm Springs (Mimbres band) and Chiricahua (band) Scouts served in Company B under Lt.
 Britt Davis in the above period.
In 1885 Mescalero Scouts were with Major Vanm Horn and Cavalry from Fort Stanton on the Rio Grande trying to prevent Geronimo, Nana and others from crossing.
Most books which cover any portion of the United States and Apache conflicts will mention Apache Scouts.
Apache wars These roughly covered a period from 1870-1890.
Medal of Honor list for Indian wars, many are Apache scouts
Navajo Scouts
Indian scouts
Traditional Apache scout
Category:American Old West
thumb|350px|right|The Lawmen of Dodge City in Coronado after the county seat fight.
 Standing, LtoR: Luke Short, Ed Masterson, J.C.
 Ford,?,?, Doc Holliday, Bat Masterson, Bill Tilghman, Red Loomis, Wyatt Earp, Virgil Earp, and James Earp.
 Seated, LtoR: W.S. Place,?,?,?,?.
Coronado, now a siding on the Union Pacific railroad in Wichita County, Kansas, United States, was once a thriving community.
 Platted in 1885, Coronado was involved in the bloodiest county seat fight in the history of the American West.
 The shoot-out on February 27 1887, with boosters—some would say hired gunmen—from nearby Leoti left several people dead and wounded.
 Afterwards numerous famous lawmen from Dodge City gathered to calm the storm that ensued after the bloody fight.
 A small town called Farmer City, which was located between Coronado and Leoti, was hoped by some to become the county seat—which would end the fighting.
 Leoti later won the right to become the county seat and now the other two towns consist mainly of farmland.
 (see bottom of page)
Category:American Old West
Category:Ghost towns in Kansas
Category:Wichita County, Kansas
The Long Branch Saloon is a famous saloon that existed during the Old West days of Dodge City, Kansas.
 It had numerous owners, most notably Chalk Beeson and gunfighter Luke Short.
  The establishment was the scene of many altercations, shoot-outs, gunfights and standoffs often associated with the then-wild cattle town, the most famous of which was the Long Branch Saloon Gunfight, in which Frank Loving killed Levi Richardson.
The original saloon was built during the late-1870s and was named the Long Branch by its first owner, William Harris, after his hometown of Long Branch, New Jersey.
  It was a plain, storefront bar with little ornamentation, which was typical for frontier saloons of the time.
  Throughout its most active times, numerous Old West characters passed through or did business inside the Long Branch, such as Clay Allison, Wyatt Earp, Doc Holliday, Frank Loving, Dave Mather, Bat Masterson and his brothers Ed and James, Charlie Bassett, and a host of others.
  Professional gambler and gunfighter Luke Short's purchase of a partial interest in the Long Branch in 1883 is credited as one of the causes of the Dodge City War.
Its fame and legend increased when it was featured in almost every episode of the longest running television drama, Gunsmoke.
  The original saloon is long gone, but a romanticized recreation of the Long Branch saloon, based mostly upon the television show Gunsmoke, exists today as part of the Dodge City Boot Hill Museum.
http://www.lbsccaz.com/
http://www.boothill.org/activities.html
http://www.legendsofamerica.com/WE-GunfighterList.html
Category:Drinking establishments in the United States
Category:Dodge City, Kansas
Saloon
Category:History of Kansas
Category:American Old West
Category:Landmarks in Kansas
The Rocky Mountain Fur Company, sometimes called Ashley's Hundred, was organized in St. Louis, Missouri in 1823 by General William H. Ashley and Major Andrew Henry (c. 1775-1832).
  They posted advertisements in St. Louis newspapers seeking 'One Hundred enterprising young men .
 . . to ascend the river Missouri to its source, there to be employed for one, two, or three years.'
  Among those hired were Jedediah Smith, the four Sublette brothers, including William and Milton, Jim Beckwourth, Thomas Fitzpatrick and David Edward Jackson, who in 1826, bought the Company and for the next seven years it continued to prosper.
 Other mountain men who worked for the Company were Jim Bridger, Joseph Meek, Robert Newell, George W. Ebbert, and Kit Carson.
Major Henry's plan was formed in response to a July 1822 law prohibiting the sale of alcohol to Indians.
  Prior to this point, the fur trade had relied on Indians to do the actual trapping and hunting that produced the furs; they were then brought to trading posts where, with increasing frequency, the Indians were given liquor both as an actual medium of exchange, and in order to render them pliant and easily cheated.
  The pattern was so firmly established that it was difficult to conduct business without a substantial supply of alcohol.
  Henry's plan made Indian trappers and trading posts unnecessary—he trained young American men to trap, and had them meet him at rendezvous, which were temporary, and could be located wherever it was convenient.
The Rocky Mountain Fur Company was a rival to Hudson's Bay Company and John Jacob Astor's American Fur Company.
  They frequently held their rendezvous near a Hudson's Bay Company post to draw off some of their Indian trade, and their trappers went into the Snake, Umqua and Rogue River valleys, all of which were considered the domain of the Hudson's Bay Company.
The fur trade declined in the 1830s due to major declines in the beaver population and the fact that beaver hats were going out of style, replaced by hats made of silk.
 A Hudson's Bay Company policy of underselling the American fur companies in the Rocky Mountains during the late 1830s succeeded in destroying the American system and led to the failure of the Rocky Mountain Fur Company.
Category:Fur trade
Category:American Old West
Category:Mountain men
de:Rocky Mountain Fur Company
The Star of Oregon episode of American history began in 1840 and ended in 1843.
 This enterprise by pioneers in the Willamette Valley of present-day Oregon consisted of building a ship they named Star of Oregon and then sailing it to California in order to bring back cattle to Oregon Country.
 The group was led by Joseph Gale and received assistance from Captain Wilkes of the United States Navy prior to setting sail on the open ocean.
 These pioneers were able to procure nearly 4,000 head of cattle, sheep, and horses combined.
In 1837 the Willamette Cattle Company had brought over 600 head of cattle to Oregon via California.
 Prior to this, virtually all cattle in the region were owned by the Hudson's Bay Company (HBC).
While the events of 1837 had broken the HBC’s monopoly, much of the cattle were owned by a select few such as Ewing Young, John McLoughlin, and the Methodist Mission.
The independent settlers of the Willamette Valley were left in the same situation as before, so they met and came up with a plan to alleviate their need for cattle.
As the area lacked many industries at the time, supplies were difficult to acquire.
 This was made more difficult when the Hudson’s Bay Company’s Doctor John McLoughlin denied the shipbuilders the ability to purchase supplies from Fort Vancouver.
 However, Limantour did not have cattle, but General Mariano Guadalupe Vallejo, Commander General of California, did have the cattle.
thumb|300px|First camp of the John Wesley Powell expedition, in the willows, Green River, Wyoming, 1871
The Powell Geographic Expedition was a groundbreaking 19th century U.S. exploratory expedition of the American West, led by John Wesley Powell in 1869, that provided the first-ever thorough investigation of the Green and Colorado rivers, including the first known passage through the Grand Canyon.
 The expedition, which lasted approximately three months during the summer of 1869, endured hardships and dangers down the river but resulted in the discoveries of many new natural features in the Colorado Basin.
 In 1875 Powell published a classic account of the expedition (combined with elements from later expeditions in 1871-72) called Report on the Exploration of the Colorado River of the West and Its Tributaries, re-issued and revised in 1895 as The Exploration of the Colorado River and Its Canyons.
Early on the Green River, the Powell Expedition lost one of their large gear-carrying boats, the No Name, at a rapids they named Disaster Falls, washing up on Disaster Island.
  No one was killed, but many crucial supplies were lost, including all of the expedition's barometers.
  Fortunately, Powell and his men managed to recover some of the barometers - they were the only means Powell had at his disposal to determine his elevation.
  Knowing the elevation was essential for producing good maps, and it let the expedition know how much vertical drop remained before they reached sea level.
 The Powell expedition named many of the features along the Green and Colorado rivers, including the Gates of Lodore.
The expedition set out from Green River Station, Wyoming Territory (now Green River, Wyoming) on May 24 with a company of ten men led by Powell, a veteran of the American Civil War who had spent much of his youth rafting on the Mississippi River and its tributaries in the upper Midwest, and who had lost his right arm to amputation after taking a musket ball in the Battle of Shiloh.
 Prior to coming west, Powell had been a professor of geology in Illinois and established the Illinois Museum of Natural History.
 In addition to Powell, the company included his brother Walter, as well as a group of seasoned mountain men that Powell had recruited on his way to western Wyoming.
 The company consisted of
John Wesley Powell
Walter Powell, John's brother
O.G. Howland, printer, editor, hunter
Seneca Howland, mountain man and brother of O.G.
Bill Dunn, mountain man
Bill Hawkins, mountain man, the expedition's cook
Jack Sumner, mountain man
Frank Goodman, an Englishman who had come west looking for adventure, a skilled boat handler
Andy Hall, an 18-year-old whose skills as an oarsman impressed Powell.
George Bradley, a soldier at Fort Bridger that agreed to accompany Powell in an exchange for a discharge from the United States Army that Powell arranged for him 
Of these ten men, six would make the entire journey.
 Four would abandon the expedition.
 Frank Goodman, the Englishman, left the expedition on July 6, claiming he’d had more than enough adventure.
  He walked away and lived for some years with the Paiutes of eastern Utah.
 Eventually, he settled in Vernal, Utah, where he was married and raised a family.
 The other three adventurers to leave the expedition fared worse.
 On August 28th, O. G.
 Howland, his brother Seneca, and Bill Dunn left the company, fearing they could not survive the dangers of the river much longer.
 They hiked out of the canyon and were killed, it is generally believed, by local Shivwits Indians in a case of mistaken identity.
 Only two days later, Powell and the five others reached the mouth of the Virgin River and safety.
Powell, John Wesley (2004).
 Seeing Things Whole: The Essential John Wesley Powell.
 Island Press.
Powell, J. W. (1875).
 The Exploration of the Colorado River and Its Canyons.
 - Companion site to the PBS series about Jown Wesley Powell's Colorado River journey.
 It includes a timeline, maps, and program information.
, by John Wesley Powell, 1875, via Internet Archive (scanned books original editions color illustrated)
, The Bancroft Library
Category:Scientific expeditions
Category:History of Arizona
Category:History of Utah
Category:History of Wyoming
Category:American Old West
Category:Exploration of North America
The Pacific Railroad Surveys (1853-1855) explored possible routes for a transcontinental railroad across North America.
 Substantial collection of natural history material was made during the surveys as well.
 The results were published in the 12-volume Reports of Explorations and Surveys, to ascertain the most practicable and economical route for a railroad from the Mississippi River to the Pacific Ocean, published by the United States War Department from 1855 to 1860.
 The surveys contained significant material on natural history, including many illustrations of reptiles, amphibians, birds, and mammals.
 Some of these illustrations were hand-colored.
Congress authorized the Secretary of War, Jefferson Davis to conduct surveys for the railroad.
 In addition to describing the route, these surveys also reported on the geology, zoology, botany, paleontology of the land as well as provided ethnographic descriptions of the Native peoples encountered during the surveys.
 Five surveys were conducted.
The Northern Pacific survey followed between the 47th parallel north and 49th parallel north from St. Paul, Minnesota to the Puget Sound and was led by the newly appointed governor of the Washington Territory, Isaac Stevens.
 Accompanying Stevens were Captain George B. McClellan with Lt.
 Sylvester Mowry out of the Columbia Barracks from the west and Lt.
 Rufus Saxton with Lt.
 Richard Arnold out of St. Marysville from the east.
The Central Pacific survey followed between the 37th parallel north  and 39th parallel north from St. Louis, Missouri to San Francisco, California.
 This survey was led by Lt.
 John W. Gunnison until his death by the Utes in Utah.
 Lt.
 Edward G. Beckwith then took command.
 Also participating in this survey was George Stoneman and Lt.
 Gouverneur K.
 Warren.
There were two Southern Pacific surveys.
 One along the 35th parallel north from Oklahoma to Los Angeles, California, a route similar to the western part of the later Santa Fe Railroad and to Interstate 40, which was led by Lt.
 Amiel W.
 Whipple.
 The southernmost survey went across Texas to San Diego, California, a route which the Southern Pacific completed as the second transcontinental railway in 1881.
 This survey was led by Lt.
 John Parke and John Pope .
The fifth survey was along the Pacific coast from San Diego to Seattle, Washington conducted by Lt.
 Robert S. Williamson and Parke.
 Spencer Fullerton Baird
 United States and Mexican Boundary Survey
 Ann Shelby Blum (1993).
 Picturing Nature: American Nineteenth-Century Zoological Illustration.
 Princeton, New Jersey: Princeton University Press, 403 pages.
 ISBN 0-691-08578-1.
 Herman J.
 Viola (1987).
 Exploring the West.
 Washington, D.C.: Smithsonian Books.
 256 pages.
 ISBN 0-8109-0889-1.
 Edward S. Wallace (1955).
 The Great Reconnaissance—Soldiers, Artists and Scientists on the Frontier 1848-1861.
 Boston, MA: Little, Brown and Company.
 288 pages.
 --role of Spencer Fullerton Baird in United States and Mexican Boundary Survey and Pacific Railroad Surveys
Category:Exploration
Category:American Old West
Category:History of United States expansionism
Category:Rail transport in the United States
The Omaha Claim Club, also called the Omaha Township Claim Association and the Omaha Land Company, was organized in 1854 for the purpose of 'encouraging the building of a city' and protecting members' claims in the area platted for Omaha City in the Nebraska Territory.
 At its peak the club included 'one or two hundred men', including several important pioneers in Omaha history.
 The Club included notable figures important to the early development of Omaha.
  It was disbanded after a ruling against their violent methods by the U.S. Supreme Court in 1860 in Baker v. Morton.
The first claim club in the United States was established by settlers around Burlington, Iowa, where claims were staked out soon after the Revolutionary War.
 These clubs were established in direct violation of federal law, in what J. Sterling Morton described as 'that independence characteristic of the commonwealth by which it became a state.'
  Early Nebraska settlers were breaking the law as well, as they invaded Omaha tribal lands to which the United States had claim but no ownership.
  Morton noted that, 'In both Nebraska and Iowa the squatters on lands were fully protected by the unauthorized if not positively illegal rules and promises of the claim clubs.'
According to two prominent historians, the roots of the Omaha Claim Club lay in the city's founders' disagreements with 'federal land laws that they considered unfair and unenforceable.
 Critics argued that the government's policy of selling land impeded rather than promoted progress...
 Almost all thought that the land policy favored wealthy speculators.'
A federal decree in 1834 that defined lands west of the Missouri 'Indian Territory' prevented settlement by Americans for another 20 years.
 In 1846 Mormon settlers received permission from the Omaha tribe to establish their Winter Quarters near the Missouri River west of Kanesville, Iowa, and in 1848 Martin Van Buren's Free Soil Party advocated the federal government give away free land in the presidential election.
 By 1853, Kanesville townspeople had already driven stakes in the land that would become Omaha.
 Logan Fontenelle, along with six other leaders of the Omaha tribe, signed over rights to Omaha lands on March 16, 1854, and the Kansas-Nebraska Act was signed on May 30, 1854.
 On June 24 of that year the U.S. government announced the treaty with the Omaha tribe, and within 11 days, on July 4, Omaha City was formally founded.
The Omaha Claim Club met regularly to confer upon rules and elect officers as necessary.
 In February 1857 a mass meeting was held at the 'Claim House' on the Pioneer Block in Omaha.
 The Pioneer Block was located between Eleventh and Twelfth Streets on Farnam Street, on the present-day site of the Gene Leahy Mall in downtown Omaha.
With more than one hundred men present, delegations were also there from Bellevue, Florence, Elkhorn and Papillion.
 Each of these groups offered Omaha's Claim Club their 'aid and counsel... to assist people of Omaha in the protection of their rights.'
When the Nebraska Territory was organized in 1854, there were no laws regulating land claims by settlers or claim jumpers.
 The Homestead Act remedying this was not enacted until 1862.
 In the meantime, a group of early settlers in the Omaha area formed a club determined to provide security for the land interests of its members.
 The organizing meeting of the Omaha Claim Club was held on July 22, 1854, at the site of the 'lone tree', the only landmark within the Omaha City limits at the time.
 The lone tree was also the ferry landing leading to Kanesville, Iowa.
At the first meeting a constitution and bylaws were prepared and adopted, and officers were elected.
 Samuel Lewis was chosen chairman, M. C.
 Gaylord was secretary; Alfred D. Jones became judge, S. Lewis was clerk, and R. B. Whitted was sheriff.
 John M.
 Thayer, A. J. Hanscom, Andrew J.
 Poppleton, Lyman Richardson, Thomas B. Cuming, Dr. George L. Miller, Dr. Enos Lowe, Jesse Lowe, Joseph Barker, Sr., Joseph, Jr., and George E. Barker, 0. D. Richardson, Byron Reed, John Redick, and James Woolworth were members, as well.
 In 1855 the membership included nearly all the town's male residents.
 The motto, 'An injury to one is the concern of all,' was adopted.
 There was an early understanding that no member could own more than 80 acres of timber.
 Other agreements settled the amount of land each member could own, requirements for claiming land in the area, requirements for maintaining land ownership, price fixing for land, as well as other price controls.
 There were also several punishments determined for settlers who violated any part of the club's rules, either stated or unstated.
The first Nebraska Territory Legislature was primarily composed of claim clubs members from across the territory.
 Despite federal law limiting land claims over 160 acres, state senators passed an act that legalized claims of 320 acres (1.3 km²) and providing penalties for trespassing upon them.
In 1855 Colonel Lorin Miller, later mayor of Omaha, surveyed Scriptown in the spring and summer on behalf of the Omaha Claim Club.
 This land was used to persuade members of the Nebraska Territory Legislature later that year as they voted on the location of the state capitol, which Omaha kept until 1867.
The club was effective in protecting its members' claims, primarily and frequently using mob violence to enforce its rule.
 The club's vigilantes rode masked and at night, frustrating efforts to identify the mob.
 The Omaha Claim Club became recognized as the unofficial court governing land claims, and in 1854 Alfred D. Jones, a surveyor, divided land into blocks starting by the ferry landing.
 That was the first time anyone planned what Omaha would look like.
 Jones was soon afterwards appointed the first postmaster of Omaha.
 Later Club leadership included Andrew J.
 Poppleton.
The club's original claim of nearly four thousand acres (16 km²) frustrated many settlers who came after the club was formed.
 Generally they objected to the vast extent of territory held by so few individuals and attempted to 'jump', or occupy for themselves, the claims of the members of the Omaha Claim Club.
 After this happened, a vigilante committee formed by members of the club visited the claim jumper to inform him that he was trespassing upon land previously claimed.
 They would warn the intruder that if he didn't vacate immediately he would be forced to.
 If the committee encountered resistance, the jumper soon found himself neck-deep in trouble — the severity depending upon the intensity of resistance.
Cam Reeves was the first figure identified in a dispute for the Omaha Claim Club.
 An unnamed 'Frenchman' had staked a claim in 1854 on part of Alfred D. Jones's land and refused to move off.
 The club sent for Reeves, who had gained a reputation as a trouble-shooter in Missouri, and he started a long battle with the Frenchman that drew crowds from neighboring towns.
 'The Frenchman took his beating and fled', while Cam Reeves stayed.
 He became Omaha's first sheriff.
The Claim Club's 'vigilante committee' activities were not limited to claim jumping.
 The vigilantes often cooperated with Sheriff Reeves, but often acted as lawmen, judges, juries and executioners themselves.
 Public whippings and lynchings were common.
Frontier punishment varied according to the degree of harm resulting from the crime.
 The pioneers dealt with most horse thieves mercilessly.
 In March, 1858, a posse of angered farmers captured two desperadoes who had stolen horses near Florence.
 After they were jailed in Omaha's courthouse, the Claim Club broke in and took the men, without any resistance from the sheriff.
 They hanged the horse thieves two miles north of Florence that day, with no repercussions, except for Sheriff Reeves, who was fined for not fulfilling his duties.
Another story involved acting Governor Thomas B. Cuming.
 Apparently, Cuming hired an Irish man named Callahan to make improvements on Cuming's land in order to conform with the homestead law.
 Callahan, however, filed a claim on the land for himself.
 When the claim club demanded that Callahan surrender the deed of ownership, a committee was appointed to 'persuade' him.
 Callahan died within a year, apparently from the after-effects of hypothermia brought on from his dunking.
John Kelly was a carpenter with a legal claim to 160 acres near Omaha.
 When word reached his aunt, Gertrude Wiley, that four wagons from the Claim Club were coming to 'talk Kelly out' of his claim, she quickly hid him in her cellar in Saratoga.
 After a day of continual harassment from the vigilantes, Kelly walked 12 miles south to Bellevue where he escaped to Iowa.
 After his deed to the land came, he went back to his land and was not bothered again.
On February 2, 1856, the club was reorganized as the Omaha Township Claim Association but its arbitrary powers continued as before — in several instances even more viciously.
 Other victims of vigilante 'justice' distributed by the Omaha Claim Club include Jacob S. Shull, Daniel Murphy, and George 'Doc' Smith, who was later the Douglas County Surveyor for many years.
The Circuit court of the District of Nebraska decided against a claim brought by Alexander Baker versus William Morton, both early Omaha settlers; Morton was involved in the Omaha Claim Club. Baker appealed to the United States Supreme Court, and in 1870 the Supreme Court ruled for Baker in the trial of Baker v. Morton.
According to court proceedings, A. H. Baker was forced to sign over the land he claimed to another person for free because of threats made by members of the Omaha Claim Club.
 Important figures in Omaha's history testified during the trial, including John Redick and James Woolworth.
 In the trial the club was found to commonly take landowners who refused to sell their property to the nearby Missouri River by force.
 With a rope tied around the person's neck, members of the club repeatedly dunked him until he agreed to sell.
 In this case, the club threatened to hang or drown Baker.
 The judge found Baker to have been forced to sign the contract through violence, and overturned the circuit court's earlier finding on behalf of Morton.
Reasons for the demise of the Omaha Township Claim Association, aka the Omaha Claim Club, vary.
 The Supreme Court ordered the breakup in their ruling.
 Other sources say that with the arrival of Omaha's United States Land Office, the claims club simply was not needed.
 In 1856, the U.S. government surveyed the land in Douglas County, including Omaha, and on March 17, 1857 the U.S. Land Office opened.
The Omaha Claim Club, along with many claim clubs around Nebraska, disbanded by 1860.
The Omaha Claim Club and others like it are credited to bringing order to a lawless frontier.
 By enforcing the 'laws' they made up, they supposedly created an order where the U.S. government was not prepared to otherwise.
 In 1857 when the Buchanan Administration announced the sale of lands in Nebraska would start in 1858, claims clubs across the state, led by Omaha, protested against him on the grounds that they would not be ready for the sale.
 The Administration was persuaded to wait until 1859.
The East Omaha Land Company of 1882 and the South Omaha Land Company of 1887 are unrelated.
 History of Omaha
Category:Pioneer history of Omaha, Nebraska
Category:Organizations based in Omaha, Nebraska
Category:Organizations based in the United States
Category:American Old West
Category:1854 establishments
Category:Crime in Omaha, Nebraska
Image:Campament omaha.jpg|thumb|300px|Omaha Tribe encampment at the Indian Congress
The Indian Congress occurred from August 4 to October 31, 1898 in Omaha, Nebraska, in conjunction with the Trans-Mississippi International Exposition.
 Occurring within a decade of the end of the Indian Wars, the Indian Congress was the largest gathering of American Indian tribes of its kind to that date.
 Over 500 members of 35 different tribes attended, including the Apache chief Geronimo, who was being held at Fort Sill as a United States prisoner of war.
Frank A. Rinehart's photographs of the Indian Congress participants are regarded as one of the best photographic documentations of American Indian leaders at the turn of the century.
After steady lobbying by the organizing committee of the Trans-Mississippi International Exposition, in December 1897 a bill was introduced in the United States Congress that provided an appropriation of $100,000 to carry out an Indian Congress at the same time as the Expo.
 After passing the Senate, preparations for the Spanish-American War monopolized the United States House of Representatives.
 In July 1898, $40,000 was made available for the event  in the Indian Appropriations Act by President William McKinley.
 That was a month after the rest of the Expo opened.
 Funding was also made available by the Bureau of American Ethnology, a part of the Smithsonian Institution.
In 1898 W. A. Jones, the Commissioner of Indian Affairs, sent a letter to each Indian Agency to appeal for attendees.
 The purpose of the Indian Congress, as he stated, was:
Image:Ponca camp.jpg|thumb|350px|Ponca Tribe encampment.
The entire Indian Congress was managed by ethnologist James Mooney and Army Captain William Mercer of the 8th U. S.
 Infantry, under the direction of the Commissioner of Indian Affairs acting on behalf of Cornelius Newton Bliss, the United States Secretary of the Interior.
 The original intention of the organizing committee was to illustrate the daily life, industry and traits of as many tribes as possible.
 However, once the congress was open authorities realized that the average person attending the Exposition wanted to see dances, games, races, ceremonials and sham battles.
 Soon the main activities of the Indian Congress were re-enactments and the Ghost Dance.
According to Captain Mercer's report, the weather 'has been trying in the extreme...
 Most of the time we have had extreme heat accompanied by dry, hot winds, which rendered camp life anything but pleasant, the conditions being rendered somewhat worse by our location.
 Following close upon the heated period we have just had a week of cold, heavy rains which made the camp and life in it more disagreeable even than it was during the hot spell.'
Ethnologist Mooney sought for the Congress to display customs of the various tribes.
 Instead, promoters erected a 5,000 seat grandstand, and arranged the tribes in re-enactments of battles.
 There were also concerns regarding the Indian Congress hosting a Ghost Dance, particularly after the U.S. Army attacked dancers during the Wounded Knee Massacre in 1890.
 However, the Ghost Dance was encouraged by the managers of the Exposition.
 A local newspaper reported the Ghost Dance became a popular attraction.
 The Ghost Dance shirt of Big Foot was displayed in another part of the Expo.
Mooney contracted with Frank A. Rinehart and Adolph Muhr to take photographs of the attendees.
 Rinehart made several hundred pictures, regarded as one of the most complete, non-exotifying collections of Native American portraits in existence.
 Rinehart and Muhr took their photographs in a studio on Expo grounds.
Speaking of his photos of the Indian Congress, Merry Foresta, director of the Smithsonian Photography Initiative at the Smithsonian Institution said, 'Rinehart's portraits are really quite extraordinary and put him above the average workaday photographer who might have also made photographs for similar reasons.
 There were other people working, but he seems to have really, because of the quality of his work, stood apart.'
35 individual tribes were represented by more than 500 Indians.
 The tribes in attendance included the Apache, Arapaho, Assiniboines, Blackfoot, Cheyenne, Chippewa, Crow, Flathead, Fox, Iowa, Kiowa, Omaha, Oto, Ponca, Pottawatomie, Sauk and Fox, Lakota, Southern Arapaho, Tonkawa, Wichita, and the Winnebago, as well as the Santa Clara Pueblo.
 History of Omaha
 Native American tribes in Nebraska
The following pictures were all taken by Frank Rinehart and Adoph Muhrat the Indian Congress in Omaha.
Image:Chiricahua Apache Hattie Tom.jpg|Hattie Tom, Chiricahua Apache.
File:Touch the Clouds 1877a.gif|Touch the Clouds, Minneconjou Teton Lakota chief
Image:SarahWhislter.jpg|Sarah Whislter, Sauk and Fox woman.
Image:YellowShirt.jpg|Yellow Shirt, Hunkpapa Sioux chief.
Image:WhiteBuffalo.jpg|White Buffalo, Cheyenne chief.
Image:Wah-Ta-Waso.jpg|Wah-Ta-Waso, Iroquois woman.
Image:KickingHorse.jpg|Kicking Horse, Flathead Salish chief.
Image:FreckleFace.jpg|Freckle Face, Arapahoe woman.
Image:BonieHattie.jpg|Bonie Tela, San Carlos Apache; and Hattie Tom, Chiricahua Apache.
Image:Interpret omaha.jpg|Little Snake, Omaha Tribe interpreter.
Image:Moni_chaki.jpg|Moni Chaki, Ponca chief.
Image:Naiche.jpg|Naiche, Chiricahua Apache chief.
Image:GeronimoRinehart.jpg|Geronimo, Chiricahua Apache leader.
Image:Geronimo I.jpg|Geronimo.
Image:Cwpbh 04312.jpg|(standing) Joe Merrivale, Young Spotted Tail, Antoine Janis.
 Seated: Touch the Clouds, Little Big Man, Black Cool, unknown
 Rydell, R. (1981) 'The Trans-Mississippi and International Exposition: 'To Work Out the Problem of Universal Civilization', American Quarterly, 33(5).
 Special Issue: American Culture and the American Frontier.
 (Winter) pp. 587-607.
  - Photos, stories and research from the Omaha Public Library
  - Portraits be Frank Rinehart
Category:Native American history of Nebraska
Category:History of North Omaha, Nebraska
Category:American Old West
Category:Native American history
A Horse thief is a person who steals horses.
  The label historically carries negative connotations of guile and depredation approximating the same weight of evil as a kidnapper or swindler.
File:Horse thief hanging.png|thumb|Hanging of a horse thief in Oregon circa 1900
The term horse thief came into great popularity in the USA during the 19th century.
  During that time the Great Plains states, Texas, and other western states were sparsely populated and negligibly policed.
  As farmers tilled the land and migrants headed west through the Great Plains their horses became subject to theft.
  Since these farmers and migrants depended on their horses, horse thieves garnered a particularly pernicious reputation because they left their victims helpless or greatly handicapped by the loss of their horses.
  The victims needed their horses for transportation and farming.
  Such depredation led to the use of the term horse thief as an insult, one that conveys the impression of the insulted person as one lacking any shred of moral decency.
Horse thievery is no longer a common offence and may in fact contain humorous connotations when used due to being anachronistic.
In the state of Texas if you steal a horse or any cattle it is still a hanging offence.
Anti Horse Thief Association
The Society in Dedham for Apprehending Horse Thieves
Stolen Horse International
The Fort Smith Council was a series of meetings held at Fort Smith, Arkansas from September 8–21, 1865, that were organized by the United States government for all Indian tribes east of the Rockies.
 The purpose was to discuss the future treaties and land allocations following the close of the American Civil War.
Attendance was mandatory for all the tribes that had signed treaties with the Confederacy—Creek, Choctaw, Chickasaw, Seminole, Cherokee, Shawnee, Delaware, Wichita, Comanche, Great Osage, Seneca, and Quapaw.
 The purpose was to notifiy them that, by taking up war against the United States, they had abrogated all their previous treaties and forfeited all their lands and annuities, and to discuss terms of the new treaties.
It was also to notify those tribes living in Indian Territory that some of their previous lands were to be turned over to the tribes who were being relocated from their reservations in Kansas.
 Fort Bridger Treaty Council of 1868
Perry, Dan W. , Chronicles of Oklahoma 14:1 (March 1936) 22-48 (retrieved August 17, 2006)
Category:History of Oklahoma
Category:History of Arkansas
Category:American Old West
Category:Oklahoma in the American Civil War
Category:Arkansas in the American Civil War
Category:Native Americans in the Civil War
Devil's Canyon, in present-day Kiowa County, Oklahoma, was the site of the first formal contact between the United States government and the Plains Indians.
 On July 21 1834, US troops under the command of Col.
 Henry Dodge escorted government officials to a peace conference at the Wichita village on the prairie at the confluence of the canyon and the North Fork of the Red River.
Category:Geography of Oklahoma
Category:History of Oklahoma
Category:American Old West
Category:Kiowa County, Oklahoma
Category:National Register of Historic Places in Oklahoma
thumb|Cherokee Freedmen Enrollment Notice
The American Dawes Commission, named for its first chairman Henry L. Dawes, was authorized under a rider to an Indian Office appropriation bill, March 3, 1893.
 Its purpose was to convince the Five Civilized Tribes to agree to cede tribal title of Indian lands, and adopt the policy of dividing tribal lands into individual allotments that was enacted for other tribes as the Dawes Act of 1887.
 In November 1893, President Grover Cleveland appointed Dawes as chairman, and Meridith H.
 Kidd and Archibald S. McKennon as members.
During this process, the Indian nations were stripped of their communally held national lands, which was divided into single lots and allotted to individual members of the nation.
 However, the Dawes Commission required that individuals claim membership in only one tribe, although many had more than one line of ancestry.
  Registration in the national registry known as the Dawes Rolls has come to be critical in issues of Indian citizenship and land claims.
 Many people did not sign up on these rolls because they feared government persecution if their ethnicity was formally entered into the system.
  Furthermore, people often had mixed blood sharing several tribes.
   Nonetheless, according to the Dawes rules, a person who was 1/4 Cherokee and 1/4 Creek must choose one and register simply as '1/4 Cherokee', for instance.
  That would have forced a person to lose part of his or her inheritance and heritage.
Although many Indian tribes did not consider strict 'blood' descent the only way to determine if a person was a member of a tribe, the Dawes commission did.
  Many Freedmen (slaves of Indians who were freed after the civil war), were kept off the rolls.
Many Creek Freedmen are still fighting this battle today against the Creek Nation, as they attempt to share in  benefits of citizenship.
  But the tribe has defined as members only those who are descended from an Indian listed on the Dawes Rolls.
   A similar controversy has embroiled Cherokee Freedmen and the Cherokee Nation.
The result of the Dawes Commission was that Indian nations lost most of their national land.
 This cleared the way for white settlers looking for oil and farm land to come into the territories in areas such as Tulsa, buy up the small lots from the Indians, and set up towns.
 The Indians received money but lost their territory.
  
Angie Debo's landmark work, And Still the Waters Run: The Betrayal of the Five Civilized Tribes (1940), detailed how the allotment policy of the Dawes Commission and the Curtis Act of 1898 was systematically manipulated to deprive the Native Americans of their lands and resources.
 In the words of historian Ellen Fitzpatrick, Debo's book 'advanced a crushing analysis of the corruption, moral depravity, and criminal activity that underlay white administration and execution of the allotment policy.'
 -  the original applications for tribal enrollments
Kent Carter, The Dawes Commission and the Allotment of the Five Civilized Tribes, 1893-1914 (Ancestry Publishing, 1999) (excerpt available )
Category:Native American history
Category:Native American law
Category:History of Oklahoma
Category:American Old West
thumb|250px|The Bird Cage Theater as it appears today.
The Bird Cage Theatre originally opened as The Elite Theatre on December 25, 1881, during the height of the silver boom in Tombstone, Arizona.
 Consisting of the theater, a saloon, a gambling parlour, and a brothel, it operated continuously – 24 hours a day, 365 days a year – for the next 8 years.
 It gained a reputation as one of the wildest places in Tombstone, prompting The New York Times to report in 1882 that 'the Bird Cage Theatre is the wildest, wickedest night spot between Basin Street and the Barbary Coast'.
 The numerous bullet holes in the building lend credence to this claim.
Many famous entertainers of the day performed here over the years, including Eddie Foy, Sr., Lotta Crabtree, Lillie Langtry, and Lola Montez.
 It is reported that the popular song, 'She's Only a Bird in a Gilded Cage' was written after a conversation occurred between Eddie Foy and songwriter Arthur Lamb concerning the ladies at the Elite who performed in 14 cages suspended from the ceiling in the main hall.
 Shortly thereafter, the owner changed the name to The Bird Cage.
The basement poker room is said to be the site of the longest-running poker game in history.
 Played continuously 24 hours a day for eight years, five months, and three days, legend has it that as much as 10 million dollars changed hands during the marathon game, with the house retaining 10 percent.
 Some of the participants were Doc Holliday, Bat Masterson, Diamond Jim Brady, and George Hearst.
 When ground water began seeping into the mines in the late 1880s the town went bust, the Bird Cage Theatre along with it.
 The poker game ended and the building was sealed up in 1889.
The building was not opened again until it was purchased in 1934, and the new owners were delighted to find that almost nothing had been disturbed in all those years.
 It has been a tourist attraction ever since, and is open to the general public year-round, from 8:00 am to 6:00 pm daily.
The theater is said to be haunted  and has been featured in the paranormal investigation shows Ghost Hunters in 2006, and Ghost Adventures in 2009.
Image:Birdcage1940.jpg|The Bird Cage circa 1940
Image:CribsBirdcage.jpg|The birdcages
Image:StageBirdcage.jpg|Stage
Image:BirdcageMuseum.jpg|Museum
Image:PokerRoomBirdcage.jpg|The basement poker room.
  
Ashley's Hundred refers to the men who responded in 1822 to the flyer, 'To Enterprising Young Men: The Subscriber wishes to engage One Hundred men to ascend the River Missouri to its source to be employed for one, two, or three years...'
The flyer was a recruitment for the first of several fur-trapping expeditions to the Rocky Mountains organized by William Henry Ashley and Andrew Henry.
See also: Rocky Mountain Fur Company.
Jim Beckwourth
Jim Bridger
Carpenter
Mike Fink
John Fitzgerald
Tom Fitzpatrick
Hugh Glass
David Jackson
Jedediah Smith
William Sublette
Talbeau Talbott?
Category:Fur trade
Category:American Old West
Category:Articles lacking sources (Erik9bot)
Category:Numeric epithets
Category:Mountain men
A bunkhouse is a hostel or barracks-like building that historically was used to house working cowboys on ranches in North America.
  As most cowboys were young single men, the standard bunkhouse was a large open room with narrow beds or cots for each individual and little privacy.
  The bunkhouse of the late 19th century was usually heated by a wood stove and personal needs were attended to in an outhouse.
While the modern bunkhouse today is still in existence on some large ranches that are too far away from towns for an easy daily commute, it now has electricity, central heating and modern indoor plumbing.
Cowboy
Ranch
Category: American Old West
Category:Articles lacking sources (Erik9bot)
thumb|200px|right|A sod house, 1901.
Image:Saskatchewan sod house.jpg|thumb|200px|right|Saskatchewan sod house, circa 1900
The sod house or 'Soddy' was a corollary to the log cabin during frontier settlement of the United States and Canada.
  The prairie lacked standard building materials such as wood or stone; however, sod from thickly-rooted prairie grass was abundant.
 Prairie grass had a much thicker, tougher root structure than modern landscaping grass.
Construction of a sod house involved cutting patches of sod in rectangles, often 2'×1'×6' (600×300×150mm) long, and piling them into walls.
  Builders employed a variety of roofing methods.
  Sod houses accommodate normal doors and windows.
  The resulting structure was a well-insulated but damp dwelling that was very inexpensive.
  Sod houses required frequent maintenance and were vulnerable to rain damage.
  Stucco or wood panels often protected the outer walls.
 Canvas or plaster often lined the interior walls.
In the United States, the terms of the Homestead Act offered free farmland to settlers who built a dwelling and cultivated the land for five years.
  Related straw-bale construction developed in Nebraska with early baling machines and has endured as a modern building material.
  Sod houses achieved none of the nostalgia that log cabins gained, probably because soddies and pottys were much more subject to dirt and infestations of insects.
  Early photographs record some sod houses; otherwise, they have all but disappeared from the landscape.
thumb|left|Interior of a sod house, North Dakota, 1937.
List of sod houses
List of house styles
Cob (building)
Canadian Prairies
Burdei a Ukrainian-inspired hybrid between the sod house and the log cabin, used in Western Canada
Addison Sod House, specific preserved example
Gustav Rohrich Sod House
thumb|right|Sod House Replica, SW Minnesota
Category:House types
Category:American Old West
right|thumb|300px|Old Trail Town in Cody, Wyoming
Old Trail Town is a collection of historic western buildings and artifacts, dating from 1879—1901, located off the Yellowstone Highway in the resort city of Cody, the seat of Park County in northwestern Wyoming.
 Much of the collection was derived from within 150 miles of Cody, the town that Buffalo Bill and his associates surveyed and established in 1895.
Image:Curly IMG 0318.JPG|left|thumb|250pxSite of log cabin of Custer's Crow scout Curly in Cody, Wyoming
One of the assembled buildings is the log cabin of the Crow Indian named Curly, a scout to General George Armstrong Custer, who escaped prior to hostilities at the Little Big Horn in Montana on June 25, 1876.
 In 1885, the United States government constructed Curly’s cabin as a reward for his military service., an archeologist and a native of the Big Horn Basin region of Wyoming.
 Edgar explored the area and worked for seven years for the large Buffalo Bill Historical Center in Cody.
 He realized the need to gather the historic buildings and relics and display them at a common site, the actual location where Buffalo Bill Cody and his associates had surveyed the first town site, 'Cody City'.One-room schoolhouse at Old Trail Town
right|thumb|300px|General store at Old Trail Town
Trail Town has more than twenty-five buildings, a hundred horse-drawn vehicles, and an extensive collection of memorabilia of the Wyoming frontier.
 The largest collection of its kind in Wyoming, Old Trail Town has enjoyed the support of area ranchers and the Cody community.
 Visitors can stroll between buildings along the boardwalk and access the cemetery, where some local and national folk heroes are interred.
Image:Johnson grave IMG 0308.JPG|right|thumb|300px|Bronze statue of Liver-Eating Johnson erected over his grave at Old Trail Town
On June 8, 1974, the grave of mountain man Liver-Eating Johnson (ca.
 1824—1900) was relocated to Old Trail Town.
 Johnson's legendary exploits were brought to film with Robert Redford in Jeremiah Johnson.
 Originally “Johnston”, John Johnson was a trapper, hunter, United States Army scout, marshal, and Union veteran of the American Civil War.
 More than two thousand attended the reburial service, perhaps the largest such gathering in Wyoming history.
  The bronze statue of Johnson erected over his grave is the work of  Peter M. Fillerup
Old Trail Town is open from May 15 until September 30.
  Admission is $6 for adults, $5 for seniors, and $2 for children 6-12. 
The Museum of the Old West, a separate entity within Old Trail Town established in 1971 as a 501 (C) (3) Not for Profit Corporation by Bob Edgar and Frances Beldon, is seeking to purchase and administer Old Trail Town provided the financing can be secured.
Image:Horns IMG 0319.JPG|left|thumb|175px|Elk horns stacked at Old Trail Town in Wyoming
Image:Cupboard IMG 0321.JPG|right|thumb|200px|Stocked cupboard in mountain man's cabin at Old Trail Town
Category:American Old West
Category:American West museums in Wyoming
Category:Open air museums in Wyoming
Category:History museums in Wyoming
Category:Museums in Wyoming
Image:Stagecoach 07-03-2008 11;18;38PM.JPG|right|thumb|300px|Stagecoach at Frontier Texas!
 formerly used on NBC's Little House on the Prairie
Frontier Texas!
 is a  state-of-the-art museum of the American West located in downtown Abilene, the seat of Taylor County in West Texas.
 The facility opened in 2004.
 It is  located at 625 North First Street on  near the Texas and Pacific Railway tracks.
 The museum focuses on typical settlers and lifestyles in the Old West.
 According to the museum website, its “cutting-edge technology puts a visitor in the middle of attacks by Indians and wolves, stampeding buffalo, a card game shootout, and a prairie thunderstorm, even a spring evening filled with fireflies.'
  Visitors see depictions of buffalo hunters, Comanche warriors, explorers, and pioneers in the theatre called the 'Century of Adventure', 1780-1880.
   The narrator in the theater is actor-artist Buck Taylor from Fort Worth.
 Taylor is also involved in the annual membership drive.
 'Women’s Art: Women’s Vision in West Texas”, April-May 2008
 'Toy Stories”, November 30, 2007-February 25, 2008
 'Spirit of the Frontier Festival”, October 5-October 6, 2007
 'Chow Time: The Heritage of Cowboy Cooking” (partly on loan from the Amon Carter Museum in Fort Worth), May 5 – September 11, 2007
'Abolitionism From Slavery to Freedom: Africans in the Americas”, February 15-April 22, 2007
'Faith on the Frontier: Christmas and Other Early Traditions”, November 22, 2006 – January 22, 2007
'Homeland Security: The Texas Forts Trail, Past & Present”, May – September 11, 2006
'Christmas on the Frontier', November – December 2005.
 This exhibit looks at the Hispanic and German cultures of Christmas, the holiday at a frontier fort, and history and photographs of a “Cowboy Christmas ball” dating to 1885.
The museum also accommodates educators by offering lesson plans for Texas and United States history at elementary and secondary levels.
 The museum publishes a quarterly newsletter called Frontier Times.
The website 'You Tube' voted Frontier Texas!
 as 'Best Old West Experience in Texas for 2008' and indicated that the holograms at the museum are 'amazing'.
 - official site
Category:Museums in Taylor County, Texas
Category:History museums in Texas
Category:Culture of the American West
Category:American Old West
Category:Abilene, Texas
Category:American West museums in Texas
Infobox nrhp
  | name =Fort Concho Historic District
  | nrhp_type = nhld
  | image = 
  | caption = 
  | location =630 S. Oakes StreetSan Angelo, Texas 
  | lat_degrees = 31
  | lat_minutes = 27
  | lat_seconds = 10
  | lat_direction = N
  | long_degrees = 100
  | long_minutes = 25
  | long_seconds = 45
  | long_direction = W
  | locmapin = Texas
  | area =
  | built =1867
  | architect=
  | architecture=
  | designated_nrhp_type=July 4, 1961
  | added = October 15, 1966 Situated at the junction of the North and Middle Concho rivers, the site selected for Fort Concho was strategic to the  stabilization of the region because of the location of no fewer than five major trails in the vicinity.
 Even though the fort was surrounded by miles of flat treeless prairie, it was considered to be “one of the most beautiful and best ordered posts in Texas.'
thumb|upright|left|A plaque at Fort Concho describing its history
Concho was established as a United States Army post in 1867 and named for the nearby  Concho River.
 It replaced the earlier Fort Chadbourne in Bronte in Coke County north of San Angelo.
 Chadbourne was established in 1852 by elements of the 8th Infantry and named for Second Lieutenant Theodore Lincoln Chadbourne, who was killed in the Battle of Resaca de la Palma in the Mexican War.
 The post experienced a chronic water shortage and was abandoned in 1867.
 Troops transferred to Fort Concho, but the military maintained a presence at Chadbourne until 1873.
 The Chadbourne ruins are open to the public, but no artifacts may be taken.
 The fort is a popular site for school field trips.
 The Fort Chadbourne Cemetery contains numerous poignant old markers.
 The oldest tombstone dates to 1877.
During its 22-year existence as an active Army fort, Concho mainly served to protect frontier settlers, stagecoaches, wagon trains and the United States mail, and maintain trade routes.
 Several successful campaigns against the Comanches were launched from Fort Concho.
 In addition, the post played a pivotal role in the suppression of illegal profiteering between the Mexican and American traders known as Comancheros.
Grierson, regimental commander of the 10th Cavalry, faced a personal tragedy at Fort Concho when his daughter Edith, about twelve years of age, died in the upstairs bedroom of one of the houses at the fort.
 The child was particularly fond of playing jacks.
The landmark today includes most of the original fort and twenty-three main structures, mostly original or restored, but some reconstructions.
 These structures include a Headquarters, Officers' Quarters, Soldiers' Barracks, and the Post Hospital.
 There are regular and changing exhibits in the fields of military history, the heritage of San Angelo and West Texas in general, and the daily life of a soldier and an officer.
Fort Concho is non-air-conditioned except for the museums.
  The fort features 23 original and restored buildings, including cavalry and infantry barracks, post hospital, schoolhouse/chapel, guardhouse, powder magazine, stables, commissary, quartermaster, headquarters, post NCO and surgeons' quarters, officers' quarters and the stable.
There are historic exhibits and period rooms in many of the restored buildings.
  The visitor's center is located in Barracks 1 and includes free exhibits and a gift shop.
  Special living history reenactments are held during the year.
The E. H. Danner Museum of Telephony contains interesting models of telephones from the 1880s to modern times.
 Exhibits include a model of Alexander Graham Bell's 'Gallows Frame Phone', of which only five were assembled,a manual switchboard, an 1898 hotel lobby telephone, the Independent Telephone Pioneers Association Hall of Fame which features photos and biographies of former Verizon leaders, and career memorabilia of former GTE Chairman and Chief Executive Officer Rocky Johnson.
 The museum occupies the old Officers' Quarters No. 4.
Beginning April 7, 2008, the 416 children and 139 women removed from the YFZ Ranch operated by the Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints polygamist sect were transported to Fort Concho and the Wells Fargo Pavilion (also in San Angelo), where they were housed until authorities decided what to do with them.
  Handbook of Texas Online
Category:National Historic Landmarks in Texas
Concho
Category:San Angelo, Texas
Category:American Old West
Category:History museums in Texas
Category:Museums in Tom Green County, Texas
Category:Medical museums in the United States
Category:Technology museums in the United States
Category:Military and war museums in Texas
Category:Historic districts in Texas
Infobox Military Structure
  There is an active preservation effort underway with long term plans of creating the 'Camp Locket Historic District' in the National Register of Historic Places.
Although travel through the area had been occurring for centuries, with the Diegueño Native Americans having lived there long before European settlement, it wasn't until the end of the 1860s and the early 1870s when a permanent Non-Native American settlement was established in the Campo Valley area.
  The area was settled by people migrating west from Texas, so much so that the area at one time was called 'Little Texas'.
  In 1869, John Capron began a regular stagecoach run was established from San Diego, by way of Dulzura and Campo, to Yuma which continued to run until 1912.
As with many places in the American Southwest at the time this immigration brought new interactions between the people living in the area, including Mexicans who lived not to far to the south.
  As a stop for the stagecoach station and a telegraph line was established, and was run by the Larkin family.
  It brought additional commerce to the area; however, with commerce comes the possibility of crime.
  On December 4, 1875, a gunfight between the denizens of Campo and a group of Mexican bandits, who had earlier killed the former Governor of Baja California Antonio Sosa in a robbery, took place at Gaskill's Store.
  After all was said and done the events of that day lead to eight dead and two wounded.
  Company G of the 1st Cavalry Regiment was sent by order of Major General John Schofield to San Diego to provide armed assistance to the area.
  Lieutenant Storey commanded a detachment of ten troopers, detaching four troopers to conduct 'outpost' duty after shooting himself in the hip, thus providing the first soldiers to be stationed in what would be Camp Lockett.
In May 1876, a large assembly of outlaws assembled in Tecate to attempt to rob the stagecoach station.
  The Company, was sent east to assist under the command of Captain Reuben Bernard, a veteran of the Modoc War; this dispersed the would be assailants.
  In the summer of that same year, a group of Native Americans came up north from Mexico and began living off the Larkin Family's cattle.
  Contacting Alcalde of Tecate, Pete Larkin was advised to confront the Native Americans.
  A fight ensued due to the confrontation leading to the death of a Native American.
  This brought reprisal, when the chief of those Native Americans asked for protection from the Alcalde, who subsequently assembled a posse and drove the cattle south of the border.
  Again the Cavalry came east to assist, which lead the the abandoning of the cattle by the posse of the Alcalde and the posse's dispersal.
  This lead the increase to the size of those on 'outpost' duty to that of a squad.
By 1877 the squad's duty ended as the 1st Cavalry Regiment was sent north due to the Little Big Horn Campaign, being replaced in San Diego by H Company, 8th Infantry Regiment.
  Company H was later replaced by Company I of the same Infantry Regiment in 1878 due to the Bannock Campaign.
  The would remain in San Diego until at least 1898, however no significant military presence would see Campo until 1895.
  In that year, about forty Yaquis were pressed into the Mexican Army, and later mutinied in Ensenada; in doing so they killed three people, including their Captain's wife and began to flee northward to attain horses to travel where they came from.
  In response the U.S. Army sent ten infantrymen under the command of Lieutenant Hubert to Campo.
  Although a farm was raided, the infantry's presence persuaded the group from continuing further into the United States, and they were eventually subdued by Mexican Militia forces south of Jacumba.
In response to the Zimmerman Telegram it was decided that detachments of the 11th Cavalry Regiment would be stationed along the US Mexico border.
  In part this was carried out the stationing of Troop E at what would be Camp Lockett in 1918, named after the 4th Colonel in command of the 11th Cavalry Regiment.
  Troop E would remain stationed there until August 1920 when they were relocated to Presidio of Monterey, and replaced by Troop D of the same regiment.
  Later on in that same year the force at Campo would be reduced to that of a platoon, while the rest of the Troop reestablished of Camp Lawrence J.
 Hearn at Palm City, near present day Imperial Beach.
  Eventually both locations would be abandoned when the Regiment was amulgated in Monterey sometime in the 1920s.
The initial phase, which occurred in 1941, housed the 11th Cavalry Regiment.
 Standard Army Quartermaster Corps Series 700 and 800 plans were used for the original camp and included housing areas (barracks, officers quarters, day room, mess hall, and storehouse), stable areas (stables, blacksmith shops, and hay sheds), a veterinary facility, the quartermaster area, motor pool area, hospital (staff quarters and wards), administration buildings, recreation buildings, a chapel, and post exchange.
Original infrastructure included roads and streets, sewage treatment plant, incinerator, and water supply system.
 Importantly, during this time several buildings from the pre-Army era were converted to military support uses, including the 1885 Gaskill Stone Store.
In 1942, the Army transferred the 11th Cavalry Regiment to Fort Benning, Georgia and converted it to motorized armor.
 At Camp Lockett, the 10th Cavalry Regiment replaced the 11th Cavalry Regiment.
  As war mobilization continued new troopers were organized into the 28th Cavalry Regiment, forming the 4th Cavalry Brigade of the 2nd Cavalry Division.
The Western Defense Command’s Southern Land Frontier Sector also moved to Lockett at this time.
 This command consisted primarily of administrative personnel responsible for planning the defense of southern Arizona and California; they fell under General John L. DeWitt, whom surveyed what would be Camp Lockett in 1940.
The expanded presence necessitated a second phase of construction from 1942 to 1943, which conformed to standard Theater of Operations plans, an even more expedient construction than the mobilization architecture
utilized in the first phase.
Most of the new construction centered on additional stable and troop housing areas for the 28th Cavalry Regiment one mile north of the original encampment.
 The 28th area included additional stables, hay sheds, and blacksmith shops.
 The original veterinary complex was expanded for the 2nd Veterinary Company.
Additional troop areas included a regimental headquarters, barracks, mess halls, latrines, and storerooms.
 Support buildings in the 28th Cavalry area included a post exchange, chapel, motor pool, and fire station.
 Recreational additions included the swimming pool complex between the 10th and 28th Cavalry areas, additional NCO and Officers’ Clubs, a gymnasium, and the outdoor amphitheater Merritt Bowl.
 Civilian housing and single-status dormitories were also constructed.
In early 1944, the 4th Cavalry Brigade was sent to North Africa then disbanded and converted in to service units.
 With their departure from Camp Lockett, the era of the horse soldier ended.
 Camp Lockett was in stand-by status for several months.
left|thumb|Army Service Forces Shoulder Sleeve Insignia
In July 1944, the Army Service Forces activated the Mitchell Convalescent Hospital at former Camp Lockett.
 The hospital was the first Army Service Forces convalescent hospital in the United States.
 To expand the original Camp Lockett hospital, many buildings were moved and converted to hospital wards and other uses.
Concurrent with activation of the convalescent hospital was the establishment of the prisoner of war camp in the 28th Cavalry Regiment area.
 The POW camp, a branch of the Riverside County Camp Haan, housed Italian and German prisoners of war, who worked in all phases of hospital operation, including services, maintenance, and construction.
The convalescent hospital remained active at Camp Lockett until June 1946, when the facility closed and the installation was declared surplus.
The district includes 52 standing buildings and 2 structures or complexes of structures built during the period of significance.
 Two contributing building were constructed before the establishment of Camp Lockett but were used by the U.S. Army during the period of significance.
The primary categories of functional building types associated with the period of significance are present in the district.
 With few exceptions, the buildings constructed by the Army are wood-framed, mobilization-style architecture supported on concrete piers or slabs.
 Infrastructure buildings, such as those in the sewage disposal plant, are built of poured concrete.
Most of the surviving buildings and structures date from the early phase of construction in 1941; there are no standing Theater of Operations-style buildings dating from the 1942-43 period of construction.
 Several of the contributors were moved during the period of significance, in conjunction with establishment of the Mitchell Convalescent Hospital in 1944.
Built properties contributing to the Camp Lockett Cultural Landscape Historic District represent a wide range of functional types from the historic period of significance.
 Personnel support functions are represented in mess halls, day rooms, officers’ quarters, supply buildings.
Recreational buildings include the base theater, swimming pool (now filled), and bathhouses.
 Buildings associated with care of the horses include stables and blacksmith shop.
 General support buildings include firehouse, guardhouse, maintenance, motor pool garage, and cellblock.
The hospital area contains administrative buildings, barracks, wards, mess halls, storehouses, dispensary, and civilian employee housing.
 Camp infrastructure properties include the sewage plant, portions of the water system, and the incinerator.
Pre-Lockett buildings utilized by the Army during the period of significance include the Gaskill Brothers Stone Store and the Ferguson Ranch House.
Historic archaeological features, especially foundations, representing a range of building and structure types from the period of significance contribute to the district and are enumerated as features within one site for this nomination.
 A total of 47 features resulting from original barracks, day rooms, mess halls, storehouses, officers’ quarters, chapel, and stables are present.
The Western Defense Command’s Southern Land Frontier Sector headquarters building is represented in an archaeological feature.
Landscape features contributing to the district include original circulation routes, mortared field stone hardscape features, patterned plantings, and open training areas.
 Eleven circulation routes laid out as part of original camp construction remain in the district.
In several locations, mortared stone retaining walls and drainage features accompany the circulation routes.
 Patterned plantings dating from the period of significance, as well as the oak grove in Chaffee Park also contribute to the district.
The Italian Prisoners of War Shrine, which is located about a mile north of the main encampment, also contributes to the district as a landscape element.
 The shrine is mortared into a bedrock outcrop and features a glass-enclosed Catholic statuette and engraved stone.
The inventory of historic buildings and structures was largely undertaken on behalf of the San Diego County Department of Parks and Recreation by staff, Heather Thomson, Sue Wade, and Bonnie Bruce (California Department of Parks and Recreation, California Department of Parks and Recreation, California Desert District), with the assistance of volunteers from the Mt.
 Empire Historical Society and the Colorado Desert Archaeological Society.
Contributors from the Mt.
 Empire Historical Society included Roger Challberg, President, and Rick Borstadt who are among the most knowledgeable local historians of the Campo area and assisted in every phase of investigation through 2006.
 Volunteers from the Colorado Desert Archaeological Society were all previously trained in field recording methods.
The survey occurred over a period of ten days dispersed between Nov. 19, 2002 and Jan 7, 2003.
 Concrete foundations and other features that constituted historical archaeological remains were recorded.
 These were documented as found during the process of the purposive survey and did not constitute a full inventory that might result from a systematic pedestrian surface survey of the district.
DPR recording methods included different approaches to grouping resources on primary forms for assignment of primary numbers, and for some features and archaeological sites, assignment of trinomials as well.
 Spatial proximity and convenience appear to be the primary criteria for grouping resources.
Many unique buildings or structures were assigned separate primary numbers while groups of contiguous buildings or groups of contiguous foundations with similar functions were recorded on one form.
 In other cases, standing buildings and adjacent foundations also were recorded on single forms.
 The DPR survey also included some non-contributing properties that occur on private property and are therefore not included in this discussion.
Ione Stiegler of IS Architecture undertook a conditions assessment of most of the standing buildings in the district during May-June, 2006 which included a description of architectural details, structural elements, finishes, window, and door treatments, general condition, historical integrity, and constraints for reuse.
She also prepared a comprehensive photographic archives of each building.
 Interiors were examined on a limited basis where possible.
 Some buildings on private property are excluded although were addressed in her survey for later use if the owners wish to nominate them in the future.
A reunion of former cavalrymen at Camp Lockett was featured on the 'California's Gold' TV program,
 which is predominantly broadcast on public television stations.
  United States Department of the Interior, National Park Service, National Register of Historic Places, Registration Form nominating Camp Lockett dated September 25, 2006, prepared By William R. Manley, Stephen R. Van Wormer, Karen L. Huff , Jerry Schaefer, Sue Wade, Heather Thompson of ASM Affiliates, Inc., 2034 Corte del Nogal, Carlsbad, CA 92011, telephone 760-804-5757
Category:African American history
Category:San Diego County, California
Category:Black history in the United States military
Category:American Old West
Category:Former United States Army facilities
Category:Spanish–American War
Category:Italian prisoners of war
Infobox_nrhp | name =Old Taylor County Courthouse and Jail
  | nrhp_type = 
  | image = 
  | caption = 
  | location= Buffalo Gap, Texas
  | lat_degrees = 32
  | lat_minutes = 17
  | lat_seconds = 10
  | lat_direction = N
  | long_degrees = 99
  | long_minutes = 49
  | long_seconds = 36
  | long_direction = W
  | locmapin = Texas
  | area =
  | built =1879
 | added = June 09, 1978
 | governing_body = Private
 | refnum=78002984
  The Old Taylor County Courthouse and Jail building is listed on the National Register of Historic Places.
Since 1999, the McWhiney Foundation has developed an interpretive theme for the site.
 Visitors can learn the history of the last half century of the Texas frontier between 1875 and 1925.
 They can obtain an understanding of the forces, such as the automobile, that brought change to the region.
 The village offers special events and lectures.
 A short book, The Texas You Expect: The Story of Buffalo Gap Historic Village, is now in publication.
Buffalo Gap also hosts musical events, including the annual Bluegrass Festival.
The community is four miles northeast of Lake Abilene and the Abilene State Park.
 Less than ten miles away is the new state-of-the art Frontier Texas!
 museum in downtown Abilene, which features narration by the former Gunsmoke star Buck Taylor.
 Lake Kirby within Abilene offers fishing and picnicking.
 - official site
Category:Museums in Taylor County, Texas
Category:History museums in Texas
Category:American West museums in Texas
Category:American Old West
Category:Abilene, Texas
Category:Open air museums in Texas
Category:National Register of Historic Places in Texas
A miners' court was a court that summoned a subset of the miners in a district when a dispute arose in the frontier West.
 A presiding officer or judge was elected and a jury was selected.
 Other systems that were used included alcaldes and arbitration.
 In the event a decision was disputed, a mass meeting of the camp could be called to allow a dissatisfied party to plead his case and possibly get the decision reversed.
Category:Quasi-judicial bodies
Category:American Old West
Category:History of mining
Image:Three chiefs Piegan p.39 horizontal.png|thumb|300px|right|The three chiefs--Piegan, by Edward S. Curtis
The Plains Indians are the Indigenous peoples who live on the plains and rolling hills of the Great Plains of North America.
thumb|right|Range of the Plains Indians at time of European contact.
Plains Indians are usually divided into two broad classifications which overlap to some degree.
 The first group were fully nomadic, following the vast herds of buffalo.
 Some tribes occasionally engaged in agriculture; growing tobacco and corn primarily.
 These included the Blackfoot, Arapaho, Assiniboine, Cheyenne, Comanche, Crow, Gros Ventre, Kiowa, Lakota, Lipan, Plains Apache (or Kiowa Apache), Plains Cree, Sarsi, Sioux, Shoshone, and Tonkawa.
The second group of Plains Indians (sometimes referred to as Prairie Indians) were the semi-sedentary tribes who, in addition to hunting buffalo, lived in villages and raised crops.
 These included the Arikara, Hidatsa, Iowa, Kaw (or Kansa), Mandan, Omaha, Osage, Otoe, Pawnee, Ponca, and Wichita.
Image:Shoshoni tipis.jpg|thumb|Shoshone around their tipi, about 1890
The nomadic tribes survived on hunting, and the bison was their main source of food.
  Some tribes are described as part of the 'Buffalo Culture' (sometimes called, somewhat misleadingly, the 'Great Plains Culture').
 American buffalo, or simply buffalo, is the commonly used (but inaccurate) name for the American Bison.
  These animals were the chief source for items which Plains Indians made from their flesh, hide and bones, such as food, cups, decorations, crafting tools, knives, and clothing.
  Not a single part of the animal was thrown away except the heart which was put in the ground after being killed.
The tribes kept moving following the seasonal grazing and migration of bison.
  The Plains Indians lived in tipis because they were easily disassembled and allowed the nomadic life of following game.
 When Spanish horses were obtained, the Plains tribes rapidly integrated them into their daily lives.
 By the early 18th century some tribes had fully adopted a horse culture.
 The Comanche were among the first to commit to a fully mounted nomadic lifestyle.
 This occurred by the 1730s, when they had acquired enough horses to put all their people on horseback.
Image:Kane Assiniboine hunting buffalo.jpg|thumb|right|'Assiniboine hunting buffalo', painting by Paul Kane
Although the Plains Indians hunted other animals, such as elk or antelope, bison was the primary game food source.
  Before horses were introduced, hunting was a more complicated process.
 The Native Americans would surround the bison, and then try to herd them off cliffs or into places where they could be more easily killed.
  A commonly used technique was the Piskin method.
 The tribesmen would build a corral and have people herd the buffalo into it to confine them in a space where they could be killed.
  The Plains Indians constructed a v-shaped funnel, about a mile long, made of fallen trees, rocks, etc.
  Sometimes buffalo could be lured into a trap by one of the tribe covering himself with a buffalo skin and imitating the call of the animals.
Before their adoption of guns, the Plains Indians hunted with spears, bows and arrows, and various forms of clubs.
  The Spanish brought horses to America, but were reluctant to trade them to Plains Indians or to teach equestrian skills.
 As a result few Plains Indians were able to acquire and use horses until the Pueblo Revolt of 1680 when the Spanish were temporarily forced to abandon New Mexico, leaving many horses.
 The Pueblo Indians, who had some equestrian knowledge, traded many of these horses to other tribes, resulting in a rapid and wide distribution of horses and equestrian skills.
  Their ability to ride horses made hunting (and warfare) much easier.
  With horses, the Plains Indians had the means and speed to stampede or overtake the bison.
 The Plains Indians reduced the length of their bows to three feet to accommodate their use on horseback.
 They continued to use bows and arrows after the introduction of firearms, because guns took too long to reload and were too heavy.
  In the summer, many tribes gathered for hunting in one place.
  The main hunting seasons were fall, summer, and spring.
  In winter harsh snow and mighty blizzards made it almost impossible to kill the bison.
Bison were hunted almost to extinction in the 19th century and were reduced to a few hundred by the mid-1880s.
  The main reason they were hunted was for their skins, with the rest of the animal left behind to decay on the ground. After the animals rotted, their bones were collected and shipped back east in large quantities.
 The herds formed the basis of the economies of local Plains tribes of Native Americans for whom the bison were a primary food source.
  Without bison, the Native Americans would be forced to leave or starve.
The railroad industry also wanted bison herds culled or eliminated.
 Herds of bison on tracks could damage locomotives when the trains failed to stop in time.
 Herds often took shelter in the artificial cuts formed by the grade of the track winding though hills and mountains in harsh winter conditions.
  As a result, bison herds could delay a train for days.
As the great herds began to wane, proposals to protect the bison were discussed.
 Buffalo Bill Cody, among others, spoke in favor of protecting the bison because he saw that the pressure on the species was too great.
 But these were discouraged since it was recognized that the Plains Indians, often at war with the United States, depended on bison for their way of life.
 In 1874, President Ulysses S. Grant 'pocket vetoed' a Federal bill to protect the dwindling bison herds, and in 1875 General Philip Sheridan pleaded to a joint session of Congress to slaughter the herds, to deprive the Plains Indians of their source of food.
  By 1884, the bison was close to extinction.
thumb|left|A pile of bison skulls in the 1870s.
The main reason for the bison's near-demise, much like the actual demise of the passenger pigeon, was commercial hunting.
Over years of surviving off the hunt, the metabolism of Plains Indians developed to allow them to survive for longer on less food.
 This was in response to sometimes long intervals between hunts.
  In times of plentiful food, Plains Indians took on a lot of extra weight to prepare for times without food.
  This adaptation saved tribes from starvation, but when Plains Indian reservations/reserves were introduced, the adaptation of carrying weight became a threat to their health.
The Plains wore bison skins in the winter.
 The women in the tribe mended the clothes.
The Plains Indians followed no single religion.
 Animist religion was an important part of a Great Plains Indians' life, as they believed that all things possessed spirits.
 Their worship was centered on one main god, in the Sioux language Wakan Tanka (the Great Spirit).
 The Great Spirit had power over everything that had ever existed, and the Plains Indians believed that by worshipping him they would become stronger.
 Earth was also quite important, as she was the mother of all spirits.
 Spirits were worshipped daily.
 People sometimes prayed alone, while other times there were group gatherings.
  The most important group ceremony was the Sun Dance, in which participants danced for four days around a sacred object, and some would inflict harm upon themselves on purpose, all while staring at the sun.
 They believed this self-sacrifice would encourage powerful spirits to support and defend them.
Image:Ghost Dance at Pine Ridge.png|300px|thumb|right|The Ghost Dance by the Ogalala Lakota at Pine Ridge.
 Illustration by Frederic Remington
There were also people that were wakan, or blessed, who were also called shaman.
  To become wakan, your prayers must be answered by the Great Spirit, or you must see a sign from him.
  Wakan were thought to possess great power.
  One of their jobs was to heal people, which is why they are also sometimes called 'medicine men'.
  The shamans were considered so important that they were the ones who decided when the time was right to hunt.
Plains Indians believed that some objects possessed spiritual or talismanic power.
  One such item was the medicine bundle, which was a sack carrying items believed by the owner to be important.
 Items in the sack might include rocks, feathers, and more.
  Another object of great spiritual power was the shield.
  The shield was the most prized possession of any warrior, and he decorated it with many paintings and feathers.
  The spirits of animals drawn on the shield were thought to protect the owner.
The tribes of the Great Plains have been found to be the tallest people in the world during the late 1800s, based on 21st century analysis of data collected by Franz Boas for the World Columbian Exposition.
  This information is significant to anthropometric historians, who usually equate the height of populations with their overall health and standard of living.
 , Chris R. Landon, Portland Public Schools, 1993
 , South Dakota State Historical Society Education Kit
 Carlson, Paul H.
 The Plains Indians.
 College Station: Texas A&M University Press, 1998.
 ISBN 0-89096-828-4
 Taylor, Colin E. The Plains Indians: A Cultural and Historical View of the North American Plains Tribes of the Pre-Reservation Period.
 New York: Crescent Books, 1994.
 ISBN 0517142503.
 on the Heilbrunn Timeline of Art History, The Metropolitan Museum of Art
ca:Cultura de les grans planúries americanes
fr:Indiens des Plaines
hr:Prerijski Indijanci
pt:Índios das Planícies
ru:Индейцы Великих равнин
Infobox Settlement
Abilene is a city in Dickinson County, Kansas, United States, 163 miles (262 km) west of Kansas City.
 In 1900, 3,507 people lived here.
 The population was 6,543 at the 2000 census.
 It is the county seat of Dickinson County.
Abilene began as a stage coach stop in 1857, established by Timothy Hersey and named from a passage in the Bible, meaning 'city of the plains.'
 The town grew quickly when Joseph G.
 McCoy decided to use the town for the location of his stockyards.
 Abilene became the very first 'cow town' of the west.
With the railroad pushing west, cattle traders soon came to use Abilene as the largest stockyards west of Kansas City.
 The Chisholm Trail ended in Abilene, bringing in many travelers and making Abilene one of the wildest towns in the west.
Town  marshal Tom 'Bear River' Smith was initially successful policing Abilene, often using only his bare hands.
 He survived two assassination attempts during his tenure.
 However, he was murdered and decapitated on November 2, 1870.
 Smith wounded one of his two attackers during the shootout preceding his death, and both suspects received life in prison for the offense.
 He was replaced by Wild Bill Hickok in April 1871.
 Hickock's time as marshal was short lived.
 While standing off a crowd during a street brawl, gambler Phil Coe took two shots at Hickock, who returned fire killing Coe, but then accidentally shot his friend and deputy, , who was coming to his aid.
 He lost his job two months later in December.
In 1880 Conrad Lebold built what the newspapers called the finest house west of Topeka.
 Lebold was one of the early town developers and Bankers from 1869 through 1889.
 The Hersey dugout can still be seen in the cellar of the Lebold Mansion.
  
In 1890, Dr. A.B. Seelye founded the A.B. Seelye Medical Company.
 Seelye developed over 100 products for the company including 'Wasa-Tusa,' an Indian name meaning to heal.
Abilene became home to Dwight D.
 Eisenhower when his family moved to Abilene from Denison, Texas in 1892 where he attended elementary school through high school.
 The Dwight D.
 Eisenhower Presidential Library is located in Abilene.
 It is now the burial site of President Eisenhower, his wife, Mamie, and their first born son Doud Dwight.
In 1960 Abilene had a population of 6,746.
Abilene is located along I-70 at  (38.919721, -97.217329).
 The Smoky Hill River passes roughly a mile and a half south of the city.
According to the United States Census Bureau, the city has a total area of 4.1 square miles (10.7 km²), all of it land.
Abilene's sister city is Minori, Japan.
Over the course of a year, temperatures range from an average low below  in January to an average high of nearly  in July.
 The maximum temperature reaches  an average of 67 days per year and reaches  an average of 14 days per year.
 The minimum temperature falls below the freezing point (32°F) an average of 117 days per year.
 Typically the first fall freeze occurs between the last week of September and the first week of November, and the last spring freeze occurs during April or the first week of May.
The area receives nearly  of precipitation during an average year with the largest share being received in May and June—which when combined average 20 days of measurable precipitation.
 During a typical year the total amount of precipitation may be anywhere from 22 to .
 There are on average 79 days of measurable precipitation per year.
 Winter snowfall averages about 14 inches, but the median is less than .
 Measurable snowfall occurs an average of 7 days per year with at least an inch of snow being received on five of those days.
 Snow depth of at least an inch occurs an average of 11 days per year.
 Month || Jan || Feb || Mar || Apr || May || Jun || Jul || Aug || Sep || Oct || Nov || Dec || Year
 Precipitation includes rain and melted snow or sleet in inches; median values are provided for precipitation and snowfall because mean averages may be misleading.
 Mean and median values are for the 30-year period 1971–2000; temperature extremes are for the station's period of record (1948–2001).
 The station is located one mile (1.6 km) west of Abilene at 38°55′N 97°14′W, elevation .
As of the census of 2000, there were 6,543 people, 2,836 households, and 1,772 families residing in the city.
 The population density was 1,584.7 people per square mile (611.7/km²).
 There were 3,104 housing units at an average density of 751.8/sq mi (290.2/km²).
 The racial makeup of the city was 95.52% White, 1.01% African American, 0.52% Native American, 0.38% Asian, 0.96% from other races, and 1.60% from two or more races.
 Hispanic or Latino of any race were 2.72% of the population.
There were 2,836 households out of which 29.0% had children under the age of 18 living with them, 50.5% were married couples living together, 9.0% had a female householder with no husband present, and 37.5% were non-families.
 34.2% of all households were made up of individuals and 17.2% had someone living alone who was 65 years of age or older.
 The average household size was 2.27 and the average family size was 2.90.
In the city the population was spread out with 24.7% under the age of 18, 7.0% from 18 to 24, 26.5% from 25 to 44, 21.7% from 45 to 64, and 20.0% who were 65 years of age or older.
 The median age was 40 years.
 For every 100 females there were 89.2 males.
 For every 100 females age 18 and over, there were 85.4 males.
The median income for a household in the city was $33,778, and the median income for a family was $46,052. Males had a median income of $31,971 versus $17,361 for females.
 The per capita income for the city was $17,356.
 About 4.8% of families and 7.3% of the population were below the poverty line, including 7.2% of those under age 18 and 14.9% of those age 65 or over.
Abilene has one daily newspaper, The Abilene Reflector-Chronicle.
The following radio stations are licensed to Abilene:
AM
FM
 Eisenhower Presidential Center and the Dwight D.
 Eisenhower Presidential Library and Museum 
 Great Plains Theatre - Originally First Presbyterian Church, built in 1881, Landmarked, and is now a live professional theatre.
 Greyhound Hall of Fame - Located near the Eisenhower Presidential Library, the hall exhibits the history of the greyhound breed and of greyhound racing.
 Hall of Generals - A wax museum of figures of generals from World War II
 Heritage Center of Dickinson County - Two museums including the Historical Museum and the Museum of Independent Telephony.
 The Museum of Independent Telephony tells the story of C.L. Brown, whose independent Brown Telephone Company grew to become the telecommunications company known today as Sprint Nextel Corporation .
 Lebold Mansion - National Register Property listed in 1973.
 Built in 1880 in the Italianate Tuscan villa style.
 Today this decorative arts museum is home to one of the finest collections of American Victorian antiques and artifacts.
 Old Abilene Town - A replica of a part of old Abilene.
 Constructed as a replica historic district, beginning in the late 1950s, it includes several original buildings that have been moved from their original locations.
 A. B. Seelye House and Museum - A Georgian style mansion built in 1905 at a cost of $55,000.
 The 25 room mansion contains the original furniture and Edison light fixtures.
 The Patent Medicine Museum contains many artifacts of the A.B. Seelye Medical Company.
  Listed on the National Register of Historic Places, it is currently a museum showcasing Seelye, an advocate of patent medicines.
C.L. Brown, Founder of Sprint Corp., 'Benevolent Patriarch' of Abilene, built a telephone company, an orphanage and 
homes for senior citizens, indigents and single mothers.
 Also built a 240-acre park for the enjoyment of the people of Abilene.
C.
 Olin Ball, food safety pioneer
Joseph R. Burton, United States Senator
Dwight D.
 Eisenhower, 34th President of the United States
Earl D.
 Eisenhower, brother of Dwight D.
 Eisenhower, member of the Illinois House of Representatives
Milton S.
 Eisenhower, brother of Dwight D.
 Eisenhower, noted academic and university president
James Butler Hickok (better known as 'Wild Bill' Hickok), Marshall and legendary figure in the American Wild West
John Wesley Hardin, American Wild West outlaw
Deane Waldo Malott, American academic and administrator and 6th president of Cornell University
Joseph McCoy, 19th century cattle baron
Luke Short, American Wild West gunslinger
Ben Thompson, American Wild West saloon keeper and noted figure
Abilene Trail
Abilene, Texas
Category:Cities in Kansas
Category:County seats in Kansas
Category:Dickinson County, Kansas
Category:American Old West
af:Abilene, Kansas
da:Abilene (Kansas)
de:Abilene (Kansas)
es:Abilene (Kansas)
fr:Abilene (Kansas)
io:Abilene, Kansas
ht:Abilene, Kansas
nl:Abilene (Kansas)
ja:アビリーン (カンザス州)
no:Abilene (Kansas)
pl:Abilene (Kansas)
pt:Abilene (Kansas)
ru:Абилин (Канзас)
vo:Abilene (Kansas)
zh:阿比林 (堪萨斯州)
Buffalo Soldiers originally were members of the U.S. 10th Cavalry Regiment of the United States Army, formed on September 21, 1866 at Fort Leavenworth, Kansas.
 The nickname was given by the Native American tribes they fought; the term eventually came to include six units:
9th Cavalry Regiment
10th Cavalry Regiment
24th Infantry Regiment
25th Infantry Regiment
 27th Cavalry Regiment
 28th Cavalry Regiment
Although several African-American regiments were raised during the Civil War to fight alongside the Union Army (including the 54th Massachusetts Volunteer Infantry and the many United States Colored Troops Regiments), the 'Buffalo Soldiers' were established by Congress as the first peacetime all-black regiments in the regular U.S. Army.
On September 6, 2005, Mark Matthews, who was the oldest living Buffalo Soldier, died at the age of 111.
 He was buried at Arlington National Cemetery.
Sources disagree on how the nickname 'Buffalo Soldiers' began.
 According to the Buffalo Soldiers National Museum, the name originated with the Cheyenne warriors in 1867, the actual Cheyenne translation being 'Wild Buffalo.'
 However, writer Walter Hill documented the account of Colonel Benjamin Grierson, who founded the 10th Cavalry regiment, recalling an 1871 campaign against the Comanche tribe.
 Hill attributed the origin of the name to the Comanche due to Grierson's assertions.
 Some sources assert that the nickname was given out of respect for the fierce fighting ability of the 10th cavalry.
 Other sources assert that Native Americans called the black cavalry troops 'buffalo soldiers' because of their dark curly hair, which resembled a buffalo's coat.
 Still other sources point to a combination of both legends.
 The term Buffalo Soldiers became a generic term for all African-American soldiers.
 It is now used for U.S. Army units that trace their direct lineage back to the 9th and 10th Cavalry, units whose bravery earned them an honored place in U.S. history.
thumb|right|Buffalo Soldiers who participated in the Spanish American War
During the American Civil War, the U.S. government formed regiments known as the United States Colored Troops, composed of black soldiers.
 After the war, Congress reorganized the Army and authorized the formation of two regiments of black cavalry with the designations 9th and 10th U.S. Cavalry, and four regiments of black infantry, designated the 38th, 39th, 40th and 41st Infantry Regiments (Colored).
 The 38th and 41st were reorganized as the 25th Infantry Regiment, with headquarters in Jackson Barracks in New Orleans, Louisiana, in November 1869.
 The 39th and 40th were reorganized as the 24th Infantry Regiment, with headquarters at Fort Clark, Texas, in April 1869.
 All of these units were composed of black enlisted men commanded by both white and black officers.
 These included the first commander of the 10th Cavalry Benjamin Grierson, the first commander of the 9th Cavalry Edward Hatch, Medal of Honor winner Louis H. Carpenter, the unforgetable Nicholas M. Nolan and the first black graduate of West Point Henry O. Flipper.
From 1866 to the early 1890s, these regiments served at a variety of posts in the Southwestern United States (Apache Wars) and Great Plains regions.
 They participated in most of the military campaigns in these areas and earned a distinguished record.
 Thirteen enlisted men and six officers from these four regiments earned the Medal of Honor during the Indian Wars.
 In addition to the military campaigns, the 'Buffalo Soldiers' served a variety of roles along the frontier from building roads to escorting the U.S. mail.
  On 17 April 1875, regimental headquarters for the 9th and 10th Cavalries were transferred to Fort Concho, Texas.
  Companies actually arrived at Fort Concho in May 1873.
  At various times from 1873 through 1885, Fort Concho housed 9th Cavalry companies A-F, K, and M, 10th Cavalry companies A, D-G, I, L, and M, 24th Infantry companies D-G, and K, and 25th Infantry companies G and K.
thumb|left|Buffalo Soldier in the 9th Cavalry, 1890
After the Indian Wars ended in the 1890s, the regiments continued to serve and participated in the Spanish-American War (including the Battle of San Juan Hill), where five more Medals of Honor were earned.
 They took part in the 1916 Mexican Expedition and in the Philippine-American War.
A lesser known action was the 9th Cavalry's participation in the fabled Johnson County War, an 1892 land war in Johnson County, Wyoming between small farmers and large, wealthy ranchers.
 It culminated in a lengthy shootout between local farmers, a band of hired killers, and a sheriff's posse.
 The 6th Cavalry was ordered in by President Benjamin Harrison to quell the violence and capture the band of hired killers.
 Soon afterward, however, the 9th Cavalry was specifically called on to replace the 6th.
 The 6th Cavalry was swaying under the local political and social pressures and were unable to keep the peace in the tense environment.
The Buffalo Soldiers responded within about two weeks from Nebraska, and moved the men to the rail town of Suggs, Wyoming, creating 'Camp Bettens' despite a racist and hostile local population.
 One soldier was killed and two wounded in gun battles with locals.
 Nevertheless, the 9th Cavalry remained in Wyoming for nearly a year to quell tensions in the area.
thumb|
Another little-known contribution of the buffalo soldiers involved eight troops of the 9th Cavalry Regiment and one company of the 24th Infantry Regiment who served in California's Sierra Nevada as some of the first national park rangers.
 In 1899, Buffalo Soldiers from Company H, 24th Infantry Regiment briefly served in Yosemite National Park, Sequoia National Park and General Grant (Kings Canyon) National Parks.
U.S. Army regiments had been serving in these national parks since 1891, but until 1899 the soldiers serving were white.
 Beginning in 1899, and continuing in 1903 and 1904, African-American regiments served during the summer months in the second and third oldest national parks in the United States (Sequoia and Yosemite).
 Because these soldiers served before the National Park Service was created (1916), they were 'park rangers' before the term was coined.
One particular Buffalo Soldier stands out in history: Captain Charles Young who served with Troop 'I', 9th Cavalry Regiment in Sequoia National Park during the summer of 1903.
 Charles Young was the third African American to graduate from the United States Military Academy.
 At the time of his death, he was the highest ranking African American in the U.S. military.
 He made history in Sequoia National Park in 1903 by becoming Acting Military Superintendent of Sequoia and General Grant National Parks.
 Charles Young was also the first African-American superintendent of a national park.
 During Young's tenure in the park, he named a Giant Sequoia for Booker T. Washington. Recently, another Giant Sequoia in Giant Forest was named in Captain Young's honor.
 Some of Young's descendants were in attendance at the ceremony.
  
File:BuffaloSoldierMuseumHoustonTX.JPG|thumb|Buffalo Soldiers National Museum in Houston, Texas
In 1903, 9th Cavalrymen in Sequoia built the first trail to the top of Mount Whitney, the highest mountain in the contiguous United States.
 They also built the first wagon road into Sequoia's Giant Forest, the most famous grove of Giant Sequoia trees in Sequoia National Park.
In 1904, 9th Cavalrymen in Yosemite built an arboretum on the South Fork of the Merced River in the southern section of Yosemite National Park.
 This arboretum had pathways and benches, and some plants were identified in both English and Latin.
 Yosemite's arboretum is considered to be the first museum in the national park system.
In the Sierra Nevada, the Buffalo Soldiers regularly endured long days in the saddle, slim rations, racism, and separation from family and friends.
  As military stewards, the African-American cavalry and infantry regiments protected the national parks from illegal grazing, poaching, timber thieves, and forest fires.
  Yosemite Park Ranger Shelton Johnson researched and interpreted the history in an attempt to recover and celebrate the contributions of the Buffalo Soldiers of the Sierra Nevada.
In total, 23 'Buffalo Soldiers' received the Medal of Honor.
The 'Buffalo Soldiers' were often confronted with racial prejudice from other members of the U.S. Army.
 Civilians in the areas where the soldiers were stationed occasionally reacted to them with violence.
 Buffalo Soldiers were attacked during racial disturbances in:
Rio Grande City, Texas in 1899 
Brownsville, Texas in 1906 
Houston, Texas in 1917
The 'Buffalo Soldiers' did not participate as organized units during World War I, but experienced non-commissioned officers were provided to other segregated black units for combat service — such as the .
File:SC120314.jpg|right|thumb|With colors flying and guidons down, the lead troops of the famous 9th Cavalry pass in review at the regiment's new home in rebuilt Camp Funston.
 Ft.
 Riley, Kansas, May 1941.
Early in the 20th century, the 'Buffalo Soldiers' found themselves being used more as laborers and service troops rather than as active combat units.
 During World War II the 9th and 10th Cavalry Regiments were disbanded, and the soldiers were moved into service-oriented units, along with the entire 2nd Cavalry Division.
 One of the infantry regiments, the 24th Infantry Regiment, served in combat in the Pacific theater.
 Another was the 92nd Infantry Division, aka the Buffalo Soldiers Division, which served in combat during the Italian Campaign in the Mediterranean theater.
 Another was the 93rd Infantry Division — including the 25th Infantry Regiment — which served in the Pacific theater.
Despite some official resistance and administrative barriers, black airmen were trained and played a part in the air war in Europe, gaining a reputation for skill and bravery (see Tuskegee Airmen).
 In early 1945, after the Battle of the Bulge, American forces in Europe experienced a shortage of combat troops.
 The embargo on using black soldiers in combat units was relaxed.
 The American Military History says:
'Faced with a shortage of infantry replacements during the enemy's counteroffensive, General Eisenhower offered Negro soldiers in service units an opportunity to volunteer for duty with the infantry.
 More than 4,500 responded, many taking reductions in grade in order to meet specified requirements.
 The 6th Army Group formed these men into provisional companies, while the 12th Army Group employed them as an additional platoon in existing rifle companies.
 The excellent record established by these volunteers, particularly those serving as platoons, presaged major postwar changes in the traditional approach to employing Negro troops.'
The 24th Infantry Regiment saw combat during the Korean War and was the last segregated regiment to engage in combat.
 The 24th was deactivated in 1951, and its soldiers were integrated into other units in Korea.
 On December 12, 1951, the last Buffalo Soldier units, the 27th Cavalry and the 28th (Horse) Cavalry, were disbanded.
 The 28th Cavalry was inactivated at Assi-Okba, Algeria in April 1944 in North Africa, and marked the end of the regiment.
There are monuments to the Buffalo Soldiers in Kansas at Fort Leavenworth and Junction City.
 Then-Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Colin Powell was guest speaker for the unveiling of the Fort Leavenworth monument in July 1992.
In recent years, the employment of the Buffalo Soldiers by the United States Army in the Indian Wars has led to modern critical reappraisal of the regiment, or revisionist history depending on one's political view, by cultural historians as being mere shock troops or accessories to the alleged forcefully-expansionist ideals of the U.S. government at the expense of the Native Americans.
 This is seen as a far cry from the historical cultural upholding of the Buffalo Soldiers as being a rare exception to the discriminatory socioeconomic environment.
Image:BuffaloSolderOfElPaso.JPG|thumb|right|Buffalo Soldier Memorial of El Paso, in Fort Bliss, depicting CPL John Ross, I Troop, 9th Cavalry, during an encounter in the Guadalupe Mountains during the Indian Wars
Image:Bfu-soldr-front.jpg|thumb|Buffalo Soldier Monument on Fort Leavenworth, Kansas
The song 'Buffalo Soldier', co-written by Bob Marley and King Sporty, first appeared on the 1983 album Confrontation.
 Many Jamaicans, especially Rastafarians like Marley, identified with the 'Buffalo Soldiers' as an example of an exceeding black men who performed with courage, honor, valor, and distinction in a field that was dominated by whites, and persevered despite endemic racism and prejudice.
 The 1960 western film Sergeant Rutledge, starring Woody Strode, tells the story of the trial of a 19th-century black Army non-commissioned officer falsely accused of rape and murder.
 One of the characters narrates the history of the term 'buffalo soldier'.
 On November 22, 1968, an episode of the television series The High Chaparral titled , starring Yaphet Kotto, paid tribute to the soldier's patriotic spirit.
 The 1970 television movie , starring Stephen Boyd, Rosey Grier and Richard Pryor, depicted a black unit during World War II, led by a white officer.
 The 1979 television movie , starring Stan Shaw and John Beck, depicted African-American cavalry soldiers and their actions in the West during the Indian Wars of the late 19th century.
 The 1997 television movie , starring Danny Glover, drew attention to their role in the military history of the United States.
 The 2006 History Channel special 'Honor Deferred' describe members of the Buffalo soldiers in WWII Italy.
 The film Miracle at St. Anna, directed by Spike Lee, chronicles the Buffalo Soldiers who served in the invasion of Italy.
 It is based on the novel of the same name by James McBride.
 2009 The film , directed by Italian filmaker Fred Kuwornu, chronicles the Buffalo Soldiers who served in Italy.
 Contains interviews with the veterans, included the Medal of Honor:Lt. Vernon Baker,interviews with the Italian partisan who fought with them, and the presidential speeches of President Barack Obama and Former President Bill Clinton.
 In the wild west themed, 'Red Dead Revolver' by Rockstar Games, 'Buffalo Soldier' is the name of a playable black character in a Union Army uniform.
Black Seminoles (Cimarrones)   
List of African American Medal of Honor recipients   
Military history of African Americans   
Camp Lockett
Buffalo Soldier tragedy of 1877 also known as the 'Staked Plains Horror.'
Image:Buffalosoldier.jpg|thumb|right|Buffalo Soldier Monument at F.
 E. Warren Air Force Base near Cheyenne, Wyoming
'Colonel' Charles Long 
Tuskegee Airmen 
United States Colored Troops   
1st Louisiana Native Guard
2nd Cavalry Division  
9th U.S. Cavalry
10th U.S. Cavalry
24th Infantry Regiment
25th Infantry Regiment
 27th Cavalry Regiment
 28th Cavalry Regiment
92nd Infantry Division   
93rd Infantry Division   
366th Infantry Regiment   
761st Tank Battalion
784th Tank Battalion
 Living History group - 9th US Cavalry
 (Regarding the organization of the Buffalo Soldiers & Troopers Motorcycle Clubs (NABSTMC)) 
], 1863] (regarding the organization of African American troops)
 Interviews (transcripts and audio) with black soldiers from Korea, including the 24th infantry
, by Edward Augustus Johnston, published 1899, hosted by the 
, a website devoted to remembering the contributions of the buffalo soldiers of the Sierra Nevada, by Park Ranger Shelton Johnson, Yosemite National Park
, an ongoing research program of the University of Texas at El Paso, Arizona State University and the National Park Service's DSCESU program]
, a memoir based on journal kept by Ivan J.
 Houston, a Buffalo Soldier
Category:African American history
Category:Black history in the United States military
Category:Buffalo Soldiers
Category:American Old West
Category:Regiments of the United States Army
Category:Spanish–American War
de:Buffalo Soldier
es:Soldados Búfalo
fr:Buffalo Soldier
it:Buffalo Soldier
pt:Buffalo Soldier
fi:Buffalo soldier
right|thumb|The dead man's hand-aces and eights.
The dead man's hand is a two-pair poker hand, namely 'aces and eights'.
 The hand gets its name from the legend of it being the five-card-draw hand held by Wild Bill Hickok at the time of his murder (August 2, 1876).
 It is accepted that the hand included the aces and eights of both the black suits; although his biographer, Joseph Rosa, says no contemporary citation for his hand has been found, the 'accepted version is that the cards were the ace of spades, the ace of clubs, two black eights (clubs and spades), and either the jack of diamonds or the queen of diamonds as the 'kicker'.
 The term, before the murder of Hickok, referred to a variety of hands.
 The earliest found reference to a 'dead man's hand' is 1886, where it was described as 'three jacks and a pair of tens.'
There are various claims as to the identity of Hickok's fifth card and there is also some reason to believe that he had discarded one card.
 The draw was interrupted by the shooting and he never got the fifth card he was due.
The Stardust in Las Vegas had a 5 of diamonds on display as the fifth card; in the HBO television series Deadwood, a 9 of diamonds is used (although the show posits that another player falsely invented the hand in order to further his own newsworthiness); the modern town of Deadwood, South Dakota also uses the 9 of diamonds in displays; and Ripley's Believe it or Not shows a queen of clubs.
 Saloon no.
 10, in Deadwood, South Dakota, the namesake to the saloon in which Wild Bill Hickock was shot while holding the infamous 'dead man's hand,' shows the fifth card as the 9 of diamonds.
  The Lucky Nugget Gambling Hall, which holds the historic site of Saloon No. 10, displays the 5th card as the jack of diamonds.
 At least two of John Ford's films feature the aces and eights hand as a foreshadowing of death.
 In Stagecoach (1939), the hand is held by Luke Plummer (Tom Tyler), soon to be shot by the Ringo Kid (John Wayne) while in The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance (1962), Liberty Valance draws the hand just prior to his death.
The Motorhead song Ace of Spades makes reference to '..the dead man's hand.'
List of poker hand nicknames
Glossary of poker terms
Category:Poker hands
Category:American Old West
de:Dead Man’s Hand
es:La Mano del Muerto
fi:Kuolleen miehen käsi
Image:California rodeo Salinas lasso bull p1050544.jpg|thumb|A loose bull is lassoed by a pickup rider during a rodeo
thumb|right|Lassoing on the prairie (from the book Prairie Experiences in Handling Cattle and Sheep, by Major W. Shepherd, 1884)
A lasso ( or ), alternatively  ( or ), also referred to as a lariat, riata, or reata (all from Spanish la reata), is a loop of rope that is designed to be thrown around a target and tighten when pulled.
 It is a well-known tool of the American cowboy.
  The word is also a verb; to lasso is to successfully throw the loop of rope around something.
  When referring to the entire length of rope used, before or after a loop is formed, the rope itself is more properly called a lariat.
  Many cowboys simply call it a 'rope.'
A lariat is made from stiff rope so that the noose stays open when the lasso is thrown.
 It also allows the cowboy to easily open up the noose from horseback to release the cattle because the rope is stiff enough to be pushed a little.
 A high quality lasso is weighted for better handling.
  The lariat has a small reinforced loop at one end, called a honda or hondo, through which the rope passes to form a loop.
  The honda can be formed by a honda knot (or another loop knot), an eye splice, a seizing, or a metal ring.
  The other end is usually tied simply in a small, tight, overhand knot to prevent fraying.
  Most modern lariats are made of stiff nylon rope, usually about 5/16' or 3/8' in diameter.
The lariat is used today in rodeos as part of the competitive events such as calf roping and team roping.
 It is also still used on working ranches to capture cattle or other livestock when necessary.
 After catching the cattle, the lariat can be tied or wrapped (dallied) around the horn, a typical feature on the front of a western saddle.
 With the lariat around the horn, the cowboy can use his horse as the equivalent of a tow truck with a winch.
Part of the historical culture of both the vaqueros of Mexico and the cowboys of the Western United States is a related skill now called 'trick roping', a performance of assorted lasso spinning tricks.
 Will Rogers was a well-known practitioner of trick roping and the natural horsemanship practitioner Buck Brannaman also got his start as a trick roper when he was a child.
thumb|left|200px|Pharaoh ready to rope the sacred bull.
 A carving at the temple of Seti I, Abydos, Egypt.
Lassos are not only part of North American culture; relief carvings at the ancient Egyptian temple of Pharaoh Seti I at Abydos, built c.1280 BC, show the pharaoh holding a lasso, then holding onto a bull roped around the horns.
 They were also used by Tatars and are still used by the Sami people.
 In Mongolia, a variant of the lasso called an uurga () is used, consisting of a rope loop at the end of a long pole.
Bolas
Rodeo
 by Carey Bunks
Category:American Old West
Category:Livestock
Category:Rodeo
Category:Spanish loanwords
es:Lazo (accesorio del gaucho)
fr:Lasso (arme)
Image:Window on the Plains Museum IMG 0579.JPG|250px|right|thumb|Entrance to Window on the Plains Museum in Dumas, Texas
Window on the Plains Museum offers displays of ranching, farming, industrial, business, and family life exhibits of the Texas Panhandle during the late 19th and 20th centuries.
 It is located in Dumas, the seat of Moore County, at 1820 South Dumas Avenue on the common United States Highways 287 and 87.
 Dumas is approximately fifty miles north of Amarillo.
Originally housed in the ballroom of the landmark Sneed Hotel and first known as the Moore County Historical Museum, the facility was dedicated on Bicentennial Day, July 4, 1976.
 It was relocated in 2001 to a modern building on a  tract in southwest Dumas and renamed 'Window on the Plains'. The facility also houses a research and archives center, and the Moore County Art Association is located next door.
Image:Windmill at Window on the Plains Museum IMG 0580.JPG|thumb|left|200px|A tall windmill outside Window on the Plains Museum highlights the need for water in the Texas Panhandle.
The origin of the museum dates to January 1976, when representatives of the Moore County Historical Commission, the art association, and the Bicentennial Committee met to consider the establishment of a county museum.
 Collier Phillips, then president of the historical commission, was elected temporary chairman.
 A steering committee met with the county commissioners in February to seek permission to use the first floor of the hotel, since the Lew Haile Annex.
 The building had been donated to the county by Elizabeth Sneed Pool Robinette.
 The commissioners agreed to the proposal, work soon began on remodeling, building exhibit areas, acquiring and placing artifacts, and documenting records.
 Some fifty-two persons donated more than five thousand hours of labor, having completed the task in time for the formal dedication on July 4.
150px|right|thumb|Louis Dumas, ca.
 1895, the founder of Dumas, Texas
The museum contains a section on the local history of Dumas and Moore County.
 The origin of the city dates to 1891 when it was laid out by the Panhandle Townsite Company, headed by Louis Dumas (April 16, 1856—January 5, 1923), originally from Sister Grove near Dallas.
 Dumas and his wife, Florence (November 17, 1861—June 9, 1927), originally from Pilot Point in Denton County, were living near Dallas, when they lost a daughter, Johnnie (1881–1888).
 Dumas came to Moore County, while his grief-stricken wife stayed behind for a time before she joined her husband.
 After a blizzard again devastated Dumas in 1895, the couple returned to Sherman, the seat of Grayson County, where they died four years apart during the 1920s.
 Dumas hence lived only about seven years in the Panhandle city which bears his name.
During the 1880s, a drift fence of barbed wire was built to hold back cattle from Oklahoma, Colorado, and Kansas from crossing into the Texas Panhandle during blizzards.
 It was strung along the northern boundary of each ranch.
 The fence extended for two hundred miles in Texas, with a gate every three miles.
 In 1889, Texas passed a law prohibiting fencing of public property, and the fence was removed in 1890.
 It had been particularly disastrous for the cattle in 1887, when they were unable to head south for greener pastures during a blizzard.
Moore County is named for Commodore Edwin Ward Moore of the Texas Navy during the Republic of Texas and a friend of Robert E. Lee.
 Dumas became the county seat in 1892.
 In 1893, Louis Dumas donated land for the Moore County Courthouse, which was completed the following year at a cost of $155,000.
 The building still serves as the courthouse.
 The first state bank was established in Dumas in 1908.
 In time, it became the First National Bank of Amarillo, since included in the Bank of America.
 the first Dumas mayor (1930–1935) served as the Moore County administrative judge from 1935–1945.
 He was posthumously named 'Citizen of the Century' in 1992.Items available in general store at Window on the Plains Museum
Image:Physician office at Window on the Plains Museum IMG 0585.JPG|200px|left|thumb|Combination physician, druggist, and dentist office at Window on the Plains Museum
Image:Ranch stove at Window on the Plains Museum IMG 0582.JPG|200px|right|thumb|Stove at typical ranch house in Moore County
Image:Blacksmith shop at Window on the Plains Museum IMG 0584.JPG|200px|left|thumb|A blacksmith shop replica at Window on the Plains 
200px|left|thumb|A cowboy in camp prepared his meal.
  
200px|right|thumb|Tent revival exhibit at Window on the Plains
200px|right|thumb|Washing machines at Window on the Plains Museum
Image:Post Office at Window on the Plains Museum IMG 0594.JPG|200px|left|thumb|Post office replica at Window on the Plains
200px|right|thumb|Ranch office exhibit at Window on the Plains
Museum exhibits include the following:
1900s Street Scene — A general store, post office, and doctor's office can be viewed as one walks down a wooden sidewalk.
The Phillips and Son General Store — Dates to 1892 and operated until 1994.
The road agent's spin, also known as the 'Curly Bill spin' (after Curly Bill Brocius) was a gunfighting maneuver first identified in the days of the Old West.
 It was utilized as a ruse when forced to surrender a side arm to an unfriendly party.
Normal Old West procedure for surrender of a loaded pistol called for it to be handed over upside down and butt-first.
 A well-trained gunfighter could hold the pistol upside-down by the trigger guard using the index finger and extend it toward the surrenderee as a false sign of compliance.
  When the surrenderee reached for the pistol with their (presumably dominant) hand, a sharp, practiced motion of the wrist would quickly flip the gun forward and back into firing position, catching the surrenderee off guard and unable to react.
 at Time
Marks, Paula Mitchell:  And Die in the West
Category:American Old West
es:Maniobra del guardia de camino
pl:Road agent's spin
Camillus 'Buck' Sydney Fly - born 1849 near Santa Rosa, California, and died in Bisbee on October 12, 1901, was most noted for the many photographs he took during Tombstone, Arizona's wild and wooly days, many may not know that 'Buck', who preferred to be called, was also a lawman.
  His photos are legendary and highly prized.
  
His parents were originally from Andrew County, Missouri.
 Somewhere along the line, they migrated to California before Camillus was born and eventually settling in Napa County.
He married Mary “Mollie” E. Goodrich on September 29, 1879 in San Francisco.
  Mary, who was also a photographer and Camillus soon moved to Arizona Territory, where they settled in Tombstone in December, 1879.
  Fly and his wife immediately set up a photographic studio in a tent before going to work on more permanent quarters.
  
In July, 1880, they opened up a 12-room boarding house and a studio called the “Fly Gallery” in the back of the building located at 312 Fremont Street in Tombstone, 'Doc' Holiday lived there for awhile.
On October 26, 1881, Fly was in a unique position, as the infamous Gunfight at the O.K. Corral actually took place just off Fremont Street between his studio and Jersey’s Livery Stable.
 During the shootout, Cochise County Sheriff John Behan cowered inside the studio, watching the gunplay, only to be joined by Ike Clanton who fled in terror proclaiming he was unarmed.
  When the smoke cleared, it was Fly, armed with a Henry rifle, who disarmed a dying Billy Clanton.
 For some strange reason Fly did not photograph the aftermath of the shootout, but legend has it that he was threatened by one of the Earps if he did.
During this time, Fly and Mary adopted a little girl they called Kitty, but Mary continued to run the boarding house and studio as Camillus traveled around the area taking photographs.
 While her husband was out, she acted as one of the few female photographers of the times, taking pictures of anyone who could pay the studio price of 35 cents.
In March, 1886, Fly accompanied General George Crook to the Canyon de Los Embudos for the negotiations with Geronimo.
 He became most famous for the photographs he took of the negotiations, Geronimo and the other free Apaches he took on March 25 and 26th.
Fly had become a heavy drinker and the year after these famous photographs were taken, his wife Mary, took their child and separated from her husband.
  He then left Tombstone on December 17, 1887 to tour Arizona with his photographs and briefly established a studio in Phoenix in 1893.
  However, the following year, he returned to the area.
 In the meantime, Mary continued to run the studio in Tombstone during his absence.
Though his drinking was becoming more and more heavy, he was elected as the Cochise County Sheriff in 1895 and served for two years.
Fly ranched in the Chiricahua Mountains, until his death at Bisbee on October 12, 1901.
 Though Camillus and his wife had been separated for years, she was at his bedside when he died and made arrangements to have his body returned to Tombstone, where it was buried in Boot Hill.
Mary continued to run the Tombstone gallery on her own and in 1905, she published a collection of her husband's Indian campaign photographs entitled 'Scenes in Geronimo's Camp: The Apache Outlaw and Murderer.'
 In 1912, Mary finally retired, moved to Los Angeles, and donated her husband’s negatives to the Smithsonian Institution in Washington, D.C.
 She died in 1925.
Tom McLaury, Frank McLaury, and Billy Clanton in their caskets after the Gunfight at the OK Corral, and also the only known photograph of Billy Clanton.
Fly took this photo of Geronimo (far right) in March 1886, before his surrender to General Crook on September 4.
Geronimo and Gen.
 Crook at Cañon de Los Embudos, Sonora, March 27, 1886.
Members of the Dodge City, Kansas, Peace Commission, from left to right: Chas.
 Bassett, W. H. Harris, Wyatt Earp, Luke Short, L. McLean, Bat Masterson, Neal Brown.
 The photograph was taken by Camillus S. Fly in 1890.
thumb|150px|Ike Clanton, Tombstone, about 1881, by C. S. Fly.
'Ask the Marshall' - in the True West Magazine January/February 2009 issue page 94
http://www.legendsofamerica.com/law-camillusfly.html
http://library.umkc.edu/spec-col/shadow-catchers/fly.htm
Category:1849 births
Category:1901 deaths
Category:Cochise County, Arizona
Category:American Old West
File:Covered wagon at the High Desert Museum Outside.jpg|thumb|right|A covered wagon replica at the High Desert Museum
The covered wagon is an icon of the American Old West.
Although covered wagons were commonly used for shorter moves within the United States, in the mid-nineteenth century thousands of Americans took them across the Great Plains to Oregon and California.
 Overland immigrants typically used farm wagons, fitting them with five or six wooden bows that arched from side to side across the wagon bed, then stretching canvas or some other sturdy cloth over the bows, creating the cylindrical cover.
Covered wagons were primarily used to transport goods.
 Small children, the elderly, and the sick or injured rode in them, but since the wagons had no suspension and the roads were rough, many people preferred to walk, unless they had horses to ride.
While covered wagons traveling short distances on good roads could be drawn by horses, those crossing the plains were usually drawn by a team of two or more pairs of oxen.
 These were driven by a teamster or drover, who walked at the left side of the team and directed the oxen with verbal commands and whipcracks.
 Mules were also used; they were harnessed and driven by someone sitting in the wagon seat holding the reins.
One covered wagon generally represented five people.
 A well-to-do family might have two or three wagons, or a group of single men traveling together might share a wagon.
 While crossing the plains, emigrants banded together to form wagon trains for mutual assistance and occasionally defense.
Prairie schooner is a fanciful name for the covered wagon; the white canvas covers of the wagons crossing the prairies reminded some writers of the sails of a ship at sea.
Conestoga wagon
Wagon
Category:American Old West
Category:Demographic history of the United States
Category:History of United States expansionism
Category:Wagons
nv:Tsin naabąąs
it:Carro coperto
pl:Kryty wóz
thumb|A historical recreation of a chuckwagon at the Texas Parks and Wildlife Expo in Austin.
A chuckwagon was originally a wagon that carried food and cooking equipment on the prairies of the United States and Canada.
  They would form a part of a wagon train of settlers or feed nomadic workers like cowboys or loggers.
 It was common for the 'cookie' who ran the wagon to be second only to the 'trailboss' on a cattle drive.
 The cookie would often act as cook, barber, dentist, and banker.
While some form of mobile kitchens had existed for generations, the invention of the chuckwagon is attributed to Charles Goodnight, a Texas rancher who introduced the concept in 1866.
  Chuck was then a slang term for food.
  Chuckwagon food included easy-to-preserve items like beans and salted meats, coffee, and sourdough biscuits.
  Food would also be gathered en route.
 In Texas, it is said that chile peppers were planted along the cattle trails to serve for future use.
The American Chuckwagon Association is an organization dedicated to the preservation of the heritage of the chuckwagon.
  Its members participate in chuckwagon cook-offs throughout much of the US.  Through these events, the members educate the public on the history and traditions surrounding the chuckwagon.
At a chuckwagon cook off, each wagon is judged on the authenticity of the wagon.
  Wagons must be in sound drivable condition, with equipment and construction available in the late 1800s.
  Contents of the chuck-box, including utensils, must also match what would have been used during the era.
  Wagons are also judged on the attire of their cooks.
  A typical chuckwagon cookoff is composed of 5 food categories:  Meat (usually chicken-fried steak), Beans (pinto), Bread (Sourdough or yeast), Dessert (usually peach cobbler), and potatoes.
  A team of judges evaluates the entries from each wagon, giving each a score.
  Once scores are tabulated, prizes are awarded to the top wagons.
One of the most famous chuckwagon cook-offs is the Lincoln County Cowboy Symposium.
  Held annually for nearly 20 years, this event attracts thousands to Ruidoso, New Mexico.
Among the few chuckwagon cook-offs east of the Mississippi River takes place during SaddleUp!
 each February in Pigeon Forge, Tennessee.
  Held just outside Great Smoky Mountains National Park, SaddleUp!
 also features a cowboy symphony and cowboy church services over a four-day period.
Image:Chuckwagon races at Calgary Stampede.jpg|thumb|right|The Chuckwagon finals at the Calgary Stampede 2006 
Chuckwagon racing is an event at some rodeos mainly in Western Canada such as the Calgary Stampede.
 Chuckwagon races were held from 1952 until 1998 at Cheyenne Frontier Days - one of America's biggest rodeos.
 There are a few professional chuckwagon racing circuits that operate in North America with the premiere circuit being run by the World Professional Chuckwagon Association (WPCA) based in Calgary, Alberta.
 A yearly chuckwagon race event is still held in Clinton, Arkansas .
Chuckwagons are raced around a figure eight barrel obstacle, and the stove and tent poles within the wagon must not be lost.
 The racing team also has from two to four 'outriders' who load the stove and tent poles at the start and must finish the race with the chuckwagon.
 Many such races are held each year in Western Canadian cities and towns.
Category:American Old West
Category:American cattlemen
Category:Types of restaurants
Category:Cuisine of the Western United States
Category:Wagons
thumb|right|225px|Frank E. Webner, Pony Express rider c. 1861 
thumb|right|225px|U.S. Postal Service trademarked Pony Express logo
The Pony Express was a fast mail service crossing the North American continent from St. Joseph, Missouri, to Sacramento, California, from April 1860 to October 1861.
 It became the nation's most direct means of east-west communication before the telegraph and was vital for tying California closely with the Union just before the American Civil War.
The Pony Express was an outgrowth of the Leavenworth & Pike's Peak Express Company of 1859, which became a year later the Central Overland California & Pike's Peak Express Company.
  This firm was founded by William H. Russell, Alexander Majors, and William B. Waddell.
The original fast mail services had messages carried by horseback riders in relay across the prairies, plains, deserts, and mountains of the Western United States.
  For its 18 months of operation, it briefly reduced the time for mail to travel between the Atlantic and Pacific coasts to about ten days.
By having riders travel a shorter route and using mounted riders rather than stagecoaches, the founders of the Pony Express hoped to establish their service as a faster and more reliable conduit for the mail and win an exclusive government mail contract.
  Pony Express demonstrated that a unified transcontinental system could be built and operated continuously year round.  Since its replacement by the First Transcontinental Telegraph, the Pony Express has become part of the lore of the American West.
  Its reliance on the ability and endurance of individual riders and horses over technological innovation was part of 'American rugged individualism.'
Its route has been designated the Pony Express National Historic Trail.
  Approximately 120 historic sites along the trail may eventually be open to the public, including 50 stations or station ruins.
From 1866 until 1890, the Pony Express logo was used by Wells Fargo, which provided secure mail and freight services.
  The United States Postal Service (USPS) uses 'Pony Express' as a trademark for postal services in the US.  Freight Link international courier services, based in Russia, adopted the Pony Express trademark,and a logo similar to that of the USPS.
  
     
Image:Pony-express-joseph.jpg|thumb|250px|Pony Express Stables in St. Joseph, Missouri     
A total of about 190 Pony Express stations were placed at intervals of about 10 miles (16 km) along the approximately  route.
   This was roughly the maximum distance a horse could travel at full gallop.
 The rider changed to a fresh horse at each station, taking only the mail pouch called a mochila, (from the Spanish Language--'pouch') with him.
 The employers stressed the importance of the pouch.
 They often said that, if it came to be, the horse and rider should perish before the mochila did.
  The mochila was thrown over the saddle and held in place by the weight of the rider sitting on it.
 Each corner had a cantina, or pocket.
 Bundles of mail were placed in these cantinas, which were padlocked for safety.
 The mochila  could hold 20 pounds (10 kg) of mail along with the 20 pounds of materiall carried on the horse, allowing for a total of 165 pounds (75 kg) on the horse's back.
  Riders, who could not weigh over 125 pounds, changed about every 75–100 miles (120-160 km).
 Included in that 20 pounds were: a water sack, a Bible, a horn for alerting the relay station master to prepare the next horse, a revolver, and a choice of a rifle or another revolver.
 Eventually, they took away everything except one revolver and a water sack to cut down on the weight.
 In case of emergencies, there are several documented cases where a given rider rode two stages back to back--over 20 hours on a galloping horse.
 The riders rode day and night.
It is unknown if riders tried crossing the Sierras in winter but they certainly crossed central Nevada.
  By 1860 there was a telegraph station in Carson City, Nevada.
  The riders received $25 per week as pay.
  A comparable wage for unskilled labor was about $1 per week for a 12-hour day's labor.
    
Alexander Majors, one of the founders of the Pony Express, had acquired more than 400 horses for the project.
 These averaged about 14½ hands (1.47 m) high and averaged 900 pounds (410 kg) each; thus, the name pony was appropriate, even if not strictly correct for all the horses.
thumb|left|300px|Pony Express map from National Park Service.
The roughly  route  roughly followed the Oregon Trail, and California Trail to Fort Bridger in Wyoming and then the Mormon Trail to Salt Lake City, Utah.
 From there it roughly followed the Central Nevada Route to Carson City, Nevada before passing over the Sierra Nevadas into Sacramento, California.
The rote started at St. Joseph, Missouri on the Missouri River, it then followed what is modern day US 36—the Pony Express Highway—to Marysville, Kansas, where it turned northwest following Little Blue River to Fort Kearny in Nebraska.
 Through Nebraska it followed the Great Platte River Road, cutting through Gothenburg, Nebraska and passing Courthouse Rock, Chimney Rock, and Scotts Bluff, clipping the edge of Colorado at Julesburg, Colorado, before arriving at Fort Laramie in Wyoming.
  From there it followed the Sweetwater River, passing Independence Rock, Devil's Gate, and Split Rock, to Fort Caspar, through South Pass to Fort Bridger and then down to Salt Lake City.
  From Salt Lake City it generally followed the Central Nevada Route blazed by Captain James H. Simpson of the Corps of Topographical Engineers in 1859.
 This route roughly follows today's U.S. Highway 50 across Nevada and Utah.
 It crossed the Great Basin, the Utah-Nevada Desert, and the Sierra Nevada near Lake Tahoe before arriving in Sacramento.
  Mail was then sent via steamer down the Sacramento River to San Francisco.
 On a few instances when the steamer was missed, riders took the mail via horseback to Oakland, California.
The rides were scheduled to leave San Francisco and St. Joseph simultaneously on April 3, 1860.
  The westbound route has gotten more publicity.
  No photographs of riders beginning in either direction are known and none are believed to exist.
The messenger delivering the mochila from New York and Washington missed a connection in Detroit and arrived in Hannibal, Missouri, two hours late.
  The railroad cleared the track and dispatched a special locomotive called the 'Missouri' with a one-car train to make the 206-mile (332 km) trek across the state in a record 4 hours, 51 minutes — an average of 40 miles per hour (64 km/h).
 It arrived at Olive and 8th Street — a few blocks from the company's new headquarters in a hotel at Patee House at 12th Street and Pennsylvania and the company's nearby stables on Pennsylvania.
  The first pouch contained 49 letters, five private telegrams, and some papers for San Francisco and intermediate points.
St. Joseph Mayor M. Jeff Thompson, William H. Russell and Alexander Majors gave speeches before the mochila was handed off.
 The ride began at about 7:15 p.m.
  The St. Joseph Gazette was the only newspaper included in the bag.
The identity of the first rider has long been in dispute.
 The Weekly West (April 4, 1860) reported Johnson William Richardson was the first rider (see Footnote 358 ).
Image:Stamp US Pony Express 25c.jpg|right|thumb|This 25-cent stamp printed by Wells Fargo was cancelled in Virginia City, Nevada, and used on a revived Pony Express run between there and Sacramento beginning in 1862.
thumb|right|Pony Express statue in St. Joseph, Missouri
thumb|right|The postal service running pony logo used before 1970 was not inspired by the Pony Express as many believe.
Image:Pony-express-logo.jpg|thumb|right|Wells Fargo security patch
The first horse-ridden leg of the Express was only about a half mile (800 m) from the Express stables/railroad area to the Missouri River ferry at the foot of Jules Street.
 Johnny Fry is credited as the first westbound rider who carried the pouch across the Missouri River ferry to Elwood, Kansas.
  Reports indicated that horse and rider crossed the river.
 In later rides, the courier crossed the river without a horse and picked up his mount at a stable on the other side.
  
The first westbound mochila reached its destination, San Francisco, on April 14, at 1:00 a.m.
James Randall is credited as the first rider from the San Francisco Alta telegraph office, since  he was on the steamship Antelope to go to Sacramento.
 At 2:45 a.m., William (Sam) Hamilton was the first rider to begin the journey from Sacramento.
Although the Pony Express proved that the central/northern mail route was viable, Russell, Majors, and Waddell did not get the contract to deliver mail over the route.
 The contract was instead awarded to Jeremy Dehut in March 1861, who had taken over the southern Congressionally favored Butterfield Overland Mail Stage Line.
 Holladay took over the Russell, Majors and Waddell stations for his stagecoaches.
  
Shortly after the contract was awarded, the start of the American Civil War caused the stage line to cease operation.
  From March 1861, the Pony Express ran mail only between Salt Lake City and Sacramento.
  The Pony Express announced its closure on October 26, 1861, two days after the transcontinental telegraph reached Salt Lake City and connected Omaha, Nebraska and Sacramento, California.
   Other telegraph lines connected points along the line and other cities on the east and west coasts.
The Pony Express had grossed $90,000 and lost $200,000.
  In 1866, after the American Civil War was over, Holladay sold the Pony Express assets along with the remnants of the Butterfield Stage to Wells Fargo for $1.5 million.
Wells Fargo used the Pony Express logo for its guard and armored car service.
 The logo continued to be used when other companies took over the security business into the 1990s.
 Effective 2001, the Pony Express logo was no longer used for security businesses since the business has been sold.
In June 2006, the United States Postal Service announced it had trademarked 'Pony Express' along with Air Mail.
'Pony Express' is a trademarked name used by Freight Link international courier services company in Russia; their logo is similar to the one trademarked by United States Postal Service with 'Since 1860' written under the image.
Pony Express memorial statues are in Sacramento; Stateline, Nevada; Reno, Nevada; Salt Lake City; Casper, Wyoming; Julesburg, Colorado; Marysville, Kansas; North Kansas City, Missouri; and St. Joseph.
 The original and most famous is the one dedicated on April 20, 1940, in St. Joseph.
 It was sculpted by Hermon Atkins MacNeil.
 It is at City Hall Park.
 The city has rejected proposals to move it to the park opposite the stables.
Eagle Mountain, Utah, located on the original Pony Express Trail in Utah, has several locations and events that commemorate the Pony Express.
  
 Pony Express Boulevard in Eagle Mountain, Utah may be the only street built on the original Pony Express Trail that is named after the Pony Express.
 Pony Express Days, the annual community celebration of Eagle Mountain, are celebrated the first week of June of each year.
 The Alpine School Districts's Pony Express Elementary School is located in Eagle Mountain and is a K-5 elementary school.
  
 Eagle Mountain also has an official Pony Express monument on the site of the original Joe's Dug Out station on the Pony Express Trail.
  
 Neighborhoods in Eagle Mountain are named after stations on the Pony Express Trail, such as: 'Cold Spring', 'Kennekuk', 'Ash Point', and 'Kiowa'.
  A major road is named 'Sweetwater', after another station, and a charter High School is named 'Rockwell.'
McGraw Hill and Amerikids USA produced the game Pony Express Rider in 1996.
 In the game, the Pony Express helps the Union uncover the plans of the Knights of the Golden Circle.
 The Pony Express is depicted in Spielberg's mini-series 'Into the West' (2005).
 Dobytown, Nebraska
 Pony Express Museum
 Yam (route)
 Joseph Alfred Slade
Image:Joe%27s_Dugout_monument_Eagle_Mountain_UT.JPG|'Joe's Dug Out' Pony Express Monument located on Pony Express Boulevard in Eagle Mountain, Utah
Image:Pony_Express_Elementary_Eagle_Mountain_UT.JPG|Pony Express Elementary School located in Eagle Mountain, Utah
Image:PonyExpressDays_Parade_2008.JPG|Parade celebrating Pony Express Days in Eagle Mountain, Utah.
 Century Magazine, volume xxxiv (New York, 1898)
, Wyoming Tales and Trails
, Kansas Historical Quarterly, February, 1946 (Vol.
 14 No. 1), pp. 36-92.
, National Park Service
, St. Joseph Museum Inc.
,  National Postal Museum
, Pocantico Hills
Category:Wells Fargo
Category:1860 establishments
Category:1860s in the United States
Category:American folklore
Category:American Old West
Category:Central Overland Route
Category:Express mail
Category:History of the United States (1849–1865)
Category:History of United States expansionism
Category:Lincoln Highway
Category:National Park areas in California
Category:National Park areas in Kansas
Category:National Park areas in Nebraska
Category:National Park areas in Nevada
Category:National Park areas in Utah
Category:National Park areas in Wyoming
Category:National Trails of the United States
Category:United States Postal Service
Category:Utah War
Pony Express
cs:Pony Express
es:Pony Express
fr:Pony Express
nl:Pony Express
pt:Pony Express
fi:Pony Express
Roughing It is a book of semi-autobiographical travel literature written by American humorist Mark Twain.
 It was written during 1870–71 and published in 1872 as a prequel to his first book Innocents Abroad.
  This book tells of Twain's adventures prior to his pleasure cruise related in Innocents Abroad.
  
Roughing It follows the travels of young Mark Twain through the Wild West during the years 1861–1867.
 After a brief stint as a Confederate cavalry militiaman, he joined his brother Orion Clemens, who had been appointed Secretary of the Nevada Territory, on a stagecoach journey west.
  Twain consulted his brother's diary to refresh his memory and borrowed heavily from his active imagination for many stories in the novel.
Roughing It illustrates many of Twain's early adventures, including a visit to Salt Lake City, gold and silver prospecting, real-estate speculation, and his beginnings as a writer.
  
In this memoir, readers can see examples of Twain's rough-hewn humor, which would become a staple of his writing in his later books, such as Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, The Adventures of Tom Sawyer, and A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court.
U.S. astronauts Frank Borman and James Lovell read 'Roughing It' aloud to pass the time aboard NASA's Gemini VII, a 14-day-long Earth orbital mission in December 1965.
 Borman recalls reading the book during an on-camera interview in the 1999 PBS-TV (USA) television program 'Nova: To the Moon'.
, text plus additional background material.
 3 short  from Roughing It from California Legacy Project.
Category:1872 books
Category:Books by Mark Twain
Category:Portrayals of Mormons in popular media
Category:Travel books
Category:American Old West
fr:À la dure
thumb|300px|A land rush in progress
The Oklahoma Land Run of 1889 was the first land run into the Unassigned Lands and included all or part of the modern day Canadian, Cleveland, Kingfisher, Logan, Oklahoma, and Payne counties of the U.S. state of Oklahoma.
   The land run started at high noon on April 22, 1889, with an estimated 50,000 people lined up for their piece of the available two million acres (8,000 km²).
The Unassigned Lands were considered some of the best unoccupied public land in the United States.
  The Indian Appropriations Bill of 1889 was passed and signed into law with an amendment by Illinois Representative William McKendree Springer, that authorized President Benjamin Harrison to open the two million acres (8,000 km²) for settlement.
  Due to the Homestead Act of 1862, signed by President Abraham Lincoln, legal settlers could claim lots up to  in size.
  Provided that a settler who lived on the land and improved it, could then receive the title to the land.
By the end of April 22, both Oklahoma City and Guthrie had established cities of around 10,000 people in literally half a day.
  As Harper's Weekly put it: 
'Unlike Rome, the city of Guthrie was built in a day.
 To be strictly accurate in the matter, it might be said that it was built in an afternoon.
 At twelve o'clock on Monday, April 22d [sic],  the resident population of Guthrie was nothing; before sundown it was at least ten thousand.
 In that time streets had been laid out, town lots staked off, and steps taken toward the formation of a municipal government.'
Many settlers immediately started improving their new land or stood in line waiting to file their claim.
  Many children sold creek water to homesteaders waiting in line for five cents a cup, while other children gathered buffalo chips to provide fuel for cooking.
  By the second week, schools had opened and were being taught by volunteers paid by pupils' parents until regular school districts could be established.
  Within one month, Oklahoma City had five banks and six newspapers.
On May 2, 1890, the Organic Act was passed creating the Oklahoma Territory.
 This act included the Panhandle of Oklahoma within the territory.
 It also allowed for central governments and designated Guthrie as the territory's capital.
Image:Cattle round up.jpg|thumb|A modern small-scale cattle drive in New Mexico, USA
A cattle drive is the process of moving a herd of cattle from one place to another, usually moved and herded by cowboys on horses.
Cattle drives involved cowboys on horseback moving herds of cattle long distances to market.
 It was a major economic activity in the American west, particularly between the years 1866-86, when 20 million cattle were herded from Texas to railheads in Kansas for shipments to stockyards in Chicago and points east.
 Because of extensive treatment of cattle drives in fiction and film, the cowboy became the worldwide iconic image of the American.
thumb|Cattle herd and cowboy, circa 1902
Europe had few cattle drives but in the 16th century the Swiss operated one over the St. Gotthard pass to the markets in Bellinzona and Lugano and into Lombardy in northern Italy.
 The drives had ended by 1700 when sedentary dairy farming proved more profitable.
Long-distance cattle driving was traditional in Mexico, California and Texas.
 The Spaniards had established the ranching industry in the New World, and begun driving herds northward from Mexico beginning in the 1540s.
 Throughout most of the 18th and 19th centuries, small Spanish settlements in Texas derived much of their revenue from horses and cattle driven into Louisiana, though such trade was usually illegal.
 Cattle driving over long distances also took place in the United States, although infrequently.
 In 1790 the boy Davy Crockett helped drive 'a large stock of cattle' 400 miles from Tennessee into Virginia; twenty years later he took a drove of horses from the Tennessee River into southern North Carolina.
 Long-distance herding of hogs was also common.
 In 1815 Timothy Flint 'encountered a drove of more than 1,000 cattle and swine' being driven from the interior of Ohio to Philadelphia.
 The stock in the states was gentle, often managed on foot.
 The history of trail driving involves horses as well as cattle.
Texans established trail driving as a regular occupation. Before they broke away from Mexico in 1836, they had a 'Beef Trail' to New Orleans.
 In the 1840s they extended their markets northward into Missouri.
 The towns of Sedalia, Baxter Springs, Springfield, and Saint Louis became principal markets.
 During the 1850s, emigration and freighting from the Missouri River westward caused a rise in demand for oxen.
 In 1858, the firm of Russell, Majors and Waddell utilized about 40,000 oxen.
 Texas longhorn were broken by the thousands for work oxen.
 Herds of longhorns were driven to Chicago, and at least one herd all the way to New York.
thumb|275px|After 1865 cowboys drove herds of longhorn cattle over the Chisholm Trail to the railheads in Kansas; they were replaced with hybrid short-horned breeds after 1900.
The gold boom in California in the 1850s created a demand for beef and provided people with the cash to pay for it.
 Thus very long drives were attempted.
 Australians began cattle drives to ports for shipment of beef to San Francisco and, after freezing methods were developed, all the way to Britain.
 In 1853 Italian aristocrat Leonetto Cipriani undertook a drive from St. Louis to San Francisco along the Oregon-California trail; he returned to Europe in 1855 with large profits.
During the Civil War before the Union seized the Mississippi in 1863 , Texans drove cattle into the Confederacy for the use of the Confederate Army.
 In October, 1862, a Union naval patrol on the southern Mississippi River captured 1,500 head of Texas longhorns, which had been destined for Confederate military posts in Louisiana.
 The permanent loss of the main cattle supply after 1863 was a serious blow to the Confederate Army.
In 1865 at the end of the American Civil War, however, Philip Danforth Armour opened a meat packing plant in Chicago, which became known as Armour and Company, and with the expansion of the meat packing industry, the demand for beef increased significantly.
 By 1866, cattle could be sold to northern markets for as much as $40 per head, making it potentially profitable for cattle, particularly from Texas, to be herded long distances to market.
The first large-scale effort to drive cattle from Texas to the nearest railhead for shipment to Chicago occurred in 1866, when many Texas ranchers banded together to drive their cattle to the closest point that railroad tracks reached, which at that time was in Sedalia, Missouri.
 However, farmers in eastern Kansas, afraid that Longhorns would transmit cattle fever to local animals as well as trample crops, formed groups that threatened to beat or shoot cattlemen found on their lands, and therefore the 1866 drive failed to reach the railroad, and the cattle herds were sold for low prices.
 However, as soon as 1867, a cattle shipping facility was built west of farm country around the railhead at Abilene, Kansas, and became a center of cattle shipping, loading over 36,000 head of cattle that year.
 The route from Texas to Abilene became known as the Chisholm Trail, after Jesse Chisholm, who marked out the route.
 It ran through present-day Oklahoma, which then was Indian Territory, but there were relatively few conflicts with Native Americans, who usually allowed cattle herds to pass through for a toll of ten cents a head.
 Later, other trails forked off to different railheads, including those at Dodge City and Wichita, Kansas.
 By 1877, the largest of the cattle-shipping boom towns, Dodge City, Kansas, shipped out 500,000 head of cattle.
At the close of the war Texas had probably 5 million cattle--and no market.
 Late in 1865 a few cowmen tried to find a market.
 In 1866 there were many drives northward without a definite destination and without much financial success; also to the old but limited New Orleans market, following mostly well-established trails to the wharves of Shreveport and Jefferson (Texas).
 In 1868, David Morrill Poor, a former Confederate officer from San Antonio, Texas, drove 1,100 cattle from east of San Angelo into Mexico over the Chihuahua Trail.
 This event, the 'Great Chihuahua Cattle Drive,' was the largest cattle drive attempted over that trail up to that time, but the market was much better in Kansas than in Mexico, so most drives headed north.
In 1867 Joseph G.
 McCoy opened a regular market at Abilene, Kans.
 The great cattle trails, moving successively westward, were established and trail driving boomed.
 In 1867 the Goodnight-Loving Trail opened up New Mexico and Colorado to Texas cattle.
 By the tens of thousands they were soon driven into Arizona.
 In Texas itself cattle raising expanded rapidly as American tastes shifted from pork to beef.
 Caldwell, Dodge City, Ogallala, Cheyenne, and other towns became famous because of trail-driver patronage.
The Chisholm Trail was the most important route for cattle drives leading north from the vicinity of Ft.
 Worth, Texas, across Indian Territory (Oklahoma) to the railhead at Abilene, Kansas.
 It was about 220 miles long and generally followed the line of the ninety-eighth meridian, but never had an exact location, as different drives took somewhat different paths.
The typical drive comprised 1,500-2,500 head of cattle.
 The typical outfit consisted of a boss, (perhaps the owner), from ten to fifteen hands, each of whom had a string of from five to ten horses; a horse wrangler who handled the horses; and a cook, who drove the chuck wagon.
 The wagon carried the bedrolls; tents were considered excess luxury.
 The men drove and grazed the cattle most of the day, herding them by relays at night.
 Ten or twelve miles was considered a good day's drive, as the cattle had to thrive on the route.
 They ate grass; the men had bread, meat, beans with bacon, and coffee.
 Wages were about $40 a month, paid when the herd were sold.
The Chisholm Trail decreased in importance after 1871, when Abilene lost its preeminence as a shipping point for Texas cattle, as a result of the westward advance of settlement.
 Dodge City, Kansas, became the chief shipping point and another trail farther west, crossing the Red River near Doan's Store, Texas.
 The extension of the Atchison, Topeka and Santa Fe Railway to Caldwell, Kansas, in 1880, however, again made the Chisholm Trail a most important route for driving Texas cattle to the North, and it retained this position until the building of additional trunk lines of railway south into Texas caused rail shipments to take the place of the former trail driving of Texas cattle north to market.
The cow towns flourished 1866-1890.
 The first was Abilene, Kansas.
 Other towns in Kansas--Wichita, Hays, Ellsworth, Newton, Caldwell, and Dodge City--succeeded Abilene or shared its patronage by riders fresh off the long trail.
 Hunnewell, Missouri; Ogallala, Nebreska; Cheyenne, Wyoming; Miles City, Montonta; and Medora, North Dakota, served the trade as well.
 In the 1880s Dodge City boasted of being the 'cowboy capital of the world.'
 Abilene, Tascosa, Amarillo, Fort Worth, and Wichita Falls, all in Texas; and Prescott, Arizona; Greeley, Colorado; and Las Vegas, New Mexico were regionally important.
The most famous cow towns like Abilene were railheads, where the herds were shipped to the Chicago stockyards.
 Many smaller towns along the way supported range lands.
 Many of the cow towns were enlivened by buffalo hunters, railroad construction gangs, and freighting outfits during their heyday.
 Cattle owners made these towns headquarters for buying and selling.
Cowboys, after months of monotonous work, dull food, and abstinence of all kinds, were paid off and turned loose.
 They howled, got shaved and shorn, bought new clothes and gear.
 They drank 'white mule' straight.
 Madames and gambling-hall operators flourished in towns that were wide open twenty-four hours a day.
 Violence and ebullient spirits called forth a kind of 'peace officer' that cow towns made famous--the town marshal.
 Wild Bill Hickok and Wyatt Earp were perhaps the two best-known cow-town marshals.
 The number of killings was, however, small by the standards of eastern cities.
By the 1880s, the expansion of the cattle industry resulted in the need for additional open range.
 Thus many ranchers expanded into the northwest, where there were still large tracts of unsettled grassland.
 Texas cattle were herded north, into the Rocky Mountain west and the Dakotas.
 However, continued overgrazing of the open range, combined with drought and the exceptionally severe winter of 1886-87 wiped out much of the open-range cattle business in Montana and the upper Great Plains.
   Following these events, ranchers began to use barbed wire to enclose their ranches and protect their own grazing lands from intrusions by others' animals.
In the 1890s herds were still occasionally driven from the Panhandle of Texas to Montana.
 However, railroads had expanded to cover most of the nation, and meat packing plants were built closer to major ranching areas, making long cattle drives to the railheads unnecessary.
 Hence, the age of the open range was gone and the era of large cattle drives were over.
During three swift decades it had moved over ten million cattle and one million range horses, stamped the entire West with its character, given economic and personality prestige to Texas, made the longhorn historic, glorified the cowboy over the globe, and endowed America with its most romantic tradition relating to any occupation.
The best known cowboy writers include Theodore Roosevelt, who lost his inheritance ranching in the Dakotas in the 1880s, Will Rogers, the leading humorist of the 1920s, and Indiana-born Andy Adams (1859-1935), who spent the 1880s and 1890s in the cattle industry and mining in the Great Plains and Southwest.
 When an 1898 play's portrayal of Texans outraged Adams, he started writing plays, short stories, and novels drawn from his own experiences.
 His The Log of a Cowboy (1903) became a classic novel about the cattle business, especially the cattle drive.
 It described a fictional drive of the Circle Dot herd from Texas to Montana in 1882, and became a leading source on cowboy life; historians retraced his path in the 1960s, confirming his basic accuracy.
 His writing is acclaimed and criticized for their fidelity to truth and their lack of literary qualities.
The cowboy's distinctive working gear, most of it borrowed from the Mexican vaquero, captured the public image.
 His high-crowned sombrero, high-heeled boots, leather chaps, six-shooter, lariat, and spurs were functional and necessary in the field, and fascinating on the movie screen.
 Increasingly the public identified the cowboy with courage and devotion to duty, for he tended cattle wherever he had to go, whether in bogs of quicksand; swift, flooding rivers; or seemingly inaccessible brush.
 He rode with lightning and blizzard, ate hot summer sand, and was burned by the sun.
 Theodore Roosevelt conceptualized the herder as a stage of civilization distinct from the sedentary farmer--a classic theme well expressed in the 1944 film 'Oklahoma!'
 Roosevelt argued that the manhood typified by the cowboy--and outdoor activity and sports generally--was essential if American men were to avoid the softness and rot produced by an easy lifer in the city.
 The cow towns along the trail were notorious for providing liquor to the cowboys; they usually were not allowed to drink on the trail itself.
Cattle drives had to strike a balance between speed and the weight of the cattle.
 While cattle could be driven as far as  in a single day, they would lose so much weight that they would be hard to sell when they reached the end of the trail.
 Usually they were taken shorter distances each day, allowed periods to rest and graze both at midday and at night.
 On average, a herd could maintain a healthy weight moving about 15 miles per day.
 Such a pace meant that it would take as long as two months to travel from a home ranch to a railhead.
 The Chisholm trail, for example, was  long.
On average, a single herd of cattle on a drive numbered about 3,000 head.
 To herd the cattle, a crew of at least 10 cowboys was needed, with three horses per cowboy.
 Cowboys worked in shifts to watch the cattle 24 hours a day, herding them in the proper direction in the daytime and watching them at night to prevent stampedes and deter theft.
 The crew also included a cook, who drove a chuck wagon, usually pulled by oxen, and a horse wrangler to take charge of the remuda, or spare horses.
 The wrangler on a cattle drive was often a very young cowboy or one of lower social status, but the cook was a particularly well-respected member of the crew, as not only was he in charge of the food, he also was in charge of medical supplies and had a working knowledge of practical medicine.
Smaller cattle drives continued at least into the 1940s, as ranchers, prior to the development of the modern cattle truck, still needed to herd cattle to local railheads for transport to stockyards and packing plants.
 Today, cattle drives are primarily used to round up cattle within the boundaries of a ranch and to move them from one pasture to another, a process that generally lasts at most a few days.
 Because of the significance of the cattle drive in American history, some working ranches have turned their seasonal drives into tourist events, inviting guests in a manner akin to a guest ranch to participate in moving the cattle from one feeding ground to the next.
  While horses are still used in many places, particularly where there is rough or mountainous terrain, the all-terrain vehicle is also used.
 When cattle are required to move longer distances, they are shipped via truck.
Events intended to promote the western lifestyle may incorporate cattle drives.
  For example the Great Montana Centennial Cattle Drive of 1989 celebrated the state's centennial and raised money for a college scholarship fund as 2,400 people (including some working cowboys), 200 wagons and 2,800 cattle traveled 50 miles in six days from Roundup to Billings along a major highway.
 Similar drives have been sponsored since that time.
Cattle drives were a major element of many hollywood films, particularly during the studio era when westerns were extremely popular.
 One of the most famous is 'Red River' (1948) directed by Howard Hawks, and starring John Wayne and Montgomery Clift.
 Like many films, Red River tended to exaggerate the dangers and disasters of cattle driving.
 The eighties miniseries Lonesome Dove starring Robert Duvall and Tommy Lee Jones centers on an extraordinarily long cattle drive from Mexico to Montana that suffers many casualties and deaths.
Cattle drive (worldwide focus)
Cowboy
Drover (Australian)
Ranch
Station (Australian agriculture)
 Allmendinger, Blake.
 The Cowboy: Representations of Labor in an American Work Culture.
 (1992).
 213 pp. 
 Alonzo, Armando C.
 Tejano Legacy: Rancheros and Settlers in South Texas, 1734-1900 (1998) 
 Atherton, Lewis E. The Cattle Kings (1961), influential interpretive study
 Carlson, Paul H., ed.
 The Cowboy Way: An Exploration of History and Culture.
 (2000).
 236 pp. 
 Clayton, Lawrence; Hoy, Jim; and Underwood, Jerald.
 Vaqueros, Cowboys, and Buckaroos.
 (2001) 274 pp. 
 Dale E. E. The Range Cattle Industry (1930)
 Dary, David.
 Cowboy Culture: A Saga of Five Centuries.
 (1981).
 336 pp. 
 Denton, Ivan.
 Old Brands and Lost Trails: Arkansas and the Great Cattle Drives.
 (1992).
 261 pp.
 Dobie, J. Frank Cow People (1964) 
 Draper, Robert.
 '21st -Century Cowboys: Why the Spirit Endures.'
 National Geographic, December 2007, pp. 114-135
 Dykstra Robert R. Cattle Towns: A Social History of the Kansas Cattle Trading Centers (1968), classic new social history
 Evans, Simon; Carter, Sarah; and Yeo, Bill, eds.
 Cowboys, Ranchers, and the Cattle Business: Cross-Border Perspectives on Ranching History.
 (2000).
 232 pp.
 Gard, Wayne.
 The Chisholm Trail (1969), the standard scholarly history
 Iverson, Peter.
 When Indians Became Cowboys: Native Peoples and Cattle Ranching in the American West (1997) 
 Jordan, Terry.
 Trails to Texas: Southern Roots of Western Cattle Ranching (1981) 
 Jordan, Terry.
 North American Cattle-Ranching Frontiers: Origins, Diffusion, and Differentiation (1993) 
 Malone, John William.
 An Album of the American Cowboy.
 New York: Franklin Watts, Inc., 1971.
 SBN: 531-01512-2
 Malone, Michael P., and Richard B. Roeder.
 Montana: A History of Two Centuries.
 University of Washington Press; Revised edition, 1991.
 ISBN 0295971290, ISBN 978-0295971292
 Massey, Sara R.
 Texas Women on the Cattle Trails (2006)  
 Massey, Sara R., ed.
 Black Cowboys of Texas.
 (2000).
 361 pp. 
 Osgood, E. S. The Day of the Cattleman.
  (1929)  
 Ridings, S.P. Chisholm Trail (1936)
 Rollins, Philip Ashton.
 The Cowboy: An Unconventional History of Civilization on the Old-Time Cattle Range.
 (1922, reprint 1997).
 402 pp. 
 Rossel, John.
 'The Chisholm Trail,' Kansas Historical Quarterly (1936) Vol.
 5, No. 1 pp 3-14 
 Skaggs, Jimmy.
 The Cattle Trailing Industry: Between Supply and Demand, 1866-1890 (1973), pathbreaking economic study
 Slatta, Richard W. Comparing Cowboys and Frontiers.
 (1997).
 320 pp. 
 Slatta, Richard W. Cowboys of the Americas.
 (1990).
 306 pp. 
 Vernam, Glenn R. Man on Horseback New York: Harper & Row 1964
 Webb, Walter P. The Great Plains (1931)
 Carlson, Paul Howard, ed.
 The Cowboy Way: An Exploration of History and Culture (2000) 
 Corkin, Stanley.
 Cowboys as Cold Warriors: The Western and U.S. History.
 (2004).
 273 pp.
 * Corkin, Stanley.
 'Cowboys and Free Markets: Post-World War II Westerns and U.S. Hegemony,' Cinema Journal, Vol.
 39, No. 3 (Spring, 2000), pp. 66-91, focus on Howard Hawks's 'Red River' (a cattle drive) and John Ford's 'My Darling Clementine' (on Tombstone); 
 Dippie, Brian W., ed.
 Charlie Russell Roundup: Essays on America's Favorite Cowboy Artist.
 (1999).
 328 pp. 
 Dykstra, Robert R., and Jo Ann Manfra.
 'The Circle Dot Cowboys at Dodge City: History and Imagination in Andy Adams's The Log of a Cowboy,' Western Historical Quarterly 33 (2002): 19-40, 
 Frantz, Joe B., and Julian E. Choate.
 The American Cowboy, The Myth and the Reality ( 1955)
 Savage, William W., Jr. The Cowboy Hero: His Image in American History and Culture.
 (1979).
 179 pp. 
 Smith, Andrew Brodie.
 Shooting Cowboys and Indians: Silent Western Films, American Culture, and the Birth of Hollywood.
 (2003).
 230 pp.
 Tompkins, Jane.
 West of Everything: The Inner Life of Westerns.
 (1992).
 245 pp.
 Walker, Don D. Clio's Cowboys: Studies in the Historiography of the Cattle Trade.
 (1981).
 210 pp.
 Adams, Andy.
 The Log of a Cowboy: A Narrative of the Old Trail Days (1903) 
 Cattle Raisers Association of Texas.
 History of the Cattlemen of Texas.
 (1914, reprint 1991).
 350 pp. 
 Collins, Hubert E. Storm and Stampede on the Chisholm (1928, reprint 1998) 
 Hawks, Howard, director.
 Red River (1948), influential Hollywood film starring John Wayne and Montgomery Clift 
 Keese, G. Pomeroy.
 'Beef,' Harper's new monthly magazine.
 July 1884 vol.
 69, Issue 410 pp. 292-302 , strong on economic themes
 Lanning, Jim and Lanning, Judy, eds.
 Texas Cowboys: Memories of the Early Days.
 (1984).
 233 pp. 
 Logsdon, Guy, ed.
 'The Whorehouse Bells Were Ringing' and Other Songs Cowboys Sing.
 (1989).
 388 pp.
 McCoy, Joseph G.
 Historic Sketches of the Cattle Trade of the West and Southwest (1874, reprint 1940).
 McCoy opened the first railhead to large shipments of Texas cattle in 1867.
 Saunders, George W. et al.
 The Trail Drivers of Texas, ed.
 by J. Marvin Hunter (1925, reprint 1985), by far the most valuable source for individual experiences on the long drives.
 Stanley, David and Thatcher, Elaine, eds.
 Cowboy Poets and Cowboy Poetry.
 (2000) 392 pp.
Category:Agriculture in the United States
Category:American Old West
simple:Cattle drives in the United States
Credit Foncier of America was a late 1800s financing and real estate company in Omaha, Nebraska.
 The company existed primarily to promote the townsites along the Union Pacific railroad, and was incorporated by a special act of the Nebraska Legislature in 1866.
 Credit Foncier was said to be 'intimately connected with all the early towns along the Union Pacific.'
While related to Train's Crédit Mobilier the company was not embroiled in the scandals that tore that organization apart.
Founded, controlled, and initially owned by eccentric railroad booster George Francis Train, Credit Foncier was named after Credit Foncier de France.
 Along with support from businessman Cyrus McCormick, Omaha banker Augustus Kountze was among the original 'special commissioners' appointed by the Legislature to form the company.
 Train once explained, 'One of my plans was the creation of a chain of great towns across the continent, connecting Boston and San Francisco by a highway of magnificent cities.'
 The company built a hotel it called the 'Credit Foncier' in Cleveland, Nebraska in 1868; not liking its success there it was moved to Columbus the next year.
 George Train, with so much land in the city, predicted a great future for Columbus.
 Train is credited with writing newspaper articles and delivering speeches in which he promoted the town, calling it, 'Columbus, the new center of the Union and quite probably the future capital of the U.S.A.'
Train served as president of the company; George P. Bemis was the secretary.
 Bemis later became mayor of Omaha.
 Two of his investments in Omaha marked the city's history, including the Cozzens House Hotel.
 The other, originally called 'Train Town' for its owner and still entitled 'Credit Foncier Addition' in city records, yielded Train 'a small fortune' as he sold homes and empty lots to new settlers just south of Omaha.
Train later moved the headquarters of Credit Foncier to Denver, Colorado, and again to Tacoma, Washington.
 Along with Omaha, Train promised each city it would become the 'gleaming metropolis' of the Union Pacific.
Waylaying (sometimes called 'laywaying') was a term used in the American Old West describing an armed attack whereby the attacker hid himself in ambush and fired upon a passing target.
 According to late historian C.L. Sonnichsen there were many methods by which frontier feuds were resolved and murder committed;
'Waylaying was not merely tolerated but strongly recommended, and everybody knew that the right way to handle it was to get down behind a bush beside the road, wait till your target for tonight rode past you, and then fire at the place where his suspenders crossed, the steadiest part of the man-horse combination.' 
They Grave of John Wesley Hardin: Three Essays on Grassroots History by C.L. Sonnichsen, Texas A&M University Press,1979 p.24
Category:American Old West
250px|thumb|right|Chief Spotted Tail 
Siŋté Glešká (pronounced gleh-shka, Spotted Tail) (1823 - 1881) was a Brulé Lakota  tribal chief.
 Although a great warrior in his youth, and having taken part in the Grattan massacre, he declined to participate in Red Cloud's War, having become convinced of the pointlessness of opposing the white incursions into his homeland; he became a statesman, speaking for peace and defending the rights of his tribe.
  In his writings about Wyoming pioneer John Hunton's diaries, historian L. G. (Pat) Flannery noted that Spotted Tail '.
 . . was of unusual intellect with deep and abiding understanding of human rights and dignity, who realized the futility of war as an instrument of justice.'
  
He made several trips to Washington, D.C to represent his people, and was noted for his interest in bringing education to the Sioux.
Spotted Tail was born about 1823 in the White River country west of the Missouri River.
  Over the previous 40 years the Lakota or Teton Sioux had moved from present day Minnesota and eastern South Dakota to areas west of the Missouri, and reformed into several sub-tribes or bands including the Saone, Brulé and Oglala.
  During this time they acquired horses, and rich buffalo hunting grounds.
  Spotted Tail's father, Cunka or Tangle Hair, was from the Saone band, and his mother, Walks-with-the-Pipe, was a Brulé.
  He was given the birth name of Jumping Buffalo.
He took his warrior name, Spotted Tail, after receiving a gift of a raccoon tail from a white trapper, and sometimes wore a raccoon tail in his war head-dress.
 Two of his sisters, Iron Between Horns and Kills Enemy, were married to the elder Crazy Horse, and he may have been the uncle of the famous warrior Crazy Horse which would make him a relative of the famous Touch the Clouds as well.
In 1871, he visited Washington D.C., to meet Commissioner of Indian Affairs Ely S. Parker and President Ulysses Grant; there he met with rival Red Cloud and agreed to work together.
In 1881, following the Black Hills War, Spotted Tail was killed by Crow Dog for reasons that may be disputed.
 According to historian Dee Brown: 
'White officials ... dismissed the killing as the culmination of a quarrel over a woman, but Spotted Tail's friends said that it was the result of a plot to break the power of the chiefs...'. 
According to Luther Standing Bear in his memior My People the Sioux Spotted Tail was killed by Crow Dog after taking the wife of a crippled man.
  Spotted Tail had gone to the Carlisle Indian school and removed his three children and granddaughter despite Captain Pratt's objection.
  Spotted Tail had been given gifts from the Carlisle school and considered his ability to receive gifts from the government and take back his children as a sign of his power.
 He exploited this and sold land not belonging to him.
  This angered many of the Sioux chiefs and Chief Standing Bear the first cautioned the other sioux leaders against hasty action.
  Spotted Tail's continual flaunting of his believed power was brought to a head when he stole the wife of a crippled man.
  When told by a council of chiefs to give the man his wife back, Spotted Tail refused saying he will do as he pleases and the US Government is behind him.
  At this point several men decided that Spotted Tail would be killed but before they could act Spotted Tail was ambushed and assassinated by Crow Dog in 1881.
He is buried in Rosebud, South Dakota.
A tribal university (Sinte Gleska University) on the Rosebud Indian Reservation in South Dakota was named for him in 1971.
In 1874, George Armstrong Custer led a reconnaissance mission into Sioux territory that reported gold in the Black Hills, an area held sacred by the local Indians.
 Formerly, the Army tried to keep miners out but did not succeed; the threat of violence grew.
 In May of 1875, delegations headed by Spotted Tail, Red Cloud, and Lone Horn traveled to Washington, D.C. in a last-ditch attempt to persuade President Grant to honor existing treaties and stem the flow of miners into their territories.
  The Indians met with Grant, Secretary of the Interior Delano, and Commissioner of Indian Affairs Smith, who informed them that Congress wanted to resolve the matter by giving the tribes $25,000 for their land and resettling them into Indian Territory.
  The Indians rejected such a treaty, with Spotted Tail’s reply to the proposition being as follows:
 “My father, I have considered all the Great Father told me, and have come here to give you an answer .
 . .
 When I was here before, the President gave me my country, and I put my stake down in a good place, and there I want to stay .
 . .
 I respect the Treaty (doubtless referring to the 1868 Treaty of Fort Laramie) but the white men who come in our country do not.
  You speak of another country, but it is not my country; it does not concern me, and I want nothing to do with it.
  I was not born there .
 . .
 If it is such a good country, you ought to send the white men now in our country there and let us alone .
 . .”
Although these chieftains were unsuccessful in finding a peaceful solution, Spotted Tail and Red Cloud did not take part in the Great Sioux War of 1876-1877 led by Crazy Horse and Sitting Bull.
Eugene Ware, a Fort Laramie army officer, wrote that Spotted Tail’s daughter, Ah-ho-appa (Fallen Leaf), “.
 . . was one of those individuals found in all lands, at all places, and among all people; she was misplaced.”  She apparently was not in harmony with her own race, preferring instead to emulate white people.
 There was also speculation that she was secretly in love with one of the officers at the fort.
When she was dying in 1866, Fallen Leaf made her father promise that she would be buried on a hillside overlooking Fort Laramie.
  The entire garrison at the post helped Spotted Tail to honor her request by arranging for a funeral full of pomp and ceremony, which included a Christian service and an Indian burial.
  Many years later, her remains were taken by Spotted Tail to the Rosebud Indian Agency in South Dakota and interred under an appropriate monument.
 Grand Duke Alexei Alexandrovich of Russia
 Paha Sapa (The Black Hills)
 Crazy Horse
200px|right|thumb|Grattan marker, 2003
The Grattan Massacre took place on August 19, 1854.
 It occurred east of Fort Laramie, Nebraska Territory, USA, now in present-day Goshen County, Wyoming, when thirty U.S. soldiers and a civilian were killed by Brulé Lakota (Sioux) after one of the soldiers had fired into the village and had shot their Chief Conquering Bear in the back.
 It was an early and significant event in the plains Indian Wars.
In the late summer of 1854, about 4,000 Brulé and Oglala were camped near Fort Laramie in accordance with the terms of the Treaty of 1851.
 On August 17, a cow belonging to a Mormon traveling on the nearby Oregon Trail was killed by a Minneconjou named High Forehead.
 Lt.
 Hugh Fleming, the senior officer at the fort, called on Conquering Bear, so that the matter could be discussed.
 Lt.
 Fleming was evidently unaware, or chose to ignore that matters of that nature were, by the terms of the Treaty of 1851, to be handled by the local Indian Agent, in this case John Whitfield, who was due to arrive within days.
 Conquering Bear, however, was fully aware that the matter should not concern the military, but he still attempted to negotiate, and did not consider the matter serious.
 Conquering Bear offered the cow's owner his choice of any of his 60 horse herd.
 The owner refused, demanding $25 instead.
 Lt.
 Fleming demanded that the Sioux arrest High Forehead and deliver him to the fort, to which Conquering Bear refused.
 That day's negotiations ended with no result.
The next day, Second Lieutenant John Lawrence Grattan, of the U.S. 6th Infantry Regiment, a recent graduate of West Point, was allowed to lead a detachment into the Indian encampment to bring in the guilty Lakota cow-killer.
  Grattan was an inexperienced, short-tempered young man, openly contemptuous of the Lakotas' ability as warriors and who was looking to prove himself.
 This would be his first interaction with the Sioux.
 A commander at Laramie later recalled, 'There is no doubt that Lt.
 Grattan left this post with a desire to have a fight with the Indians, and that he had determined to take the man at all hazards.'
 Grattan took with him a sergeant, a corporal, 27 privates and a French-American interpreter named Luciene Auguste, along with two artillery pieces.
By the time the detachment reached the Indian encampment, Auguste was intoxicated, and Grattan broke the translator's bottle against his saddle.
 Had Lt.
 Grattan taken charge of Auguste at that point, and sent him back to the fort, it may have prevented tragedy.
 Instead, Lt.
 Grattan scolded him, and continued on.
 Auguste was not well liked by the Sioux, and spoke only broken Dakota, with his other dialects being poor to nonexistent.
 As they entered the encampment, he began to taunt the Sioux, calling their warriors women, and stating that the soldiers were not there to talk, but to kill them all.
 A local trader and trading post owner, James Bordeaux, later recounted those facts.
It is estimated that the encampment as a whole had some 1,200 warriors out of the total 4,000 or so total population.
 According to Bordeaux, Lt.
 Grattan did begin to realize his situation, and stopped to discuss this with Bordeaux, who was there trading.
 Bordeaux advised Grattan to speak directly with Conquering Bear and let him handle the situation in his own way and in his own time.
 Lt.
 Grattan seemed to grasp that concept, and continued on into the encampment.
 However, he first located the lodge of High Forehead, and ordered his surrender.
 High Forehead refused, saying he would die first.
Lt.
 Grattan then approached Conquering Bear, insisting that the Sioux should arrest the guilty party and turn him over.
 Conquering Bear refused.
 However, Conquering Bear did understand the nature of the situation and tried to negotiate, but Lt.
 Grattan continued to escalate tensions.
 The problem was undoubtedly made worse by the interpreter Auguste, who continued to taunt the Sioux, and seemingly mistranslated some of what Conquering Bear said, as well as what Lt.
 Grattan said, as there seemed to be some confusion.
 Conquering Bear asked that the trader, James Bordeaux, be brought to translate, as they trusted him and his language skills were excellent.
 Bordeaux was notified by the Sioux, and he did ride forward to the meeting place, however he would later say that he could quickly see that the matter had gotten out of hand, as Lt.
 Grattan was openly defiant of Conquering Bear, and Bordeaux could see the Sioux warriors moving into flanking positions around the soldiers.
 Seeing this, Bordeaux departed and returned to his trading post, where he told his fellow traders to arm themselves, as a fight was coming.
Lt.
 Grattan evidently tired of the negotiations, and undoubtedly had noticed that his small detachment was in a bad position.
 He concluded the negotiations, and began walking back to his column.
 When Conquering Bear stood up, he was shot in the back and killed by a soldier, while another soldier fired into a group of Indians nearby, wounding one.
 This started a volley of fire from both sides; Grattan and the 30 men with him were quickly wiped out, with Lt.
 Grattan being one of the first killed.
 A group of some 18 soldiers did break away in an attempt to reach a small group of rocks so that they could form some sort of a defense, but were cut off and annihilated by warriors led by Red Cloud, then an up and coming war leader within the Sioux.
Conquering Bear was the only Lakota who was killed.
  Bordeaux was spared because he was married to a Sioux woman and had a friendly relationship with her tribe.
The enraged warriors rampaged throughout the night, swearing to kill all other white people.
  They made a token attack on Fort Laramie the next morning; and on the third day, they abandoned their camp on the Platte River and returned to their respective hunting grounds.
  A civilian and military burial party went to the scene of the massacre on the fourth day and found that the slain soldiers had been mutilated by the Indians and burned by the hot August sun beyond recognition.
  Lt.
 Grattan’s body was identified by a watch he was carrying and was returned to the post for burial, but the remains of his troops were merely interred at the site in the same shallow grave.
This event was called the 'Grattan Massacre' by the U.S. press as part of a campaign to stir up anti-Indian sentiment.
 The fact that Lt.
 Grattan had instigated the event, as well as the fact that the army should never have involved itself in the situation was ignored in the press.
 News of the fight reached the War Department and plans were put into motion for retaliation.
William S. Harney was recalled from Paris and sent to Fort Kearny, where he was put in command of elements of his own 2nd US Dragoons.
 They set out on August 24, 1855 to find and exact retribution on the Sioux.
  This then led to the Battle of Ash Hollow (also known as the Battle of Bluewater Creek) on September 3, 1855, in which U.S. soldiers killed a number of Brulé Sioux in present-day Garden County, Nebraska.
  Thus began the nearly quarter-century of intermittent savage warfare on the plains that was triggered by the Grattan massacre.
 Ambrose, Stephen E. (1996).
 - Crazy Horse and Custer.
 - New York: Random House (First Anchor Books Edition).
 - pp.61-64.
Category:Conflicts in 1854
Category:1854 in the United States
Category:Battles involving the Sioux
Category:Battles involving the United States
Category:History of Wyoming
Category:Sioux Wars
Category:Native American history of Nebraska
Category:American Old West
pl:Masakra Grattana
The known history of the Grand Canyon area stretches back 10,500 years when the first evidence for human presence in the area started.
 Native Americans have been living at Grand Canyon and in the area now covered by Grand Canyon National Park for at least the last 4,000 of those years.
 Anasazi, first as the Basketmaker culture and later as the more familiar Puebleoans, developed from the Desert Culture as they became less nomadic and more dependent on agriculture.
 A similar culture, the Cohonina, also lived in the canyon area.
 Drought in the late 13th century was the likely cause for both cultures to move on.
 Other cultures followed, including the Paiutes, Cerbat, and the Navajo, only to be later forced onto reservations by the United States Government.
Under direction by conquistador Francisco Vasquez de Coronado to find the fabled Seven Cities of Cibola, Captain Garcia Lopez de Cardenas led a party of Spanish soldiers with Hopi guides to the Grand Canyon in September of 1540.
 Not finding what they were looking for, they left.
 Over 200 years passed before two Spanish priests became the second party of non-Native Americans to see the canyon.
 In 1869, U.S. Army Major John Wesley Powell led the Powell Geographic Expedition through the canyon on the Colorado River.
 This and later study by geologists uncovered the geology of the Grand Canyon area and helped to advance that science.
 In the late 19th century there was interest in the region because of its promise of mineral resources—mainly copper and asbestos.
 The first pioneer settlements along the rim came in the 1880s.
Early residents soon discovered that tourism was destined to be more profitable than mining, and by the turn of the century Grand Canyon was a well-known tourist destination.
 Most visitors made the grueling trip from nearby towns to the South Rim by stagecoach.
 In 1901 the Grand Canyon Railway was opened from Williams, Arizona, to the South Rim, and the development of formal tourist facilities, especially at Grand Canyon Village, increased dramatically.
 The Fred Harvey Company developed many facilities at the Grand Canyon, including the luxury El Tovar Hotel on the South Rim in 1905 and Phantom Ranch in the Inner Gorge in 1922.
 Although first afforded Federal protection in 1893 as a forest reserve and later as a U.S. National Monument, Grand Canyon did not achieve U.S. National Park status until 1919, three years after the creation of the National Park Service.
 Today, Grand Canyon National Park receives about five million visitors each year, a far cry from the annual visitation of 44,173 in 1919.
thumb|300px|'Foot of Toroweap Looking East' by William H. Holmes (1882).
 Artwork such as this was used to popularize the Grand Canyon area.
thumb|Spilt-twig figurine from the Grand Canyon (NPS photo)
Current archaeological evidence suggests that humans have inhabited the Grand Canyon area as far back as 4,000 years and at least were passers through for 6,500 years before that.
thumb|left|Anasazi food storage building ruins at Tusayan Pueblo.
Large numbers of dated archaeological sites indicate that the Anasazi and the Cohonina flourished until about 1200 CE.  Many Anasazi relocated to the Rio Grande and the Little Colorado River drainages, where their descendants, the Hopi and the 19 Pueblos of New Mexico, now live.
 Adjacent to the eastern part of the park is the Navajo Nation, the largest reservation in the United States.
The first Europeans reached the Grand Canyon in September 1540.
 The group was led by Hopi guides and, assuming they took the most likely route, must have reached the Canyon at the South Rim, probably between today's Desert View and Moran Point.
The report indicates that they greatly misjudged the proportions of the gorge.
  On the one hand, they estimated that the Canyon was about three to four leagues wide (13–16 km, 8–10 mi), which is quite accurate.
  Cárdenas finally had to give up and returned to the main army.
  His report of an insurmountable barrier squelched all interest in the area for the next two hundred years.
Only in 1776 did two Spanish Priests, Fathers Francisco Atanasio Domínguez and Silvestre Vélez de Escalante travel along the North Rim again, together with a group of Spanish soldiers, exploring southern Utah in search of a route from Santa Fe, New Mexico to Monterey, California.
 There is little in terms of documentation to support this, however.
The signing of the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo in 1848 ceded the Grand Canyon region to the United States.
 Jules Marcou of the Pacific Railroad Survey made the first geologic observations of the canyon and surrounding area in 1856.
 Building good relations with local Native Americans and white settlers, he discovered Lee's Ferry in 1858 and Pierce Ferry (later operated by, and named for, Harrison Pierce)—the only two sites suitable for ferry operation.
In 1857 Edward Fitzgerald Beale led an expedition to survey a wagon road from Fort Defiance, Arizona to the Colorado River.
 On September 19 near present day National Canyon they came upon what May Humphreys Stacey described in his journal as '...a wonderful canyon four thousand feet deep.
 Everyone (in the party) admitted that he never before saw anything to match or equal this astonishing natural curiosity.'
A U.S. War Department expedition led by Lt.
 Joseph Ives was launched in 1857 to investigate the area's potential for natural resources, to find railroad routes to the west coast, and assess the feasibility of an up-river navigation route from the Gulf of California.
 In the process, the Explorer struck a rock and was abandoned.
 The group later traveled eastwards along the South Rim of the Grand Canyon.
thumb|left|upright|John Wesley Powell in 1869
A man of his time, Ives discounted his own impressions on the beauty of the canyon and declared it and the surrounding area as 'altogether valueless', remarking that his expedition would be 'the last party of whites to visit this profitless locality'.
 Attached to Ives' expedition was geologist John Strong Newberry who had a very different impression of the canyon.
   Powell was a major in the United States Army and was a veteran of the American Civil War, a conflict that cost him his right forearm in the Battle of Shiloh.
 All those who stayed with Powell survived and that group successfully ran most of the canyon.
thumb|upright|'Noon Day Rest in Marble Canyon' from the second Powell Expedition, circa 1872
Two years later a much better-funded Powell-led party returned with redesigned boats and a chain of several supply stations along their route.
 This time, photographer E.O. Beaman and 17-year-old artist Frederick Dellenbaugh were included.
 Famed painter Thomas Moran joined the expedition in the summer of 1873, after the river voyage and thus only viewed the canyon from the rim.
 His 1873 painting 'Chasm of the Colorado' was bought by the United States Congress in 1874 and hung in the lobby of the Senate.
The Powell expeditions systematically cataloged rock formations, plants, animals, and archaeological sites.
 Photographs and illustrations from the Powell expeditions greatly popularized the canyonland region of the southwest United States, especially the Grand Canyon  (knowing this Powell added increasing resources to that aspect of his expeditions).
 Powell later used these photographs and illustrations in his lecture tours, making him a national figure.
 Rights to reproduce 650 of the expeditions' 1,400 stereographs were sold to help fund future Powell projects.
 In 1881 he became the second director of the U.S. Geological Survey.
thumb|left|upright|Clarence Dutton
Geologist Clarence Dutton followed up on Powell's work in 1880–1881 with the first in-depth geological survey of the newly-formed U.S. Geological Survey.
 Painters Thomas Moran and William Henry Holmes accompanied Dutton, who was busy drafting detailed descriptions of the area's geology.
 The report that resulted from the team's effort was titled A Tertiary History of The Grand Canyon District, with Atlas and was published in 1882.
  The proposed Denver, Colorado Canyon, and Pacific Railway was to carry coal from mines in Colorado.
 Expedition leader Frank M. Brown, his chief engineer Robert Brewster Stanton, and 14 other men set out in six boats from Green River, Utah, on May 25, 1889.
Competition with the automobile (see below) forced the Santa Fe Railroad to cease operation of the Grand Canyon Railway in 1968 (only three passengers were on the last run).
 The railway was restored and reintroduced service in 1989, and has since carried hundreds of passengers a day.
The first automobile was driven to the Grand Canyon in 1902.
 Oliver Lippincott from Los Angeles, California, drove his Toledo Automobile Company-built car to the South Rim from Flagstaff.
 Lippincott, a guide and two writers set out on the afternoon of January 4 that year anticipating a seven-hour journey.
 Two days later, the hungry and dehydrated party arrived at their destination; the countryside was just too rough for the 10 horsepower (7 kW) auto.
 A three day drive from Utah in 1907 was required to reach the North Rim for the first time.
  
thumb|The El Tovar Hotel in the 1900s
Things changed in 1905 when the luxury El Tovar Hotel opened within steps of the Grand Canyon Railway's terminus.
 An IMAX theater just outside the park shows a reenactment of the Powell Expedition.
The Kolb Brothers, Emery and Ellsworth, built a photographic studio on the South Rim at the trailhead of Bright Angel Trail in 1904.
 Hikers and mule caravans intent on descending down the canyon would stop at the Kolb Studio to have their photos taken.
 The Kolb Brothers processed the prints before their customers returned to the rim.
 Using the newly-invented Pathé Bray camera in 1911–12, they became the first to make a motion picture of a river trip through the canyon that itself was only the eighth such successful journey.
 From 1915 to 1975 the film they produced was shown twice a day to tourists with Emery Kolb at first narrating in person and later through tape (a feud with Fred Harvey prevented pre-1915 showings).
By the late 19th century, the conservation movement was increasing national interest in preserving natural wonders like the Grand Canyon.
 U.S. National Parks in Yellowstone and around Yosemite Valley were established by the early 1890s.
 U.S. Senator Benjamin Harrison introduced a bill in 1887 to establish a national park at the Grand Canyon.
  Mining and logging were allowed, but the designation did offer some protection.
 An act signed by President Gerald Ford on January 3, 1975, doubled the size of Grand Canyon National Park by merging these adjacent national monuments and other federal land into it.
 That same act gave Havasu Canyon back to the Havasupai.
In 1935, Hoover Dam started to impound Lake Mead south of the canyon.
 Conservationists lost a battle to save upstream Glen Canyon from becoming a reservoir.
 The Glen Canyon Dam was completed in 1966 to control flooding, provide water and hydroelectric power.
 Seasonal variations of spring  high flow and flooding and low flow in summer have been replaced by a much more regulated system.
 The much more controlled Colorado has a dramatically reduced sediment load, which starves beaches and sand bars.
 In addition, clearer water allows significant algae growth to occur on the riverbed, giving the river a green color.
With the advent of commercial flight, the Grand Canyon has been a popular site for aircraft overflights.
 However, a series of accidents resulted in the Overflights Act of 1987 by the United States Congress, which banned flights below-the-rim and created flight-free zones.
 The tourism flights over the canyon have also created a noise issue, and the number of flights over the park has been restricted.
Grand Canyon
Grand Canyon National Park
Geology of the Grand Canyon area
National Park Service (adapted public domain text) Grand Canyon National Park, , Last updated: 06-Jan-2005.
 Retrieved December 31, 2006.
 Grand Canyon National Park, , Last updated: 06-Jan-2005.
 Retrieved December 31, 2006.
 (viewed April 11, 2005)
 (viewed March 18, 2006)
 official website
Diane Grua, , Annotation, December 1998
, U.S. National Park Service
Category:American Old West
Category:Grand Canyon history
Category:History of Arizona
Category:Native American history
Marion Hedgepeth (1856-1910) - also known as the Handsome Bandit, the Debonair Bandit, the Derby Kid and the Montana Bandit.
  He was a famous Wild West outlaw.
Hedgepeth was born in Prairie Home, Missouri on April 14, 1856.
 Running away from home at the age of 15, he was an outlaw by the time he was 20, having killed in Colorado and Wyoming, as well as robbing trains.
In November, 1883, Hedgepeth was sentenced to serve a term of seven years in the Missouri penitentiary on the charge of larceny and jail breaking.
 He was discharged on February 16, 1889.
Hedgepeth lived for awhile in a lawless region of Kansas City, Missouri, known as 'Seldom Seen' because the police were seldom seen there.
  He became a member of the 'famous Slye-Wilson gang of safe blowers and highwaymen'.
On October 7, 1890 Hedgepeth and the other members of Slye-Wilson gang (Adalbert Slye, 'Jim' Francis and 'Dink' Wilson) robbed a train of $40,000 in Glendale, Missouri near St. Louis, Missouri personally escaping with some $10,000.
 The gang fled to Salt Lake city and disbanded.
 After being relentlessly pursued by the Pinkertons, he was finally arrested on February 1, 1892 in San Francisco, along with Slye, and brought back to  Missouri for trial.
 Convicted, he was sentenced in 1893 to twenty-five years in the Missouri State Prison.
 Hedgepath informed on a former cell-mate, whom he knew as 'H.M. Howard' but was really H H Holmes, which eventually resulted in the notorious killer's unmasking, conviction and execution in 1896.
 For this Hedgepeth was pardoned by Missouri state governor Joseph W. Folk 14 years into his 25 year term.
He was arrested in 1907 in Omaha, for the burglary of a storage house at Council Bluffs, Iowa.
 He was convicted and sent to an Iowa state prison in March, 1908, and was released after serving one year.
He was shot and killed by police on December 31, 1910 during a botched Chicago saloon robbery.
Category:Outlaws of the American Old West
Category:People shot dead by law enforcement officers in the United States
Category:American Old West
Category:Gangs in Missouri
Category:Crime in Missouri
Category:History of Missouri
Category:1856 births
Category:1910 deaths
Category:Recipients of American gubernatorial pardons
Abraham Klauber (January 24, 1831- July 23, 1911 in San Diego, California ) was born in Zdeslav, Bohemia.
 (Czech Republic)  was the grandson of Rabbi Moses Klauber, and the son of Jacob and Elizabeth Klauber.
 Abraham’s father died of cholera in 1844, leaving 13 year old Abraham as the sole support for both his mother and younger sister Mary.
  He immediately went to work for a merchant named Mandlebaum, as a clerk in his grocery.
  As a young man he learned the merchandising business, but by the time he was nineteen, he had heard the tales of California's gold rush and of freedom in America.
  In 1850 he left his homeland to make his fortune in the New World.
In 1850 from Bremerhaven Germany, Abraham took the sailing ship (Ocean Queen) to New Orleans.
  On arriving he then took a steamboat to St. Louis, where he went to work for Herman Levi.
  After a short time he moved on to Ottawa, Illinois, where he worked for Francis Mandlebaum, soon the two men became business partners.
  In 1852 the two left for New York, setting sail for the gold mines of California via the Isthmus of Nicaragua.
 The harrowing trip across the Nicaraguan Isthmus was plagued with much sickness and death.
  It was during the crossing that young Abe contracted Yellow Fever which he fortunately survived.
  On arriving in San Francisco in July 1852, Abraham traveled again up river to Sacramento where he and his partner Francis Mandlebaum started a small clothing and general store.
  Abraham was witness to the great fire and flood of Sacramento on November 2, 1852.
  After rebuilding their store, Abraham moved to Volcano California, setting up a branch store called 'The Sacramento Store, Abraham Klauber & Co.'
  Abraham and Francis married two sisters Louisa and Theresa Epstein who were also originally from Bohemia.
  Francis and Abraham were joined later in their business enterprises by brothers-in-law Morris and Henry Epstein who would be elected as a state legistator representing Douglas County for the first Organization of the State of Nevada.
The store in Volcano did very well during the Gold Rush, and soon Abraham opened another group of stores over the Sierra in Genoa Nevada Territory.
 The Genoa store was to play a key role in the history of Nevada.
  During his years in Nevada (1859-1868) he opened branch stores in Dayton, Carson City and Virginia City Nevada.
  Abraham provided his stores with goods by trucking supplies via mule train and wagon across the Sierra Mountains.
 Abraham’s store in Genoa was used by Wells Fargo to conduct its business.
 The company’s agents, Abraham and Henry Epstein,  also became local agents for the Pony Express.
 The Pony Express was an important link with the outside world.
 It was a lifeline of information for the local papers that brought in the latest news and reports on the festering slave question in the East.
 The communications were even more important during this period since the country was leading up to the start of the Civil War..
Abraham became a U.S. Citizen on March 12, 1859, using money he had earned from his business enterprises, he soon sent for both his mother and sister in Bohemia.
   After having three children, Abraham began to tire of the hard mountain life, the Comstock mines had begun to slow production and the establishment of the Trans-Continental railroad began to negatively affect his Nevada Business.
 Abraham soon began to look for another place to live.
  In 1869, he chose San Diego as the place where he would move his enterprises.
 It was in San Diego where he created his new business in an area called 'New Town,' purchasing a lot from the 'Father of San Diego' Alonzo Horton.
  For the next 40 years he would grow both his family & business enterprises starting with Steiner & Klauber, Klauber & Levi and then finally the very successful wholesale food distribution firm of Klauber Wangenheim Co.
  Abraham and Theresa would raise 9 of their 12 children to adults.
 Abraham's youngest son Laurence Monroe Klauber (1883 in San Diego, California – 1968),  was an American herpetologist,  and was considered to be the foremost authority on rattlesnakes.
  In 1877, Abraham ran for and was elected with 756 votes to serve with D.R. Foss and E. Ormsby on San Diego’s Board of Supervisors, serving as its chairman 1878-80.
  The much revered 80 year old pioneer and adventurer passed to his final rest on July 23, 1911.
  Acquaintances declared that his death marked the passing of one of the gentlest and most loved characters the southland had ever known.
  
Skeleton Canyon is located in the Peloncillo Mountains, which straddles the modern Arizona and New Mexico state line border.
 This canyon connects the Animas Valley of New Mexico with the San Simon Valley of Arizona.
 Geromino's final surrendered to General Miles in 1886 occurred at the western edge of this canyon.
Alleged treasure tale, involving a Mexican gang in a sack of Monterrey, Mexico and buried in s.e. Arizona's Skeleton Canyon in the summer/fall of 1881.
According to extant stories, a Mexican gang led by Jose Estrada had sacked several banks and cathedrals in Monterrey, taking a large amount of gold and silver bullion, gold statuary, and diamonds (some stories indicate the items taken include 39 gold bars and a cigarbox full of diamonds).
  This gang then made their way northwest, towards Arizona, where they were ambushed by American outlaws in the Peloncillo Mountains as they made their way through Skeleton Canyon towards the Animas Valley of New Mexico.
  Having killed off the Mexicans, the outlaws supposedly buried the treasure there, and made their way out of the canyon, only to die off one by one in a series of later double-crosses.
  The treasure remains unrecovered.
In treasure hunting there are always true stories, false ones, and those built up from minor events.
  Skeleton Canyon is of the latter.
  Between the late 1870s - early 1880s the Clanton gang operated in that part of Arizona.
  Their modus operandi was to rustle cattle and sell the stock to the mining towns which sprang up during that time (Tombstone was one of them).
  Their victims included Mexicans, some of whom were involved in legitimate cattle drives, as well as those engaged in the illegal smuggling of various goods.
  The canyons (Guadalupe and Skeleton) along the western side of the Pelloncillos were favored as ambush sites, and it is documented that at least four such ambush/robberies took place.
  On 13 August 1881, in retaliation for one such ambush, Neuman Haynes 'Old Man' Clanton was gunned down in Guadalupe Canyon.
The ambush/robberies of Mexican smugglers in those canyons may have netted the outlaws a small fortune, possibly a few thousand dollars at most, which then grew into the Skeleton Canyon tales today.
  The large amount that is stated in the tales never existed; a check of newspapers and government sources within Mexico and the U.S. states bordering the area revealed that the source of the treasure, Monterrey, was never sacked and robbed at any time.
Category:American folklore
Category:Treasure
Category:American Old West
Category:Articles lacking sources (Erik9bot)
Red Cloud (Lakota: Maȟpíya Lúta), (1822 – December 10, 1909) was a war leader of the Oglala Lakota (Sioux).
 One of the most capable Native American opponents the United States Army ever faced, he led a successful conflict in 1866–1868 known as Red Cloud's War over control of the Powder River Country in northwestern Wyoming and southern Montana.
 Later, he led his people in reservation life.
Red Cloud was born close to the forks of the Platte River by the location of the modern-day city of North Platte, Nebraska.
 His mother was an Oglala and his father was a Brulé. Red Cloud was partly raised by his maternal uncle, Chief Smoke.
 At a young age, he fought against neighboring Pawnee and Crow, gaining much military experience.
left|thumb|200px|Red Cloud
Image:Red cloud and other souix.jpg|right|thumb|200px|Standing:Red Bear, Young Man Afraid of his Horse, Good Voice, Ring Thunder, Iron Crow, White Tail, Young Spotted Tail.
 Seated: Yellow Bear, Jack Red Cloud, Big Road, Little Wound, Black Crow
Red Cloud's War was a series of conflicts fought in the Wyoming and Montana territories between the Lakota Sioux and the United States Army between 1866 and 1867.
 In December 1866, the bloodiest battle of the war, called the Fetterman Massacre (or the Battle of the Hundred Slain), took place .
  Captain William J. Fetterman was sent with two civilians and 79 cavalry and infantry-men to chase away a small Indian war party that had attacked nearby.
  Captain Frederick Brown accompanied Fetterman; the two were confident in their troops and anxious to go to battle with the Indians.
  They disobeyed orders to stay behind the Lodge Trail Ridge and instead continued to pursue a small band of warriors led by an Indian on an injured horse.
  It was the wily Crazy Horse, who was only pretending to be a vulnerable target.
  He tricked Captain Fetterman and his troops into following him into an ambush of over 2,000 Arapaho, Sioux, and Cheyenne.
  Red Cloud's warriors suffered only 14 casualties, while slaughtering the entire detachment of 81 from Fort Phil Kearny.
  
Following this battle, a peace commission toured the plains in 1867 and was able to determine that most of the Indian violence had in fact been provoked by the whites.
  This discovery led to the ending of the war in 1868, in a victory by the Lakota as the US signed the Treaty of Fort Laramie and agreed to withdraw completely from Lakota territory.
Uneasy relations between the expanding United States and the natives continued.
 In 1870, Red Cloud visited Washington D.C., and met with Commissioner of Indian Affairs Ely S. Parker (an Iroquois Native American and U.S. Army General) and President Ulysses Grant.
 In 1871, the Red Cloud Agency was established on the Platte River, downstream from Fort Laramie.
 As outlined in the Treaty of 1868, the agency staff were responsible for issuing rations to the Lakota weekly as well as providing the annually distributed supply of goods.
 In the fall of 1873, the agency was removed to the upper White River in northwestern Nebraska.
Red Cloud settled at the agency with his band by the fall of 1873.
 He soon became embroiled in a controversy with the new Indian agent, Dr. John J. Saville.
In 1874, General George Armstrong Custer led a reconnaissance mission into Sioux territory that reported gold in the Black Hills, an area held sacred by the local Indians.
 Formerly, the Army tried to keep miners out but did not succeed; the threat of violence grew.
 In May of 1875, Sioux delegations headed by Red Cloud, Spotted Tail, and Lone Horn traveled to Washington, D.C. in a last-ditch attempt to persuade President Grant to honor existing treaties and stem the flow of miners into their lands.
  The Indians met on various occasions with Grant, Secretary of the Interior Delano, and Commissioner of Indian Affairs Smith, who finally informed them on May 27th that Congress was ready to resolve the matter by giving the tribes $25,000 for their land and resettling them into Indian Territory.
  The delegates refused to sign such a treaty, with Spotted Tail responding to the proposition by saying:  “When I was here before, the President gave me my country, and I put my stake down in a good place, and there I want to stay .
 . . You speak of another country, but it is not my country; it does not concern me, and I want nothing to do with it.
  I was not born there .
 . .
 If it is such a good country, you ought to send the white men now in our country there and let us alone.”
Although Red Cloud was unsuccessful in finding a peaceful solution, he did not take part in the Lakota war of 1876-1877 led by Tȟašúŋke Witkó (Crazy Horse) and Tȟatȟáŋka Íyotake (Sitting Bull).
In the fall of 1877 the Red Cloud Agency was removed to the Missouri River and the following year was removed to the forks of the White River where it was renamed the Pine Ridge Reservation.
Red Cloud continued fighting for his people, even after being forced onto the reservation.
 In 1889 he opposed a treaty to sell more of the Sioux land; his steadfastness and that of Sitting Bull required the government agents to obtain the necessary signatures through subterfuges such as obtaining the signatures of children.
 He negotiated strongly with Indian Agents such as Dr. Valentine McGillycuddy, and opposed the Dawes Act.
Red Cloud became an important leader of the Lakota as they transitioned from the freedom of the plains to the confinement of the reservation system.
 He outlived the other major Sioux leaders of the Indian wars and died in 1909 at the age of 87 on the Pine Ridge Reservation, where he is buried.
Red Cloud was selected for induction into the Nebraska Hall of Fame in 2000.
Category:1822 births
Category:1909 deaths
Category:People from Montana
Category:People from Lincoln County, Nebraska
Category:People from South Dakota
Category:Red Cloud's War
Category:Lakota leaders
Category:American Old West
ca:Red Cloud
de:Red Cloud
es:Nube Roja
eo:Ruĝa Nubo
eu:Hodei Gorri
fa:ابر سرخ
fr:Red Cloud
ko:마흐피야 루타
hr:Crveni Oblak
it:Nuvola Rossa
pl:Czerwona Chmura
pt:Nuvem Vermelha
ru:Красное Облако
fi:Punainen Pilvi
sv:Röda molnet
ta:சிகப்பு மேகம்
tr:Red Cloud
thumb|Certificate of homestead given under the Homestead Act in Nebraska, 1868.
The Homestead Act was one of several United States Federal laws that gave an applicant freehold title up to 160 acres (1/4 section) of undeveloped land outside of the original 13 colonies.
 The new law required three steps: file an application, improve the land, and file for deed of title.
 Anyone who had never taken up arms against the U.S. Government, including freed slaves, could file an application and improvements to a local land office.
The original act was signed into law by President Abraham Lincoln on May 20, 1862.
In 1909, a major update called the Enlarged Homestead Act was passed, targeting land suitable for dryland farming (much of the prime low-lying alluvial land along rivers had been homesteaded by then); it increased the number of acres to 320.
  In 1916, the Stock-Raising Homestead Act targeted settlers seeking  of public land for ranching purposes.
The Homestead Act was intended to liberalize the homesteading requirements of the Preemption Act of 1841.
  The 'yeoman farmer' ideal was powerful in American political history, and plans for expanding their numbers through a homestead act were rooted in the 1850s.
 The South resisted, fearing the increase in free farmers would threaten plantation slavery.
  Two men stood out as greatly responsible for the passage of the Homestead Act: George Henry Evans and Horace Greeley.
  The agitation for free land became evident in 1844, when several bills were introduced unsuccessfully in Congress.
  After the South seceded and their delegations left Congress in 1861, the path was clear of obstacles, and the act was passed.
 Because of this there was little or no land left.
The Enlarged Homestead Act of 1909 gave  to farmers who accepted more marginal lands which could not be irrigated.
 A massive influx of new farmers eventually led to massive land erosion and the Dust Bowl of the 1930s.
The Federal Land Policy and Management Act of 1976 ended homesteading;  the government believed that the best use of public lands was for them to remain in government control.
  The only exception to this new policy was in Alaska, for which the law allowed homesteading until 1986.
While distributing much land to farmers at minimal cost, homesteading took place on lands that had recently been cleared of Native Americans.
  Economically, the program was a large scale redistribution of land from autonomous tribes to taxpaying farmers, a process carried out directly when Indian Reservations were broken up into holdings by individual families (especially in Oklahoma).
The Homestead Act was much abused.
  According to Hansen and Libecap, if farms had been  in size rather than their actual , farmers individually would have adopted the very practices that were subsequently imposed by soil conservation districts.
  It should be noted that working a farm of  would not have been feasible for a homesteader using 19th century animal-powered tilling and harvesting.
  The acreage limits were reasonable when the act was written.
The act was later imitated with some modifications by Canada in the form of the Dominion Lands Act.
 Similar acts—usually termed the Selection Acts—were passed in the various Australian colonies in the 1860s, beginning in 1861 in New South Wales.
 In the writings of Laura Ingalls Wilder (Little House on the Prairie series), she describes her father claiming a homestead in Kansas, and later Dakota Territory.
 The Oklahoma land rush is a major scene in the Rodgers and Hammerstein musical Oklahoma.
 The Homestead Act is used as the ruse to allow The Amazing Screw-On Head to investigate paranormal activities west of the Mississippi River without arousing Confederate suspicion.
 Land Act of 1804
 Military Tract of 1812
 Preemption Act of 1841
 Donation Land Claim Act of 1850
 Public Land Survey System
 Land grants
 Land patent
Dick, Everett, 1970.
 The Lure of the Land: A Social History of the Public Lands from the Articles of Confederation to the New Deal.
Gates, Paul W., 1996.
 The Jeffersonian Dream: Studies in the History of American Land Policy and Development.
Hyman, Harold M., 1986.
 American Singularity: The 1787 Northwest Ordinance, the 1862 Homestead and Morrill Acts, and the 1944 G.I. Bill.
 Lause, Mark A., 2005.
 Young America: Land, Labor, and the Republican Community.
 Phillips, Sarah T., 2000, 'Antebellum Agricultural Reform, Republican Ideology, and Sectional Tension.'
 Agricultural History 74(4): 799-822.
 ISSN 0002-1482 
 Richardson, Heather Cox, 1997.
 The Greatest Nation of the Earth: Republican Economic Policies during the Civil War.
 Robbins, Roy M., 1942.
 Our Landed Heritage: The Public Domain, 1776-1936.
 Smith, Henry Nash.
 Virgin Land: The American West as Symbol and Myth.
 New York: Vintage, 1959.
Specific references:
General references:
 . - Library of Congress
 . - National Park Service
 . - National Park Service
 . - National Archives and Records Administration
 . - Olympic Peninsula Community Museum.
 - University of Washington.
 - Online museum exhibit that documents the history of several families who moved to the Olympic Peninsula following the Homestead Act of 1862
. - National Park Service Teaching with Historic Places (TwHP) lesson plan.
 - National Park Service
Category:1862 in law
Category:1909 in law 
Category:Economic history of the United States
Category:American Old West
Category:United States federal public land legislation
Category:History of the United States (1849–1865)
Category:Agriculture in the United States
Category:1862 in the United States
Category:37th United States Congress
de:Homestead Act
fr:Homestead Act
ko:자영 농지법
pl:Ustawa o gospodarstwach rolnych
pt:Lei da Propriedade Rural
A range war (taken from the term 'open range') is a type of (typically undeclared) conflict that occurs in agrarian or stockrearing societies.
 Typically fought over water rights or grazing rights to unfenced/unowned land, it could pit competing farmers or ranchers against each other.
 Formal military involvement, other than to separate warring parties, is rare.
Range wars were known to occur in the American West.
 Many range wars in the United States were fought by representatives of different industries, especially between cattle ranchers with a fixed base of operations and the more migratory sheep ranchers.
 Famous range wars included the Lincoln County War, the Pleasant Valley War, the Mason County War and the Johnson County Range War, fought between local residents and gunmen hired by absentee landowners.
  
Range wars have been the subject of movies and stories.
 Some examples:
Range War () is a 1939 movie (featuring Hopalong Cassidy) about a group of ranchers in conflict with a railway company.
Shane is a 1953 movie (featuring Alan Ladd) that tells the story of a gunfighter taking the side of the farmers against cattlemen during a  fictional range war loosely based on the Johnson County Range War.
The Virginian a 1902 novel by Owen Wister; filmed four times, also based on the Johnson County Range War, but on the side of the large ranchers and depicting the lynchings as frontier justice for cattle rustling.
Open Range (2003), in which free-grazers take on a cattle baron who tries to use hired assassins to steal their herd
To The Last Man: A Story of the Pleasant Valley War is a novel by famous Western author Zane Grey concerning the Pleasant Valley War in 1880s Arizona
Oklahoma!
 (1943 Broadway musical, 1955 film) Rogers & Hammerstein musical about a cowboy in love with a farm girl, complicated by a rivalry between local farmers and cowboys over fences and water rights.
El Dorado is a 1967 movie about an aging gunfighter who goes straight to help his drunken lawman friend after a cattle baron hires him to intervene in a range war.
'The Range War' (song) by Todd Rundgren focuses on a relationship between a boy whose 'uncle runs cattle' and a girl whose 'daddy runs sheep' and hints at this relationship fueling this particular range war.
Chisum is a 1970 western movie loosely based on the 1878 Lincoln County War in New Mexico Territory.
While in previous centuries violence may have been involved, the term can also be used for non violent contention for scarce resources, perhaps between ranchers and environmentalists, or between ranchers and fans of wild horses.
A range war is also a slang term for a turf war or disagreement about proper hierarchy or relationship and is often used in a joking manner.
 The term can be used in politics, or business.
Category:American cattlemen
Category:American Old West
This article refers to a railroad built in the United States between Omaha and Sacramento, completed in 1869.
  For other transcontinental railroads see transcontinental railroad.
Image:69workmen.jpg|thumb|right|300px|The ceremony for the driving of the golden spike at Promontory Summit, Utah, May 10, 1869
The First Transcontinental Railroad (known originally as the Pacific Railroad and later as the Overland Route), built in the United States between 1863 and 1869 by the Central Pacific Railroad of California and Union Pacific Railroad, connected Council Bluffs, Iowa/Omaha, Nebraska (via Ogden, Utah and Sacramento, California) to Alameda, California.
 By linking with the existing railway network of the Eastern United States, the road thus connected the Atlantic and Pacific coasts of the United States by rail for the first time.
 Opened for through traffic on May 10, 1869, with the driving of the 'Last Spike' at Promontory Summit, Utah, the road established a mechanized transcontinental transportation network that revolutionized the population and economy of the American West.
Authorized by the Pacific Railroad Acts of 1862 and 1864 during the American Civil War and supported by 30-year U.S. government bonds and extensive land grants of government owned land, it was the culmination of a decades-long movement to build such a line and was one of the crowning achievements labor  in the crossing of plains and high mountains westward by the Union Pacific and eastward by the Central Pacific.
The transcontinental railroad is considered one of the greatest American technological feats of the 19th century—surpassing the building of the Erie Canal in the 1820s and the crossing of the Isthmus of Panama by the Panama Railroad in 1855.
 It served as a vital link for trade, commerce and travel that joined the eastern and western halves of late 19th century United States.
 The transcontinental railroad quickly ended most of the far slower and more hazardous stagecoach lines and wagon trains that had preceded it.
 The railroads led to the decline of traffic on the Oregon and California Trail which had populated much of the west as they provided much faster, safer and cheaper (7 days and about $65 economy) transport east and west for people and goods across half a continent.
 The sale of the railroad land grant lands and the transport provided for timber and crops lead to the rapid settling of the supposed 'Great American Desert'.
 The main workers on the Union Pacific were many ex-army veterans and Irish emigrants while most of the engineers etc.
 were ex-army men who had learned their trade keeping the trains running during the Civil War.
 The Central Pacific, facing a labor shortage in the labor short West, relied on Chinese laborers who did prodigious work building the line over and through the Sierra Nevada mountains and then across Nevada to a meeting in Utah.
thumb|left|Pacific Railroad Bond, City and County of San Francisco, 1865
The building of the railroad was motivated in part to bind the eastern and western states of the United States together.
 The Central Pacific faced with the prodigious feat of building a road over the Sierra Nevada mountains started work in 1863.
 The Union Pacific company faced with the competition for workers, rails, ties, railroad engines and supplies by the needs of the American Civil War didn't start construction till July 1865.
 Completion of the railroad  substantially accelerated the populating of the West while contributing to the decline of territory controlled by the Native Americans in these regions.
 In 1879, the Supreme Court of the United States formally established, in its decision regarding Union Pacific Railroad vs.
 United States (99 U.S. 402), the official 'date of completion' of the Transcontinental Railroad as November 6, 1869.
The Central Pacific and the Southern Pacific Railroad combined operations in 1870 and formally merged in 1885.
 Union Pacific originally bought the Southern Pacific in 1901 but in 1913 was forced to divest it; the company once again acquired the Southern Pacific in 1996.
 Much of the original right-of-way is still in use today and owned by the Union Pacific.
Needing rapid communication, as the railroad was built they built telegraph lines along side the railroad rights of way.
 Since these lines were much easier to protect and maintain than the original First Transcontinental Telegraph lines which went over much of the original routes of the Mormon Trail and the Central Nevada Route though central Utah and Nevada, they soon became the main telegraph lines and the earlier lines were mostly abandoned.
thumb|left|Route of the first American transcontinental railroad from Sacramento, California, to Council Bluffs, Iowa.thumb|left|Profile of the Pacific Railroad from Omaha to San FranciscoThe Union Pacific laid  of track, starting in Council Bluffs, and continuing across the Missouri River and through Nebraska (Elkhorn, now Omaha, Grand Island, North Platte, Ogallala, Sidney, Nebraska), the Colorado Territory (Julesburg), the Wyoming Territory (Cheyenne, Laramie, Green River, Evanston), the Utah Territory (Ogden, Brigham City, Corinne), and connecting with the Central Pacific at Promontory Summit.
 The route did not pass through the two biggest cities in the Great American Desert -- Denver, Colorado and Salt Lake City, Utah.
  Feeder lines were built to service the two cities.
The Central Pacific laid 690 miles (1,110 km) of track, starting in Sacramento, California, and continuing over the Sierra Nevada mountains into Nevada.
 Some of the towns it passed through were: Newcastle, California and Truckee, California, Reno, Nevada, Wadsworth, Winnemucca, Battle Mountain, Elko, and Wells, Nevada, before connecting with the Union Pacific line at Promontory Summit in the Utah Territory.
 Later, the western part of the route was extended to the Alameda Terminal in Alameda, California, and shortly thereafter, to the Oakland Long Wharf at Oakland Point in Oakland, California.
 The eastern part of the line was extended to Ogden ending the short lifetime of the Railroad boom town of Promontory.
 Even before it was completed, they were building other railroads in Nevada and California to connect to it.
At first, the Union Pacific was not directly connected to the Eastern U.S. rail network.
  Instead, trains had to be ferried across the Missouri River.
  In 1872, the Union Pacific Missouri River Bridge opened and directly connected the East and West.
Modern-day Interstate 80 closely follows the path of the railroad, with one exception. Between Echo, Utah and Wells, Nevada, Interstate 80 passes through the larger Salt Lake City and passes along the south shore of the Great Salt Lake.
 The Railroad instead, with Mormon workers, blasted and tunneled its way down the Weber River canyon to Ogden and around the north shore of the Great Salt Lake (roughly paralleling modern  Interstate 84 and State Route 30).
 While routing the railroad along the Weber River, workers planted the thousand-mile tree, where a marker still stands, to commemorate the milestone.
 The portion of the railroad around the north shore of the lake is no longer intact.
 In 1904, the Lucin Cutoff, a causeway across the center of the Great Salt Lake, shortened the route by approximately , traversing Promontory Point instead of Promontory Summit.
right|thumb|upright|The official poster announcing the Pacific Railroad's grand opening.
Talk of a transcontinental railroad started in 1830, shortly after steam powered  railroads were invented in Great Britain and began to be introduced into the United States.
 This talk intensified as railroad technology advanced and the Oregon Territory and California were added to United States Territory in 1846.
  Much of the early debates was not so much over whether it would be built, but how it would be paid for and what route it should follow: a 'central' route, avoiding the worst of the Rocky Mountains via the Platte River in Nebraska and the South Pass in Wyoming by following much of the path of the Oregon Trail, or a southern route, avoiding the Rockies by going across Texas, New Mexico Territory, across the Sonora desert and on to Los Angeles, California.
 A 'northern' route roughly following the route followed by Lewis and Clark along the Missouri River  through what is now northern Montana to Oregon Territory was initially considered impractical because of snow.
One of the most prominent champions of the central route railroad at this time was Asa Whitney (a distant cousin to cotton gin inventor Eli Whitney).
  Whitney envisioned a route from Chicago and the Great Lakes to northern California, paid for by the sale of land to settlers along the route.
In June 1845 Whitney led a team along part of the proposed route to assess its feasibility.
  Whitney traveled widely to solicit support from businessmen and politicians, printed maps and pamphlets, and submitted several proposals to Congress, all at his own expense.
  Legislation to begin construction of the Pacific Railroad (called the Memorial of Asa Whitney) was first introduced to Congress by Representative Zadock Pratt.
   Congress did not act on Whitney's proposal.
The Oregon Question was settled in 1846 when the United States and Great Britain agreed to a Canadian U.S. boundary at the 49th parallel.
 California was easily taken over in 1846 and came under formal United States control in 1848 with the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo at the conclusion of the Mexican-American War.
 Gold was discovered in California in January 1848 setting off the California Gold Rush and settlers coming into California skyrocketed.
 By 1850 California had enough settlers arriving by the California Trail and by sea to become the 31st state.
Whitney was to see a version of the central route completed although he was not formally involved.
The southern route and the Gadsden Purchase
Concerns lingered that snow would make the central route to California impractical.
 A survey after 1848 indicated that the best route for a southern route had been overlooked in the boundary accepted by the treaty ending the war with Mexico.
 Fortunately, Santa Anna was back into power in Mexico and in 1853 the United States made the Gadsden Purchase, acquiring the southern portions of what is now New Mexico and Arizona for $5,000,000.
 The southern route could now be built entirely within U.S. territory.
  However, Congress was divided between slave and non-slave state members and did not then agree to support construction of a southern route (or any route), as the decision became embroiled in the divisive sectional dispute that eventually turned into the American Civil War.
 The southern railroad was not built until 1880 when the Southern Pacific Railroad crossed Arizona territory.
thumb|left|Theodore Judah, architect of the Transcontinental Railroad and first chief engineer of the Central Pacific.
The next big champion of the central route was Theodore Judah.
 Judah undertook what was one of the chief obstacles of a central route to California—a way over the high and rugged Sierra Nevada mountains.
Judah was chief engineer for the newly formed Sacramento Valley Railroad in 1852.
  Although the railroad was to go bankrupt he was convinced that a properly financed railroad could pass from Sacramento through the Sierra Nevada mountains to reach the Great Basin and hook up with rail lines coming from the East.
In 1856 he wrote a 13,000-word proposal in support of a Pacific railroad and distributed it to Cabinet secretaries, congressmen, and other influential people.
In September 1859, Judah was chosen to be the accredited lobbyist for the Pacific Railroad Convention.
  The convention approved his plan to survey, finance, and engineer the road.
 Judah returned to Washington in December 1859, where he was given an office in the United States Capitol, an audience with President James Buchanan, and he represented the Convention before Congress.
In February 1860 Iowa Representative Samuel Curtis introduced a bill to build the railroad.
  It passed the House but died when it could not be reconciled with the Senate version.
Judah returned to California in 1860.
  He continued to search for a more practical route through the Sierras suitable for a railroad.
  In the summer of 1860, a local miner, Daniel Strong, had surveyed a route over the Sierras for a wagon toll road, a route he realized would also suit a railroad.
 He described his discovery in a letter to Judah, and together they formed an association to solicit subscriptions from local merchants and businessmen to support their proposed railroad.
From January or February 1861 until July, the party of ten led by Judah and Strong surveyed the route for the railroad over the Sierra Nevada, through Clipper Gap, Emigrant Gap, Donner Pass, and south to Truckee.
 They had discovered a way across the Sierras that was gradual enough that with a lot of work it could be made suitable for a railroad.
Before major construction could begin, Judah traveled back to New York City to raise funds to buy out The Big Four.
 Shortly after he arrived in New York, however, Judah died on November 2, 1863, of Yellow Fever which he had contracted while traveling over the Panama Railroad's transit of the Isthmus of Panama.
 The CPRR Engineering Department was taken over by Samuel S. Montegue as his successor as  Chief Engineer, and Chief Assistant Engineer (later Acing Chief Engineer) Lewis Metzler Clement who also became Superintendent of Track.
Main articles: The Big Four and Central Pacific Railroad
thumb|Leland Stanford's official gubernatorial portrait
Collis Huntington, a hardware merchant, heard Theodore Judah lecture at the St. Charles Hotel in Sacramento in November 1860, and he invited Judah to his office to hear his proposal in detail.
 Huntington was to change Judah's strategy of finding several investors and instead sought to raise the money from three partners who initially invested $1,500 each and form a board of directors: Mark Hopkins, his business partner; James Bailey, a jeweller; Leland Stanford, a grocer, future governor of California, and founder of Stanford University; and Charles Crocker, a dry-goods merchant and eventual owner of Crocker Banks.
  The investors became known as the The Big Four and their railroad was called the Central Pacific Railroad.
 Each were eventually to make millions of dollars off their continuing investments and active management and control of the Central Pacific Railroad (CPRR).
The Pony Express from 1860 to 1861 was to prove that the Central Nevada Route across Nevada and Utah and the sections of the Oregon Trail across Wyoming and Nebraska was viable during the winter.
  With the American Civil War raging and a secessionist movement in California gaining steam, the apparent need for the railroad became more urgent.
In 1861 Curtis again introduced a bill to establish the railroad, but it did not pass.
  After the secession of the southern states, the House of Representatives on May 6, 1862, and the Senate on June 20 finally approved it.
 Lincoln signed it into law on July 1.
 The act established the two main lines—the Central Pacific from the west and the Union Pacific from the mid-west.
  Other rail lines were encouraged to build feeder lines.
Each was required to build only 50 miles (80 km) in the first year; after that, only 50 miles (80 km) more were required each year.
 Each railroad was subsidized $16,000 per mile ($9,940/km) built over an easy grade, $32,000 per mile ($19,880/km) in the high plains, and $48,000 per mile ($29,830/km) in the mountains.
 To allow the railroads to raise additional money Congress provided additional assistance to the railroad companies in the form of land grants of federal lands.
 They were granted 400-foot right-of-ways plus ten square miles of land (ten sections) adjacent to the track for every mile of track built.
 To avoid a railroad monopoly on good land, the land was not given away in a continuous swath but in a 'checkerboard' pattern leaving Federal land in between that could be purchased from the government.
 The land grant railroads, receiving millions of acres of public land, sold bonds based on the value of the lands, sold the land to settlers, used the money to build their railroads, and contributed to a rapid settlement of the West.
  The race was on to see which railroad company could build the longest section of track and receive the most land and subsidy.
Image:Council-bluffs1.jpg|thumb|right|Lincoln Memorial where Abraham Lincoln is said to have selected Council Bluffs as the eastern terminus after visiting this site in 1859 under the employ of Thomas Durant.
Once it was decided that the railroad would follow the central route rather than the southern route, there was little question that the western terminus would be Sacramento.
  However, there was considerable intrigue over the eastern terminus.
The three prime candidates for the eastern terminus on  of Missouri River between Kansas City and Omaha were:
 Council Bluffs/Omaha proposed by Thomas Durant via an extension of his proposed Mississippi and Missouri Railroad via the new Union Pacific Railroad.
 St. Joseph, Missouri via the Hannibal and St. Joseph Railroad (H&SJ).
 Kansas City, Kansas/Leavenworth, Kansas via the Leavenworth, Pawnee and Western Railroad (LP&W) (later called the Kansas Pacific) controlled initially by Thomas Ewing, Jr. and later by John C.
 Fremont.
The principal advantages of Council Bluffs/Omaha was that it was well north of the Civil War fighting taking place in Missouri, was the shortest route to South Pass break in the Rockies in Wyoming, and would follow a fertile river that would encourage settlement.
  Missouri's advantages included that it had the only railroad to actually reach the Missouri River on its western border (H&SJ), was more centrally located for lines coming up from Texas and could offer a route servicing Denver, Colorado, the biggest city in the Great American Desert.
 In 1862 the closest rail lines to Omaha/Council Bluffs were  away and would take five years to reach Omaha.
Thomas Durant who was building the cross-Iowa railroad (the M&M) was literally banking that the Omaha route would be chosen and began buying up land in Nebraska.
In 1857, Durant hired private citizen Abraham Lincoln to represent the M&M in litigation brought by steamboat operators to dismantle Government Bridge, the first bridge across the Mississippi River.
 The bridge prevented steamboats from passing above the bridge and was an obstruction of a public waterway.
 In August 1859 Lincoln at the behest of M&M attorney Norman Judd traveled to Council Bluffs to inspect M&M facilities that were to be used to secure a $3,000 loan Lincoln was to hold.
  On the visit Lincoln rode the SJ&H railroad and visited railroad locations in Missouri and Kansas before going to Council Bluffs.
  During the visit Lincoln was to spend 2 hours with M&M engineer Grenville M.
 Dodge at the Pacific House Hotel discussing the merits of starting the railroad in Council Bluffs and was to visit Cemetery Hill there to look over the proposed route.
Lincoln's ties to Council Bluffs were furthered strengthened by the fact that he had won the 1860 Republican nomination on the third ballot when the Iowa delegation switched its vote to him.
  In contrast, Lincoln was to get only 10 percent of the Missouri vote in the 1860 Presidential Election.
While the Pacific Railroad Act was to award the eastern contract to the newly formed Union Pacific, it was left up to then President Lincoln to formally choose the location for the railroad to start and Lincoln in 1862 was to follow the advice of his former client.
The H&SJ and LP&W were not totally shut out of the contract though.
  The H&SJ was to be allowed to build a feeder line from Atchison, Kansas while the LP&W could build a feeder line out of Kansas City, Kansas.
  The feeder lines were supposed to meet the Union Pacific main line somewhere around the 100th meridian in central Nebraska and the feeder lines were to get the same land grant incentives as the Union Pacific.
thumb|Thomas Clark Durant
Main articles: Thomas C.
 Durant and Union Pacific Railroad
In contrast to the relatively straight forward arrangements for the Central Pacific, the Union Pacific which was to ultimately build nearly 2/3 of the track was to be mired in controversy and scandals while its controlling partner Thomas C.
 Durant got rich as he took advantage of lax or non-existent government oversight during the Civil War.
The enabling legislation for the Union Pacific required that no partner was to own more than 10 percent of the stock.
  However, the Union Pacific had problems selling its stock.
  Durant enticed investors with a scheme where he would put up the money for the stock if they would just put their names on it.
  Then Durant wound up taking the stock from the investors and was to end up controlling about half the stock of the railroad.
The initial construction of railroad went over land that Durant owned around Omaha.
  Being paid by the mile, the railroad built oxbows of extraneous track never venturing further than  from Omaha in the railroad's first 2 1/2 years.
Durant manipulated market prices on his stocks by spreading rumours about which railroads were to be connected to the Union Pacific.
  First he ran up the stock of his M&M Railroad while secretly buying stock in the depressed Cedar Rapids and Missouri Railroad (CR&M), then running up CR&M stock with new plans to connect the Union Pacific to it at which point he began buying back the M&M stock at depressed prices.
  The gambit is estimated to have raised $5 million for his cohorts and him.
Durant was to keep a low public profile in his mechanizations as he was only a vice president.
  He was to install a series of respected men such as John Adams Dix as president of the railroad.
On July 4, 1865, the Union Pacific had not gone further than  from Omaha—even as the Central Pacific had been working away for 2 1/2 years.
  With the end of the Civil War and increased government supervision in the offing, Durant hired his former M&M engineer Grenville M.
 Dodge to build the railroad and the Union Pacific began a mad dash.
thumb|left|The Jupiter, which carried Leland Stanford (one of the 'Big Four' owners of the Central Pacific) and other railway officials to the Golden Spike Ceremony.
Because of the nature of the way money was given to the companies building the railroad, they were sometimes known to sabotage each others railroads to claim that land as their own.
 When they first came close to meeting, they changed paths to be nearly parallel, so that each company could claim subsidies from the government over the same plot of land.
 Fed up with the fighting, Congress eventually declared where and when the railways should meet.
  Survey teams closely followed by work crews from each railroad passed each other, eager to lay as much track as possible.
  The leading Central Pacific road crew set a record by laying 10 miles (16 km) of track in a single day, commemorating the event with a signpost beside the track for passing trains to see.
The majority of the Union Pacific track was built by Irish laborers, and veterans of both the Union and Confederate armies.
  Brigham Young, President of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, wished to see the railroad support immigration and the population centers in Ogden and Salt Lake City, Utah.
  As the track approached Utah Territory, he sought a labor contract with the Union Pacific.
  Under this completed contract, workgangs made up almost entirely of Mormons built much of the Union Pacific track in the Utah territory including the difficult section requiring extensive blasting and tunneling through the Weber River canyon.
 (Allen and Leonard, pp. 328–329)
thumb|right|Chinese railroad workers greet a train on a snowy day.
The Central Pacific's grade was constructed primarily by many thousands of emigrant workers from China who were commonly referred to at the time as 'Celestials' and China as the 'Celestial Kingdom.'
 Even though at first they were thought to be too weak or fragile to do this type of work, after the first few days on which Chinese were on the line, the decision was made to hire as many as could be found in California (where most were independent gold miners or in service industries such as laundries and kitchens).
  Many more were imported from China.
 Most of the men received between one and three dollars per day, but the workers arriving directly from China received much less.
 Eventually, they went on strike and gained a small increase in salary.
In addition to track laying (which typically employed approximately 25% of the labor force), the operation also required the efforts of hundreds of tunnelers, explosive experts, bridge builders,  blacksmiths, carpenters, engineers, masons, surveyors, teamsters, telegraphers, and even cooks, to name just a few of the trades involved in construction of the railroad.
Six months later, on January 8, 1863 Governor Leland Stanford ceremoniously broke ground in Sacramento, California, to begin construction of the Central Pacific Railroad.
 The Central Pacific made great progress along the Sacramento Valley.
 However construction was slowed, first by the foothills of the Sierra Nevada, then by the mountains themselves and most importantly by winter snowstorms.
 Consequently, the Central Pacific expanded its efforts to hire immigrant laborers (many of whom were Chinese).
 The immigrants seemed to be more willing to tolerate the horrible conditions, and progress continued.
 The increasing necessity for tunnelling then began to slow progress of the line yet again.
 To combat this, Central Pacific began to use the newly invented and very unstable nitro-glycerine explosives—which accelerated both the rate of construction and the mortality of the laborers.
 Appalled by the losses, the Central Pacific began to use less volatile explosives and developed a method of placing the explosives in which the Chinese blasters worked from large suspended baskets which were then rapidly pulled to safety after the fuses were lit.
 Construction began again in earnest.
Image:Grenville Dodge.jpg|thumb|left|Grenville M.
 Dodge wearing a major general's uniform
The major investor in the Union Pacific was Thomas Clark Durant, who had made his stake money by smuggling Confederate cotton with the aid of Grenville M.
 Dodge.
 Durant chose routes that would favour places where he held land, and he announced connections to other lines at times that suited his share dealings.
  Durant paid an associate to submit the construction bid who then handed it over to another company controlled by Durant, Crédit Mobilier.
  Durant then manipulated the finances and government subsidies, making himself another fortune.
  Durant hired Dodge as chief engineer and Jack Casement as construction boss.
In the east, the progress started in Omaha, Nebraska, by the Union Pacific Railroad proceeded very quickly because of the open terrain of the Great Plains.
 However, they soon became subject to slowdowns as they entered Indian-held lands.
 The Native Americans living there saw the addition of the railroad as a violation of their treaties with the United States.
 War parties began to raid the moving labor camps that followed the progress of the line.
 Union Pacific responded by increasing security and by hiring marksmen to kill American Bison—which were both a physical threat to trains and the primary food source for many of the Plains Indians.
 The Native Americans then began killing laborers when they realized that the so-called 'Iron Horse' threatened their existence.
 Security measures were further strengthened, and progress on the railroad continued.
thumb|right|upright|Golden spike that was donated by the governor of Arizona Territory.
 It is one of four ceremonial spikes driven at the completion (but is not the final golden spike).
thumb|left|The Last Spike by Thomas Hill (1881)Six years after the groundbreaking, laborers of the Central Pacific Railroad from the west and the Union Pacific Railroad from the east met at Promontory Summit, Utah.
 It was here on May 10, 1869 that Stanford drove the The Last Spike (or golden spike) which is now on display at the Cantor Arts Center at Stanford University, that joined the rails of the transcontinental railroad.
 In perhaps the world's first live mass-media event, the hammers and spike were wired to the telegraph line so that each hammer stroke would be heard as a click at telegraph stations nationwide—the hammer strokes were missed, so the clicks were sent by the telegraph operator.
  As soon as the ceremonial spike had been replaced by an ordinary iron spike, a  message was transmitted to both the East Coast and West Coast that simply read, 'DONE.'
 The country erupted in celebration upon receipt of this message.
 Travel from coast to coast was reduced from six months or more to just one week.
left|thumb|Display ads for the CPRR and UPRR the week the rails were joined on May 19, 1869thumb|left|UPRR & CPRR 'Great American Over-Land Route' Timetable cover 1881When the golden spike was driven, the rail network was not yet connected to the Atlantic or Pacific, but  merely connected Omaha and Sacramento.
  In November 1869 the Central Pacific finally connected Sacramento to San Francisco Bay at Oakland, California.
The Central Pacific soon learned that it would have trouble maintaining an open track in winter across the Sierras.
 At first they tried plowing the road with special snowplows mounted on their steam engines.
 When this was found only partially successful an extensive process of building snow sheds over some of the track to protect it from deep snows and avalanches was instituted.
 This eventually kept the tracks free for all except a few days of the year.
Both railroads soon instituted extensive upgrade projects to build better bridges, viaducts, dugways, heavier duty rails, stronger ties, better road beds etc.
 The original track had often been laid as fast as possible with only secondary attention to maintenance and longevity.
 Getting the subsidies was initially the primary incentive, upgrades of all kinds were routinely required in the coming years.
The Union Pacific would not connect Omaha to Council Bluffs until completing the Union Pacific Missouri River Bridge in 1872.
With the completion of the Civil War, the competing railroads coming from Missouri took advantage of their initial strategic advantage for a building boom.
  The H&SJ finished the Hannibal Bridge which was the first bridge to cross the Missouri River in July 1869 in Kansas City.
  This in turn connected to Kansas Pacific trains going from Kansas City to Denver which had built the Denver Pacific Railway connecting to the Union Pacific.
  In August 1870 the Kansas Pacific laid the last spike connecting to the Denver Pacific line at Strasburg, Colorado and the first true Atlantic to Pacific United States railroad was completed.
Kansas City's head start in connecting to a true transcontinental railroad was to contribute to it rather than Omaha being the dominant rail center west of Chicago.
The Kansas Pacific became part of the Union Pacific in 1880.
On June 4, 1876, an express train called the Transcontinental Express arrived in San Francisco via the First Transcontinental Railroad only 83 hours and 39 minutes after it left from New York City.
 Only ten years before the same journey would have taken months over land or weeks on ship.
The Central Pacific was absorbed by the Southern Pacific in 1885.
 The Union Pacific initially took over the Southern Pacific in 1901 but was forced by the U.S. Supreme Court to divest it because of monopoly concerns.
  The Union Pacific completed the take-over of the Southern Pacific in 1996.
Having been bypassed with the completion of the Lucin Cutoff in 1904, the Promontory Summit rails were pulled up in 1942 to be recycled for the World War II effort.
  This process began with a ceremonial 'undriving' at the golden spike location.
  In 1957, Congress authorized the Golden Spike National Historic Site.
 On May 10, 2006, on the anniversary of the driving of the spike, Utah announced that its state quarter design would be a representation of the driving of the spike.
thumb|Oakes Ames
Despite the transcontinental success and millions in government subsidies, the Union Pacific faced bankruptcy less than three years after the golden spike as details surfaced about overcharges Credit Mobilier had billed Union Pacific for the formal building of the railroad.
  The scandal hit epic proportions in the United States presidential election, 1872 which saw the re-election of Ulysses S. Grant and became the biggest scandal of the Gilded Age.
  It would not be resolved until the congressman who was supposed to have reined in its excesses but instead wound up profiting from it was dead.
Durant had initially come up with the scheme to have Credit Mobilier subcontract to do the actual track work.
  Durant gained control of the company after buying out employee Herbert Hoxie for $10,000.
  Under Durant's guidance the company was charging Union Pacific often twice or more the customary cost for track work (thus in effect paying himself to build the railroad).
  The process was to mire down Union Pacific work.
Lincoln asked Massachusetts Congressman Oakes Ames, who was on the railroad committee, to clean things up and get the railroad moving.
  Ames got his brother Oliver Ames, Jr. named president of the Union Pacific and Ames himself became president of Credit Mobiler.
Ames in turn gave stock options to other politicians while at the same time continuing the lucrative overcharges.
  The scandal was to implicate Vice President Schuyler Colfax (who was cleared) and future President James Garfield among others.
The scandal broke in 1872 when the New York Sun published correspondence between Henry S. McComb and Ames detailing the scheme.
 In the ensuing Congressional investigation, it was recommended that Ames be expelled from Congress but this was reduced to a censure and Ames died within three months.
Durant was to leave the Union Pacific and a new rail baron Jay Gould was to become the dominant stockholder.
Visible remains of the historic line are still easily located—hundreds of miles are still in service today, especially through the Sierra Nevada Mountains and canyons in Utah and Wyoming.
  While the original rail has long since been replaced because of age and wear, and the roadbed upgraded and repaired, the lines generally run on top of the original, handmade grade.
  Vista points on Interstate 80 through California's Truckee Canyon provide a panoramic view of many miles of the original Central Pacific line and of the snow sheds which make winter train travel safe and practical.
In areas where the original line has been bypassed and abandoned, primarily in Utah, the road grade is still obvious, as are numerous cuts and fills, especially the Big Fill a few miles east of Promontory.
 The sweeping curve which connected to the east end of the Big Fill now passes a Thiokol rocket research and development facility.
Amtrak runs a daily service from Emeryville, California (San Francisco Bay Area) to Chicago, the California Zephyr.
  The Zephyr consistently uses the original First Transcontinental Railroad track from Sacramento to Winnemucca, Nevada.
 The Zephyr usually uses the original track on the westbound runs from Winnemucca to Wells, Nevada.
 The eastbound runs between these towns usually use tracks built by the Western Pacific Railroad.
 This is because the Union Pacific Railroad now owns both tracks, and it routes trains on either track.
Image:369842.1020.A.jpg|thumb|Poster for the film Union Pacific.
The feat is depicted in various movies including the 1939 film Union Pacific directed by Cecil B. DeMille which portrayed the fictional Central Pacific investor Asa Barrows obstructing attempts by the Union Pacific from reaching Ogden, Utah.
  The investigator, played by Joel McCrea, saves the railroad and gets the engineer's girl, played by Barbara Stanwyck.
John Ford's 1924 silent movie The Iron Horse captures the fervent nationalism that drove public support for the project.
   Although not exactly historical, he did go to great pains to make it a realistic looking reenactment, including in its cast some of the Chinese laborers who actually worked on the Central Pacific section of the railroad.
The 1962 film How the West Was Won has a whole segment devoted to the construction; one of the movie's most famous scenes, filmed in Cinerama, is of a buffalo stampede over the railroad.
Kristiana Gregory wrote a book which is part of the Dear America series called The Great Railroad Race in which the diary's writer, Libby West chronicles the end of the building of the railroad and the excitement which engulfed the country beforehand and afterwards.
The building of the railway is portrayed by the BBC documentary series Seven Wonders of the Industrial World (2004) in Episode 6 The Line, with a runtime of 49 minutes.
The series American Experience also documents the railway in episode Transcontinental Railroad with a runtime of 60 minutes.
The main character in The Claim (2000) is a surveyor for the Central Pacific Railroad, and the film is partially about the efforts of a frontier town mayor to have the railroad routed through his town.
 Overland Route (Union Pacific Railroad)
 California and the railroads
 Chin Lin Sou
 Hell on Wheels
 Transcontinental railroad
Cooper, Bruce C.,  (2005), Polyglot Press, Philadelphia ISBN 1-4115-9993-4
Category:Economic history of the United States
Category:American Old West
Category:History of United States expansionism
Category:Rail transport in the United States
Category:Southern Pacific Railroad
Category:Union Pacific Railroad
Category:History of the United States (1865–1918)
Category:19th-century colonization of the Americas
Category:Railway lines in Omaha, Nebraska
Category:Rail lines receiving land grants
bg:Първа презконтинентална железница
dv:ބައްރުތައް ކަނޑަތުކޮށް ދަތުރުކުރާ ފުރަތަމަ ރޭލުމަގު
es:Primer ferrocarril transcontinental de Estados Unidos
fr:Premier chemin de fer transcontinental
it:First Transcontinental Railroad
nl:Transcontinental Railroad
pl:Pierwsza Kolej Transkontynentalna
pt:Primeira Ferrovia Transcontinental
sv:Transamerikanska järnvägen
uk:Перша трансконтинентальна залізниця
File:800px-Cowboy 18872.jpg|right|thumb|The cowboy, the quintessential symbol of the American Old West, circa 1888.
The American Old West (often referred to as the Old West or Wild West) comprises the history, geography, peoples, lore, and cultural expression of life in the Western United States, most often referring to the period of the latter half of the 19th century, between the American Civil War and the end of the century.
 After the eighteenth century and the push beyond the Appalachian Mountains, the term is generally applied to anywhere west of the Mississippi River in earlier periods and westward from the frontier strip toward the latter part of the 19th century.
  More broadly, the period stretches from the early 19th century to the end of the Mexican Revolution in 1920.
Through treaties with foreign nations and native peoples, political compromise, technological innovation, military conquest, establishment of law and order, and the great migrations of foreigners, the United States expanded from coast to coast (Atlantic Ocean-to-Pacific Ocean), fulfilling its belief in Manifest Destiny.
 In securing and managing the West, the U.S. federal government greatly expanded its powers, as the nation grew from an agrarian society to an industrialized nation.
 First promoting settlement and exploitation of the land, by the end of the 19th century the federal government became a steward of the remaining open spaces.
 As the American Old West passed into history, the myths of the West took firm hold in the imagination of Americans and foreigners alike.
thumb|This map shows the area of the American West
The American frontier moved gradually westward decades after the settlement of the first white immigrants on the Eastern seaboard in the 1600s.
 The 'West' was always the area beyond that boundary.
 Scholars, however, sometimes refer to the 'Old West' as the region of the Ohio and Tennessee valleys during the 18th century, when the frontier was being contested by England, France, and the American colonies.
 Most often, however, the 'American Old West', the 'Old West' or 'the Great West' is used to describe the area west of the Mississippi River during the 19th century.
With a stroke of the pen, Thomas Jefferson, the third president of the United States (elected in 1801), more than doubled the size of the United States with the Louisiana Purchase of 1803 which was comprised of land France had acquired from Spain just three years earlier.
 Napoleon Bonaparte had begun to consider it a liability, since the slave rebellion in Haiti and tropical disease undermined his Caribbean adventures.
 Robert R. Livingston, American ambassador to France, negotiated the sale with French foreign minister Talleyrand, who stated, 'You have made a noble bargain for yourselves, and I suppose you will make the most of it'.
The price was $23 million (about $0.04 per acre), including the cost of settling all claims against France by American citizens.
 The purchase was controversial.
 Many of the Federalist Party, the dominant political party in New England, thought that the territory was 'a vast wilderness world which will... prove worse than useless to us' and spread the population across an ungovernable land, weakening federal power to the detriment of New England and the Northeast.
 But the Jeffersonians thought the territory would help maintain their vision of the ideal republican society, based on agricultural commerce, governed lightly and promoting self-reliance and virtue.
Jefferson quickly ordered exploration and documentation of the vast territory.
 He charged Lewis and Clark to lead an expedition, starting in 1804, to 'explore the Missouri river, and such principal stream of it, as, by its course and communication with the waters of the Pacific ocean; whether the Columbia, Oregon, Colorado or any other river may offer the most direct and practicable communication across the continent for the purposes of commerce'.
 Jefferson also instructed the expedition to study the region's native tribes, weather, soil, rivers, commercial trading, and animal and plant life.
The principal commercial goal was to find an efficient route to connect American goods and natural resources with Asian markets, and perhaps to find a means of blocking the growth of British fur trading companies into the Oregon Country.
 Asian merchants were already buying sea otter pelts from Pacific coast traders for Chinese customers.
 An expansion of inland fur trading was also anticipated.
 With news spreading of the expedition's findings, entrepreneurs like John Jacob Astor immediately seized the opportunity and expanded fur trading operations into the Pacific Northwest.
 Astor's 'Fort Astoria' (later Fort George), at the mouth of the Columbia River, became the first permanent white settlement in that area.
 However, during the War of 1812, the rival North West Company (a British-Canadian company) bought the camp from Astor's agents as they feared the British would destroy an American camp.
 For a while, Astor's fur business suffered.
 But he rebounded by 1820, took over independent traders to create a powerful monopoly, and left the business as a multi-millionaire in 1834, reinvesting his money in Manhattan real estate.
The quest for furs was the primary commercial reason for the exploration and colonizing of North America by the Dutch, French, and English.
 The Hudson's Bay Company, promoting British interests, often competed with French traders who had arrived earlier and had been already trading with indigenous tribes in the northern border region of the colonies.
 This competition was one of the contributing factors to the French and Indian War in 1763.
 British victory in the war led to the expulsion of the French from the American colonies.
 French trading continued, however, based in Montreal.
 Astor's move into the Northwest was a major American attempt to compete with the established French and English traders.
As the frontier moved westward, trappers and hunters moved ahead of settlers, searching out new supplies of beaver and other skins for shipment to Europe.
 The hunters preceded and followed Lewis and Clark to the Upper Missouri and the Oregon territory; they formed the first working relationships with the Native Americans in the West.
 They also added extensive knowledge of the Northwest terrain, including the important South Pass through the central Rocky Mountains.
 Discovered about 1812, it later became a major route for settlers to Oregon and Washington.
File:Lewis and Clark Columbia River.jpg|left|thumb|240px|Map of part of Lewis and Clark expedition
The War of 1812 did little to change the boundaries of the United States and British territories, but its conclusion led to the nations' agreement to make the Great Lakes neutral waters to both navies.
 Furthermore, competing commercial claims by England and the U.S. led to the Anglo-American Convention of 1818.
 This resulted in their sharing the Oregon territory until a decades later resolution.
 By 1820, with the fur trade depressed, distances to supply increasing, and conflicts with native tribes rising, the trading system was overhauled by Donald Mackenzie of the North West Company and by William H. Ashley.
 Previously, Indians caught the animals, skinned them, and brought the furs to trading posts such as Fort Lisa and Fontenelle's Post, where trappers sent the goods down river to St. Louis.
 In exchange for the furs, Indians typically received calico cloth, knives, tomahawks, awls, beads, rifles, ammunition, animal traps, rum, whiskey, and salt pork.
The new 'brigade-rendezvous' system, however, sent company men in 'brigades' cross-country on long expeditions, bypassing Maya tribes.
 It also encouraged 'free trappers' to explore new regions on their own.
 At the end of the gathering season, the trappers would 'rendezvous' and turn in their goods for pay at river ports along the Green River, the Upper Missouri, and the Upper Mississippi. St. Louis was the largest of the rendezvous towns.
 An early chronicle described the gathering as 'one continued scene of drunkenness, gambling, and brawling and fighting, as long as the money and the credit of the trappers last.'
 Trappers competed in wrestling and shooting matches.
 When they would gamble away all their furs, horses, and their equipment, they would lament, 'There goes hos and beaver.'
 By 1830, however, fashions changed in Europe and beaver hats were replaced by silk hats, sharply reducing the need for American furs.
 Thus ended the era of the 'Mountain men', trappers and scouts such as Jedediah Smith (who had traveled through more unexplored western land than any non-Indian and was the first American to reach California overland).
 The trade in beaver fur virtually ceased by 1845.
While the profit motive dominated the movement westward, the Federal government played a vital role in securing land and maintaining law and order, which allowed the expansion to proceed.
 Despite the Jeffersonian aversion and mistrust of federal power, it bore more heavily in the West than any other region, and made possible the fulfillment of Manifest Destiny.
 Since local governments were often absent or weak, Westerners, though they grumbled about it, depended on the federal government to protect them and their rights, and displayed little of the outright antipathy of some Easterners to Federalism.
The federal government established a sequence of actions related to control over western lands.
 First, it acquired western territory from other nations or native tribes by treaty; then it sent surveyors and explorers to map and document the land; next, ordered federal troops to clear out and subdue the resisting natives; and finally, had bureaucracies manage the land, such as the Bureau of Indian Affairs, the Land Office, the U.S. Geological Survey, and the Forest Service.
 The process was not a smooth one.
 Indian resistance, sectionalism, and racism forced some pauses in the process of westward settlement.
 Nonetheless, by the end of the 19th century, in the process of conquering and managing the West, the federal government amassed great size, power, and influence in national affairs.
File:Audubon-Paridae.jpg|left|thumb|160px|Plate from Birds of America
A major role of the federal government was sending out surveyors, naturalists, and artists into the West to discover its potential.
 Following the Lewis and Clark expeditions, Zebulon Pike led a party in 1805-6, under the orders of General James Wilkinson, commander of the western American army.
 Their mission was to find the head waters of the Mississippi (which turned out to be Lake Itasca, and not Leech Lake as Pike concluded).
 Later, on other journeys, Pike explored the Red and Arkansas Rivers in Spanish territory, eventually reaching the Rio Grande.
 On his return, Pike sighted the peak named after him, was captured by the Spanish and released after a long overland journey.
 Unfortunately, his documents were confiscated to protect territorial secrets and his later recollections were rambling and not of high quality.
 Major Stephen H. Long led the Yellowstone and Missouri expeditions of 1819-1820, but his categorizing of the Great Plains as arid and useless led to the region getting a bad reputation as the 'Great American Desert', which discouraged settlement in that area for several decades.
In 1811, naturalists Thomas Nuttall and John Bradbury traveled up the Missouri River with the Astoria expedition, documenting and drawing plant and animal life.
 Later, Nuthall explored the Indian Territory (Oklahoma), the Oregon Trail, and even Hawaii.
 His book A Journal of Travels into the Arkansas Territory was an important account of frontier life.
 Although Nuthall was the most traveled Western naturalist before 1840, unfortunately most of his documentation and specimens were lost.
 Artist George Catlin traveled up the Missouri as far as present-day North Dakota, producing accurate paintings of Native American culture.
 He was supplemented by Karl Bodmer, who accompanied the Prince Maximilian expedition, and made compelling landscapes and portraits.
 In 1820, John James Audubon traveled about the Mississippi Basin collecting specimens and making sketches for his monumental books Birds of America and The Viviparous Quadrupeds of North America, classic works of naturalist art.
 By 1840, the discoveries of explorers, naturalists, and mountain men had produced maps showing the rough outlines of the entire West to the Pacific Ocean.
Criollo and mestizo settlers of New Spain declared their independence in 1810 (finally obtaining it in 1821), crumbling American colonial empire in the Americas (at that moment called just America, since it was seen as just one continent), forming the new nation of Mexico which included the New Mexico territory at its north.
 A hoped for result of Mexico's independence was more open trade and better relations with the United States where previously Spain had enforced its border strictly and had arrested American traders who ventured into the region.
 After Mexico's independence, large caravans began delivering goods to Santa Fe along the Santa Fe Trail, over the  journey which took 48 days from Kansas City, Missouri (then known as Westport).
 Santa Fe was also the trailhead for the 'El Camino Real' (the King's Highway), a major trade route which carried American manufactured goods southward deep into Mexico and returned silver, furs, and mules northward (not to be confused with another 'Camino Real' which connected the missions in California).
 A branch also ran eastward near the Gulf (also called the Old San Antonio Road).
 Santa Fe also connected to California via the Old Spanish Trail.
The Mexican government began to attract Americans to the Texas area with generous terms.
 Stephen F.
 Austin became an 'empresario,' receiving contracts from the Mexican officials to bring in immigrants.
 In doing so, he also became the de facto political and military commander of the area.
 Tensions rose, however, after an abortive attempt to establish the independent nation of Fredonia in 1826.
 William Travis, leading the 'war party,' advocated for independence from Mexico, while the 'peace party' led by Austin attempted to get more autonomy within the current relationship.
 When Mexican president Santa Anna shifted alliances and joined the conservative Centralist party, he declared himself dictator and ordered soldiers into Texas to curtail new immigration and unrest.
 However, immigration continued and 30,000 Americans with 3,000 slaves arrived in 1835.
 A series of battles, including at the Alamo, at Goliad, and at the San Jacinto River, led to independence and the establishment of the Republic of Texas in 1836.
 The U.S. Congress, however, refused to annex Texas, stalemated by contentious arguments over slavery and regional power.
 Texas remained an independent country, led by Sam Houston, until it became the 28th state in 1845.
 Mexico, however, viewed the establishment of the statehood of Texas as a hostile act, helping to precipitate the Mexican War.
The expansion of migration into the Southeast in the 1820s and 1830's forced the federal government to deal with the 'Indian question.'
 By 1837 the 'Indian Removal policy' began, to implement the act of Congress signed by Andrew Jackson in 1830.
 The forced march of about twenty Native American tribes included the 'Five Civilized Tribes' (Creek, Choctaw, Cherokee, Chickasaw, and Seminole).
 They were pushed beyond the frontier and into the 'Indian Territory' (which later became Oklahoma).
 Of the approximate 70,000 Indians removed, about 20% died from disease, starvation, and exposure on the route.
 This exodus has become known as The Trail of Tears (in Cherokee 'Nunna dual Tsuny,' 'The Trail Where they Cried').
 The impact of the removals was severe.
 Sometimes the transplanted tribes clashed with the tribes native to the area.
 In addition, the Smallpox Epidemic of 1837 decimated the tribes of the Upper Missouri, weakening them, and allowing immigrants easier access to those lands.
The Indian removals were justified by two prevailing philosophies.
 The 'superior race' theory contended that 'inferior' peoples (i.e., natives) held land in trust until a 'superior race' came along which would be a more productive steward of the land.
 Humanitarians espoused a second theory stating that the removal of natives would take them away from the contaminating influences of the frontier and help preserve their culture.
 Neither theory showed any understanding of the natives' intimate connection with their land nor the deadly effect of social and physical uprooting.
 For example, tribes were dependent on local animals and plants for their food and their medicinal and cultural purposes, which were often unavailable after moving.
File:Andrew Jackson Portrait2.jpg|right|thumb|160px|President Andrew Jackson
In 1827, the Cherokee, on the basis of earlier treaties, declared themselves a sovereign nation within the boundaries of Georgia.
 When the Georgia state government ignored the declaration and annexed the land, the Cherokee took their case to the U.S. Supreme Court.
 The court ruled Georgia's laws null and void in the Cherokee nation, but the state ignored the ruling.
 The court also ruled that the tribes were 'domestic dependent nations' and could not make treaties with other nations.
 Furthermore, it was up to the federal government to protect those rights, making the tribes, in effect, wards of the federal government.
 President Jackson, having just signed the Indian Removal Act, failed to enforce the court ruling, illegally abdicating to the states the right to make policy regarding the tribes.
 In effect, Jackson refused to honor the federal government's commitment to protect the southern tribes and to act in its proper role in dealing with the tribes as sovereign, though dependent, nations.
 Jackson justified his actions by stating that Indians had 'neither the intelligence, the industry, the moral habits, nor the desire of improvements.'
The only way for a Native American to avoid removal was to accept the federal offer of  or more of land (depending on family size) in exchange for leaving the tribe and becoming a U.S. citizen subject to state law and federal law.
 However, many natives who took the offer were defrauded by 'ravenous speculators' who stole their claims and sold their land to whites.
 In Mississippi alone, fraudulent claims reached .
 Some of those who refused to move or take the offer found sanctuary for a while in remote areas.
 To motivate natives reluctant to move, the federal government also promised rifles, blankets, tobacco, and cash.
 Of the five tribes, the Seminole offered the most resistance, hiding out in the Florida swamps and waging a war which cost the U.S. Army 1,500 lives and $20 million.
 Through war, abandonment, and the removal policy, the federal government acquired about  of native land in the East from 1776 to 1842.
No sooner had the federal government created the 'Indian Territory' than whites began to encroach upon the boundaries, traders began to sell prohibited liquor, and settlers took shortcuts across Indian land on their way to Oregon and California.
 As the migrants moved across the Great Plains, their livestock sometimes trampled or ate Indian crops.
 Some tribes struck back by raiding livestock and by demanding payment from settlers crossing their land.
 The federal government attempted to reduce tensions and create new tribal boundaries in the Great Plains with two new treaties in the early 1850s.
 The Treaty of Fort Laramie established tribal zones for the Sioux, Cheyennes, Arapahos, Crows, and others, and allowed for the building of roads and posts across the tribal lands.
 A second treaty secured safe passage along the Santa Fe Trail for wagon trains.
 In return, the tribes would receive, for ten years, annual compensation for damages caused by whites.
The Kansas and Nebraska territories also became contentious areas as the federal government sought those lands for the future transcontinental railroad.
 In the Far West settlers began to occupy land in Oregon and California before the federal government secured title from the native tribes, causing considerable friction.
 In Utah, the Mormons also moved in before federal ownership was obtained.
 During their flight West, the Mormons established an outpost called Winter Quarters with permission from Big Elk of the Omaha tribe.
 This set a precedent for such agreements; however, when the Mormons exhausted local timber supplies they were asked to move from the land.
 Their occupancy in the area that soon became the Nebraska Territory lasted from 1846 to 1848.
File:Native American Chiefs 1865.jpg|left|thumb|240px|Native American Chiefs 1865
A new policy of establishing reservations came gradually into shape after the boundaries of the 'Indian Territory' began to be ignored.
 In providing for Indian reservations, Congress and the Office of Indian Affairs hoped to detribalize native Americans and prepare them for integration with the rest of American society, the 'ultimate incorporation into the great body of our citizen population.'
 This allowed for the development of dozens of riverfront towns along the Missouri River in the new Nebraska Territory, which was carved from the remainder of the Louisiana Purchase after the Kansas-Nebraska Act.
 Influential pioneer towns included Omaha, Nebraska City and St. Joseph.
White attitudes towards Indians during this period ranged from extreme malevolence ('the only good Indian is a dead Indian') to misdirected humanitarianism (Indians live in 'inferior' societies and by assimilation into white society they can be redeemed) to highly idealistic (Native Americans and settlers could co-exist in separate but equal societies, dividing up the remaining western land).
 Dealing with nomadic tribes complicated the reservation strategy and decentralized tribal power made treaty making difficult among the Plains Indians.
 Conflicts erupted in the 1850s, resulting in the Indian Wars.
John Charles Frémont, son-in-law of powerful Missouri senator and expansionist Thomas Hart Benton, led a series of expeditions in the mid 1840's which answered many of the outstanding geographic questions about the West.
 He crossed through the Rocky Mountains by five different routes, reached deep into the Oregon territory, traveled the length of California, and into Mexico below Tucson.
 With the help of legendary scouts Christopher 'Kit' Carson and Thomas 'Broken Hand' Fitzpatrick, and German cartographer Charles Preuss, Frémont produced detailed maps, filled in gaps of knowledge, and provided route information that fostered the 'Great Migrations' to Oregon, California, and the Great Basin.
 He also disproved the existence of the mythical Rio San Buenaventura, featured on old maps, which was a large river believed to drain all of the West and which exited at San Francisco into the Pacific.
Manifest Destiny was the belief that the United States was pre-ordained by God to expand from the Atlantic coast to the Pacific coast.
 The concept was expressed during Colonial times, but the term was coined by newspaperman John O'Sullivan, and became a rallying cry for expansionists in the 1840s.
 It was a moral/religious as well as political/economic justification for growth, regardless of the social and legal consequences for Native Americans.
 Implicit is the position that the American claim supersedes―by God's favor―that of foreign nations or the native peoples.
 O'Sullivan wrote, 'Away, away with all these cobweb tissues of rights of discovery, exploration, settlement, continuity, etc....
 The American claim is by the right of our manifest destiny to overspread and to possess the whole continent which Providence has given us for the development of the great experiment of liberty and federative self-government entrusted to us'.
The Polk and Tyler administrations successfully promoted this nationalistic doctrine over sectionalists and others who objected for moral reasons or over concerns about the spread of slavery.
 Starting with the annexation of Texas, the expansionists got the upper hand.
 To gain the acceptance of Northerners, Texas was even promoted by expansionists as a place where slavery could be concentrated, and from where blacks and slavery would eventually leave the U.S. entirely, solving the problem forever.
Henry Clay and Daniel Webster, among others, did not vote for conquest and expansion, and preferred co-existence with friendly foreign powers sharing the continent.
 John Quincy Adams believed the Texas annexation to be 'the heaviest calamity that ever befell myself and my country'.
 However, Manifest Destiny's popularity in the Midwest states and the addition of federal encouragement overcame the opposition and created a climate which helped start the 'Great Migrations' to Oregon, California, and the Great Basin.
Also spurring settlers westward were the emigrant 'guide books' of the 1840s featuring route information supplied by the fur traders and the Frémont expeditions, and promising fertile farm land beyond the Rockies.
 Independence, Missouri became the starting point for caravans of 'Chicago' and 'Prairie Schooner' wagons which traveled the Oregon and California trails.
 The trip was slow and arduous, but unlike the depiction in films, generally absent of Indian attacks.
 One Oregon pioneer wrote, 'Our journey is ended.
 Our toils are over.
 But... no tongue can tell, nor pen describe the heart rending scenes through which we passed'.
 On the  journey, settlers had to overcome extreme climate, lack of food and clean water, disease, broken down wagons, and exhausted draft animals.
 The Oregon territory, filling up with Americans, was ceded to the U.S. in 1846 by Great Britain, which was anxious to fix the northern boundary at the 49th parallel.
 Oregon gained statehood in 1859.
File:The Mormon pioneers coming off Big Mountain into Mountain dell.png|right|thumb|300px|Re-enactment of Mormon pioneers 1912
Brigham Young, also influenced by Frémont's discoveries and seeking to escape persecution, led his followers of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints (the 'Mormons') to the valley of the Great Salt Lake, bypassed by other immigrants headed to Oregon, because of its aridity.
 Eventually, nearly one hundred Mormon settlements sprang up in what Young called 'Deseret', which later become Utah, California, Nevada, Arizona, and Nebraska.
 The Salt Lake City settlement served as the hub of their network, and was proclaimed 'Zion, the seat of God's kingdom on earth'.
 The communalism and advanced farming practices of the Mormons enabled them to succeed in a region other settlers rejected as too harsh but which Frémont believed to have great potential.
 During the gold rushes of the 1850s, Salt Lake City became an important supply point, adding to its economic strength.
In California, the twenty-one mission settlements established by the Catholic Church had failed to attract sufficient Mexican settlers who had viewed the region as too remote.
 The Spanish aristocracy (the 'californios') controlled the territory through vast land grants on which large cattle ranches spread.
 Manned mostly by Christianized Indians supervised by the friars, the ranches supplied English and American merchant ships with hides and tallow.
 The few Americans in the area were mostly traders, merchants, and sailors, many from 'Yerba Buena' (renamed San Francisco in 1846).
 Although Presidents Jackson and Tyler's efforts to buy California from Mexico had failed, American settlers started to enter the territory by 1841.
 The Bartleson-Bidwell Party brought the first overland family migrations to Sacramento, California, followed by several more caravans which established the California Trail.
 Thousands of settlers and miners made the trip in the following decade after the discovery of gold.
 When Frémont's third expedition brought him to California in 1845, he joined the Bear Flag Revolt, and allied with other American forces, captured and controlled considerable California territory.
 In 1847, a counter-revolt by 'rancheros' failed.
 At the same time that the Mexican War was underway in the central Southwest, Mexico decided to formally cede California to the U.S. in the Treaty of Cahuenga.
A crisis with Mexico had been brewing from the time Texas won its independence in 1836.
 The annexation of Texas by the United States brought feelings on both sides to a boil.
 Additionally, the two nations disputed the border, the U.S. insisting on the Rio Grande and Mexico claiming the Nueces River,  north.
 Also, an international commission decided that American settlers were owed damages in the millions of dollars for past wrongs by the Mexican government, which it refused to pay.
 President Polk attempted to use the debts as leverage in offering to buy the Mexican territories of New Mexico and California, while he made a show of force along the border area.
 Negotiations got nowhere, and as Polk prepared to ask Congress to declare war, the Mexican cavalry began an attack on American outposts.
 After the declaration of war, Whigs accused the President of imperialism and claimed that the administration had employed 'an artful perversion of truth—a disingenuous statement of facts to make people believe a lie'.
 Northerners also feared the extension of slavery into the new territories, though the linchpin of slavery—the plantation—seemed improbable in the dusty plains of Texas.
File:Zachary Taylor 1.jpg|right|thumb|180px|Zachary Taylor
General (and later president) Zachary Taylor was ordered to the scene and his troops forced the Mexicans back to the Rio Grande.
 Then he advanced into Mexico where several battles ensued.
 Also General Winfield Scott undertook a naval assault on Veracruz, then marched his 12,000 man force west to Mexico City, winning the final battle at Chapultepec.
 Some advocated for the complete take over of Mexico by the U.S., but practical arguments as well as racism prevented the attempt.
 The 'Cincinnati Herald' voiced the racist sentiment asking what would the U.S. do with millions of Mexicans 'with their idol worship, heathen superstition, and degraded mongrel races?'
The surrender by Mexico took place on September 17, 1847.
 The Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo, signed in 1848, ceded the territories of California and New Mexico (which included the states-to-be of Utah, Arizona, Nevada, New Mexico, and parts of Colorado and Wyoming) to the United States for $18.5 million (which included the assumption of claims against Mexico by settlers).
 The Gadsden Purchase in 1853, covering southern Arizona and New Mexico, pushed the border southward and acquired land for an anticipated railroad route, and had the unintended effect of heightening conflicts with southern Apaches now habitating U.S. territory.
 The Mexican War was the smallest but deadliest of American wars—one in six American soldiers died from bullets or disease—but the spoils of that war were substantial.
 The completed Mexican cession covered over half a million square miles and increased the size of the U.S. by nearly 20%.
 Managing the new territories and dealing with the slavery issue were challenges which lay ahead.
 The Compromise of 1850 kept California a free state and allowed Utah and New Mexico to make their own decisions regarding slavery.
 It also imposed some border adjustments.
 Prior to this discovery, gold mining in the United States had been limited to primitive mines in the Southeast, especially in Georgia.
 Word spread quickly across the United States, after Polk told Congress in December 1848, 'The accounts of the abundance of gold in that territory are of such an extraordinary character as would scarcely command belief were they not corroborated by the authentic reports of officers in the public service.'
The word also reached experienced miners in South America and Europe, who quickly headed to California.
 Thousands of 'Forty-Niners' reached California, many along the California trail, boosting the population from about 14,000 in 1848 to over 200,000 in 1852.
 San Francisco was the main port of arrival, with Asians, South Americans, Australians, and Europeans making long ocean journeys, and the town grew from 800 to 20,000 people in eighteen months, with only a fractional number of women and children.
 Experienced foreign miners sometimes taught the willing American amateurs, but most newcomers arrived, grabbed some supplies, and headed willy-nilly to the gold camps without the slightest idea of what mining entailed.
File:Gold prospector.jpg|left|thumb|180px|Gold prospector
As in many other boomtowns, rapid growth in San Francisco resulted in hastily erected housing, mob rule, vigilant justice, hyper-inflated prices, environmental degradation, and considerable squalor.
 Field conditions for miners were even worse.
 They lived in log cabins and tents, and worked in all kinds of weather, suffering disease without treatment.
 Supplies were expensive and food poor, subsisting mostly of pork, beans, and whiskey.
 These highly male, transient communities with no established institutions were prone to high levels of violence, drunkenness, profanity, and greed-driven behavior.
 A weekend's entertainment with a prostitute and plentiful drink could cost hundreds of dollars, not including gambling losses, wiping out a month or more of found gold.
Without courts or law officers in the mining communities to enforce claims and justice, miners developed their own ad hoc legal system, based on the 'mining codes' used in other mining communities abroad.
 Each camp had its own rules and often handed out justice by popular vote, sometimes acting fairly and at times exercising vigilantism—with Indians, Mexicans, and Chinese generally receiving the harshest sentences.
 As miner John Cowden wrote, 'Very few ever think of stealing in the country of plenty and those who do so are immediately strung up.'
The Gold Rush radically changed the California economy and brought in an array of professionals, including precious metal specialists, merchants, doctors, and attorneys, who supplemented the numerous miners, saloonkeepers, gamblers, and prostitutes.
 A San Francisco newspaper stated, 'The whole country... resounds to the sordid cry of gold!
 Gold!
 Gold!
 while the field is left half planted, the house half built, and everything neglected but the manufacture of shovels and pick axes.'
 Gold fever was a widespread affliction among all classes.
 Black Elk recalled, gold was 'the yellow metal that makes whites crazy.'
 Later rushes, though notable, possessed less of the 'lunacy' and urgency of the California strikes Over 250,000 miners found a total of more than $200 million in gold in the five years of the California Gold Rush.
  As thousands arrived, however, fewer and fewer miners struck their fortune, and most ended exhausted and broke.
Camps spread out north and south of the American River and eastward into the Sierras.
 In a few years, nearly all of the independent miners were displaced as mines were purchased and run by mining companies, who then hired low-paid salaried miners.
 As gold became harder to find and more difficult to extract, individual prospectors gave way to paid work gangs, specialized skills, and mining machinery.
 Bigger mines, however, caused greater environmental damage.
 In the mountains, shaft mining predominated, producing large amounts of waste.
 Independent miners began to leave California in the 1850s as mines gave out, and moved on to new finds in Nevada, Idaho, Montana, Arizona, New Mexico, and Colorado.
 An exception were the Chinese.
 After white prospectors left the placer mining areas, many Chinese miners, previously excluded by racism, found the freedom to buy up the old claims and re-work them.
The discovery of the Comstock Lode, containing vast amounts of silver, resulted in the Nevada boomtowns of Virginia City, Carson City, and Silver City.
 The wealth from silver, more than from gold, fueled the maturation of San Francisco in the 1860s and helped the rise of some of its wealthiest families.
Following the California and Nevada discoveries, miners left those areas and hunted for gold along the Rockies and in the southwest.
 Soon gold was discovered in Colorado, Utah, Arizona, New Mexico, Idaho, Montana, and South Dakota (by 1864).
 Deadwood, South Dakota, in the Black Hills, was an archetypical late gold town, founded in 1875.
 In 1876, Wild Bill Hickok, accompanied by Calamity Jane, came to town and cemented Deadwood's fame by being murdered there ten days later.
 Tombstone, Arizona was another notorious mining town.
 Silver was discovered there in 1877, and by 1881 the town had a population of over 10,000.
 Wyatt Earp and his brothers arrived in 1880, became actively involved as Republicans, saloon owners, and real estate investors, and soon became involved in the most famous gunfight of the Old West, the Gunfight at the O.K. Corral.
 In the aftermath, Virgil Earp survived an assassination and Morgan Earp was hunted down and killed.
 Wyatt fled Tombstone with warrants issued against him and drifted through California, Colorado, Idaho, Arizona, and Alaska.
 In his old age, Wyatt Earp was an adviser in Hollywood for western movies, which helped secure his legendary status.
As gold and silver played out, the large work force of experienced miners gradually found work as industrial miners—working copper, iron, coal, and rare earth deposits which fueled a rapidly expanding national economy.
 Working the deeper mines was extremely hazardous.
 Temperatures could exceed  below  and many died from heat stroke.
 Poor ventilation concentrated a toxic brew of carbon dioxide, dust, and other compounds and caused frequent headaches and dizziness.
 Accidents, premature explosions, and cave-ins were common and deadly.
 About half the miners had lung disorders, shortening their lives to an average of 43 years.
 In the hard rock mines, accidents annually disabled 1 of every 30 miners and killed 1 out of 80, the highest rates of any U.S. industry.
The end of the Mexican War and the first migrations to California and Oregon prompted the federal government to undertake an additional series of surveys to chart the remaining unexplored regions of the West, to establish boundaries, and to plan possible routes for a transcontinental railroad.
 Much of this work was undertaking by the U.S. Army's Corps of Engineers, Corps of Topographical Engineers, and Bureau of Explorations and Surveys, and became known as 'The Great Reconnaissance.'
 Debates ensued among advocates of the 'northern route', 'central route', and 'southern route' for the railroad.
 Speculators were quick to follow the activities of the surveyors and this prompted further migration and business development.
Major requirements for the rail route were an adequate supply of water and wood, surmountable geography, and a politically and economically acceptable solution.
 The survey parties also had civilian scientists who collected specimens of flora and fauna along the way, for study by institutions like the Smithsonian.
 In some instances, as in the Whipple Expedition, Indians provided assistance, but at other times, such as with the Gunnison Party, Indians harassed and killed surveyors.
 By 1855, a twelve volume report was issued but without any recommendation for a preferred route.
 The survey did offer many more alternatives than expected as well as providing a wealth of scientific knowledge which heightened public awareness of the West.
 It also spurred further settlement which ultimately increased conflict with the tribes of the Great Plains.
The Gold Rush and the subsequent spurt of migration to California hastened the need for better communications across the continent.
 Mail was being transported to San Francisco by ship from New York, with a land crossing across the Isthmus of Panama, normally a month's trip.
 Then the federal government provided subsidies for the development of mail and freight delivery, and by 1856, Congress authorized road improvements and an overland mail service to California.
 There was even an experiment to use camels for transportation.
 Commercial wagon trains began to haul freight out west.
 For mail, the Overland Mail Company was formed, using what was called the 'Butterfield route', through Texas, then New Mexico and into Arizona, over the dangerous Apache Pass protected by Fort Bowie.
 This route was abandoned by 1862, after Texas joined the confederacy, in favor of stagecoach services established via Fort Laramie and Salt Lake City, a 24 day journey, with Wells Fargo & Co. as the foremost provider (initially keeping the 'Butterfield' name).
File:Ponymap.jpg|right|thumb|360px|Map of Pony Express route
William Russell, hoping to get a government contract for more rapid mail delivery service, started the Pony Express in 1860, cutting delivery time to ten days.
 He set up over 150 stations about  apart.
 Riders were required to be expert and weigh less than ., with an advertisement of the time asking for, 'young skinny wiry fellows, not over eighteen... willing to risk death daily...
 Orphans preferred...
 Wages: $25 per week.'
 If a relief rider was not available at the next station, the rider was required to change horses and keep going.
The service was short-lived, however, as the continental telegraph was completed on October 24, 1861, just eighteen months later.
 Samuel F. B. Morse developed his telegraph system in the 1830s.
 It found acceptance by the mid 1840s, and over  of wire were laid out to form a single national network.
 The telegraph and the Morse Code made possible the instantaneous transmission of information and the beginning of the tele-communications industry.
 The new national communication system soon proved a boon to newspapers, to freight hauling, to weather reporting, to law enforcement, and to the railroads.
Though Russell did get a government contract, his business had considerable losses anyway and failed.
 After the Pony Express service folded, mail continued by overland coach and by sea.
 However, Wells Fargo (established in 1852) maintained special courier services across the Sierras for carrying gold and mail through the 1860s, and its banking, freighting, and business services flourished in California.
 It grew through the consolidation of other overland mail companies until the opening of the transcontinental railroad in 1869 caused Wells Fargo to realign its services and delivery routes.
By the mid-1850s, the Kansas territory had a population of only a few hundred settlers but it became the focus of the slavery question.
 Of its neighboring states, Missouri was a slave state and Iowa was not.
 With the Kansas-Nebraska Act of 1854, Congress repealed the Missouri Compromise which blocked slavery in Kansas, instead leaving the decision up to Kansas.
 The stakes were high.
 Adoption of slavery in Kansas would have given the slave states a two vote majority in the Senate and abolitionists were intent on blocking that.
 To influence the territorial decision, abolitionists (also called 'Jayhawkers' or 'Free-soilers') financed the migration of anti-slavery settlers.
 But pro-slavery advocates secured the outcome of the territorial vote by bringing in 'Border Ruffians', rowdies from Missouri who stuffed ballot boxes and intimidated voters.
 The anti-slavers then sent Sharps rifles ('Beecher's Bibles') and ammunition to supporters in Kansas, leading to widespread violence and destruction which prompted the New York Tribune to call the territory 'Bleeding Kansas'.
The Dred Scott decision by the Supreme Court of the United States in 1857 declared the Missouri Compromise unconstitutional and that Congress had no authority to exclude slavery from the territories, thus opening these areas to slavery again depending on the local vote.
 Despite the efforts by presidents Franklin Pierce and James Buchanan to influence Kansas territorial governors to vote pro-slavery, Kansas voted to become a free state and the thirty-fourth state of the Union in 1861.
 The conflict also helped to foster the organization and development of the Republican Party in 1856, a mixture of free-soilers, expansionists, and federalists who opposed the extension of slavery into the Western territories.
 Abraham Lincoln, an early Republican, made clear his position on slavery in the famous Lincoln-Douglas debates which helped propel him to the presidency in 1860, 'Never forget that we have before us this whole matter of the right or wrong of slavery in this Union, though the immediate question is as to its spreading out into new Territories and States'.
 Lincoln branded slavery as a 'monstrous injustice' and a 'moral, social, and political evil'.
 In 1862, Lincoln signed a law prohibiting the spread of slavery into all the remaining territorial possessions.
 During Lincoln's administration, two other important acts were passed which impacted the West—the Homestead Act and the Pacific Railroad Act.
At the outset of the American Civil War, Westerners looked to the Civil War to settle the question of slavery in their territories.
 But they also feared that the federal government would be too preoccupied with the war to worry about the stability of the territorial governments and that lawlessness might spread.
 The Dred Scott Decision had made the choice of slavery legal in all of the land west of the Mississippi River, except for Kansas, Oregon, and California.
Although most of the battles of the Civil War took place east of the Mississippi River, a few important campaigns occurred in the West.
 However, Kansas, a major area of conflict building up to the war, was the scene of only one battle, at Mine Creek.
 But its proximity to Confederate states enabled guerillas, such as Quantrill's Raiders, to attack Union strongholds, causing considerable damage.
 Both sides attacked civilians, murdering and plundering with little discrimination, creating an atmosphere of terror.
File:Picacho Battle.jpg|thumb|left|A historical reenactment of the Battle of Picacho Peak in Arizona
In Texas, citizens voted to join the confederacy.
 Local troops took over the federal arsenal in San Antonio, with plans to grab the territories of New Mexico, Utah, and Colorado, and possibly California.
 At the Battle of Glorieta Pass, the Texans' campaign was defeated by Union troops from Colorado and from Fort Union.
 Missouri, a Union state where slavery was legal, became a battleground when the pro-secession governor, against the vote of the legislature, led troops to the federal arsenal at St. Louis.
 When Confederate forces from Arkansas and Louisiana joined him, Union General Samuel Curtis was dispatched to the area and regained Missouri for the Union for the duration of the war.
The decreased presence of Union troops in the West left behind untrained militias which encouraged native uprisings and skirmishes with settlers.
 President Lincoln appears to have had little time to formulate new Indian policy It also standardized procedures and the supervision of territorial governments, taking away some local powers, and imposing much 'red tape', growing the federal bureaucracy significantly.
Federal involvement in the territories was considerable.
 In addition to direct subsidies, the federal government maintained military posts, provided safety from Indian attacks, bankrolled treaty obligations, conducted surveys and land sales, built roads, staffed land offices, made harbor improvements, and subsidized overland mail delivery.
 Territorial citizens came to both decry federal power and local corruption, and at the same time, lament that more federal dollars were not sent their way.
Territorial governors were political appointees and beholden to Washington so they usually governed with a light hand, allowing the legislatures to deal with the local issues.
 In addition to his role as civil governor, a territorial governor was also a militia commander, a local superintendent of Indian affairs, and the state liaison with federal agencies.
 State legislators, on the other hand, spoke for the local citizens and they were given considerable leeway by the federal government to make local law, except in extreme cases, as when the Federal government squashed polygamy by the Mormons in Utah.
These improvements to governance still left plenty of room for profiteering.
 As Mark Twain wrote while working for his brother, the secretary of Nevada, 'The government of my country snubs honest simplicity, but fondles artistic villainy, and I think I might have developed into a very capable pickpocket if I had remained in the public service a year or two.'
In acquiring, preparing, and distributing public land to private ownership, the federal government generally followed the system set forth by the Land Ordinance of 1785.
 Federal exploration and scientific teams would undertake reconnaissance of the land and determine Native American habitation.
 Through treaty, land title would be ceded by the resident tribes.
 Then surveyors would create detailed maps marking the land into squares of six miles (10 km) on each side, subdivided first into one square mile blocks, then into  lots.
 Townships would be formed from the lots and sold at public auction.
 Unsold land could be purchased from the land office at a minimum price of $1.25 per acre.
In theory, the system would provide a fair distribution of land and reduce large accumulations of land by private owners.
 In reality, speculators could exploit loopholes and acquire large tracts of land.
 There was no limit to purchases of the unsold land by speculators.
 Furthermore, settlers often got to the land ahead of the surveyors and became squatters, living on land they held no title to.
As part of public policy, the government would award public land to certain groups such as veterans, through the use of 'land script'.
 The script traded in a financial market, often at below the $1.25 per acre minimum price set by law, which gave speculators, investors, and developers another way to acquired large tracts of land cheaply.
 Land policy became politicized by competing factions and interests, and the question of slavery on new lands was contentious.
 As a counter to land speculators, farmers formed 'claims clubs' to enable them to buy larger tracts than the  allotments by trading among themselves at controlled prices.
The federal government also began to give away land for agricultural colleges, Indian reservations, public institutions, and the construction of railroads.
 It also gave away land when a territory became a state, and it gave each state  for each senator and representative.
In 1862, Congress passed three important bills that impacted the land system.
 The Homestead Act granted  to each settler who improved the land for five years, to citizens and non-citizens including squatters, for no more than modest filing fees.
 If a six months residency was complied with, the settler then had the option to buy the parcel at $1.25 per acre.
 The property could then be sold or mortgaged and neighboring land acquired if expansion was desired.
 Though the act was on the whole successful, the  size of parcels was not large enough for the needs of Western farmers and ranchers, and it failed to address the needs of the mining and timber operations as well.
left|thumb|300px|Homesteaders
Early on after the California Gold Rush, the federal government decided to leave the regulation of mining claims to local governments.
 This was reversed by later acts, which helped legitimate land acquisition for all purposes but which also made it easier for speculators and swindlers, especially in the timber and ranching industries.
 Given the necessity of water for ranching, squabbles over water rights ensued and complicated the situation.
The Pacific Railroad Grant provided for the land needed to build the transcontinental railroad.
 Since several routes were under consideration, the amount of land so provided was huge, over .
 The land given the railroads alternated with government-owned tracts saved for distribution to homesteaders.
 In an effort to be equitable, the federal government reduced each tract to  because of its perceived higher value given its proximity to the rail line.
 Railroads had up to five years to sell or mortgage their land, after tracks were laid, after which unsold land could be purchased by anyone.
 Often railroads sold some of their government acquired land to homesteaders immediately to encourage settlement and the growth of markets the railroads would then be able to serve.
 However, the railroads were slow to build in some areas, waiting for the population to grow adequately on its own, before selecting final routes.
 This caused a 'chicken-and-egg' situation which, in some cases, impeded rather than hastened settlement.
 Congress also made loans to the railroads based on the mileage of rail.
The Morrill Act provided land grants to states to build institutions of higher education for agricultural purposes, in an effort to stimulate rural economic growth and the education programs to support it.
 The states would sell the bulk of the land to raise funds to build the institutions.
The federal government even attempted to forest the prairies to make better use of undesirable land.
 Relying on the theory that planting trees would alter the climate enough to produce the rainfall need to sustain the forests long term, the government encouraged homesteaders to plant trees.
 When the 'rain-follows-the-plow program' failed due to drought and pests, the federal government turned instead to more practical programs to develop irrigation, though large-scale irrigation projects came decades later.
 But by the 1870s, the large land giveaways raised concerns about the management of remaining public lands, particularly those of unique value such as the Grand Canyon and Yellowstone, and the conservation movement was born.
 In 1872, Yellowstone became the first national park in the United States (and in the world).
The Pacific Railroad Act of 1862 finally hastened the transition of the transcontinental railroad from dream to reality.
 Existing rail lines, particularly belonging to the Union Pacific, had already reached westward to Omaha, Nebraska, about half way across the continent.
 The Central Pacific, starting in Sacramento, California, was extended eastward across the Sierras to link with the Union Pacific heading west.
 The two finally met at Promontory Point, Utah on May 10, 1869.
 Leland Stanford, one of the prime backers of the Central Pacific, hammered the golden spike in triumph, linking the two lines.
 A cross-country trip was reduced from about four months to one week by the completion of the railroad.
Building the railroad required six main activities: surveying the route, blasting a right of way, building tunnels and bridges, clearing and laying the roadbed, laying the ties and rails, and maintaining and supplying the crews with food and tools.
 The work was highly labor intensive, using mostly plows, scrapers, picks, axes, chisels, sledgehammers, and handcarts.
 A few steam-driven machines, such as shovels, were employed as well.
 Each iron rail weighed .
 and required five men to lift.
 For blasting, they used gunpowder, nitroglycerine, and limited amounts of dynamite.
 The Central Pacific employed over 12,000 Chinese workers, 90 percent of the work force.
 The Union Pacific employed mostly Irishmen.
 The crews averaged about two miles (3 km) of new track per day but they were driven to do more.
thumb|right|300px|The meeting of the lines on May 10, 1869.
With grants and loans, the federal government stimulated the land and capital acquisition needed for the project.
 Leland Stanford, former governor and part of a group of businessmen known as the 'Big Four', sold stock and bonds in the enterprise to finance construction, with the help of Wall Street money men like Jay Gould who connected with investors in the United States and Europe.
 The enterprise was considered risky, given the high construction costs, and the bonds need to yield high interest (similar to today's 'junk bonds') to be attractive to investors.
 The huge dollars involved in the project and the participation of so many groups out to profit resulted in substantial corruption and influence peddling.
 The owners of both construction companies, using mostly 'other people's money', insured their own profits with shady dealing and with slush funds used to bribe government officials.
The worst corruption revolved around George Francis Train's Crédit Mobilier, the construction company for the Union Pacific, which, according to author Richard White, drew in 'dozens of congressmen, a secretary of the treasury, two vice-presidents, a leading presidential contender, and an eventual president.
 It caused a scandal that remained an issue in four presidential elections'.
 Train's other enterprises, including the Credit Foncier of America, Train Town and Omaha's Cozzens Hotel, succeeded, further burnishing Train's image.
 While the Central Pacific-Union Pacific railroad succeeded, other transcontinental projects failed to reach the Pacific coast until many years later.
 The most notorious was the Northern Pacific project which failed to sell its bonds, resulting in the collapse of the Jay Cooke and Company investment house and helping to trigger the financial Panic of 1873.
 The most profitable of the transcontinental lines was the Great Northern railroad which ran along the northern tier of the United States, providing freight service to the Northwest.
 The cost of moving freight on the Great Northern was 2.88 cents per ton early on, falling to less than.
 80 cents by 1907.
Despite the engineering problems and political scandals, the transcontinental railroad was a big success in helping to open up the West.
 In the first year, 150,000 passengers made the trip for 'pleasure, health, or business' and enjoyed the 'luxurious cars and eating houses' as advertised by the Union Pacific.
 Settlers were encouraged with promotions to come West on scouting trips to buy land near the line and to use the rails for freight needs.
 The railroads had 'Immigration Bureaus' which advertised the 'promised land' abroad.
 Railroad 'Land Departments' sold land on easy terms.
 The Great Plains, a harder 'sell' than California or Oregon, was promoted as 'prairie which is ready for the plow' and 'a flowery meadow' only requiring 'diligent labor and economy to ensure an early reward.'
The transcontinental railroad spurred the development of trunk and feeder lines and the rapid growth of Omaha specifically, creating a rail network extending from the city that eventually reached over most of the West.
 The railroads made possible the transformation of the United States from an agrarian society to a modern industrial nation.
 Not only did they bring eastern products west and agricultural products east, but they also helped the establishment of western branches of eastern companies.
 Mail order businesses grew rapidly, bringing city products to rural families, sometimes dominating local companies and forcing them out of business.
 The building and the operation of railroads, which required vast amounts of coal and lumber, spurred the timber and mining industries.
 Most industries benefited from the lower costs of transportation and the expanding markets made possible by the railroads.
 Railroads also had a profound social effect.
 Rail travel brought immigrant families to the West as women were less intimidated by the rail journey west than by wagon.
 The greater numbers of women and children migrating west helped stabilize and tame some of the wild frontier towns, as these settlers organized and demanded schools, law enforcement, churches, and other institutions supportive of family life.
  
File:Side of a False Front Building in Chesaw WA.jpg|thumb|right|300px|A False Front building in Chesaw, Washington.
After the Civil War, many from the East Coast and Europe were lured west by reports from relatives and by extensive advertising campaigns promising 'the Best Prairie Lands', 'Low Prices', 'Large Discounts For Cash', and 'Better Terms Than Ever!'.
 The new railroads provided the opportunity for migrants to go out and take a look, with special 'land exploring tickets', the cost of which could be applied to land purchases offered by the railroads.
 Some migrants went west reluctantly, particularly women tied to their husbands economically, who viewed the dangers of the West more objectively.
 As one farm wife stated, 'There's nothing up there but Indians and rattlesnakes and blue northers and prairie fires'.
 The truth was that farming the plains was indeed more difficult than back east.
 Water management was more critical, lightning fires more prevalent, weather more extreme, rainfall less predictable.
Most migrants, however, put those concerns aside.
 Their chief motivation to move west was to find a better economic life than the one they had.
 Farmers sought larger and more fertile areas; merchants and tradesman new customers and less competitive markets; laborers higher paying work and better conditions.
 The major exception was the Mormons, who sought a religious and economic Utopia, free of persecution, which would allow their entire community to thrive.
 In many cases, migrants sank their roots in communities of similar religious and ethnic backgrounds.
 For example, many Finns went to Minnesota and Michigan, Swedes to South Dakota, Norwegians to North Dakota, Irish to Montana, Chinese to San Francisco, German Mennonites in Kansas, and German Jews to Portland, Oregon.
The California Gold Rush set off large migrations of Hispanic and Asian people which continued after the Civil War.
 Chinese migrants, many of whom were impoverished peasants, provided the major part of the workforce for the building of Central Pacific portion of the transcontinental railroad.
 They also worked in mining, agriculture, and small businesses, and many lived in San Francisco.
 Significant numbers of Japanese also arrived in California.
 Some migrants intended to make their fortune and return home and others sought to stay and start a new life.
File:Army buffalo soldiers.jpg|right|thumb|200px|Buffalo soldier
Many Hispanics who had been living in the former territories of New Spain, lost their land rights to fraud and governmental action when Texas, New Mexico, and California were formed.
 In some cases, Hispanics were simply driven off their land.
 In Texas, the situation was most acute, as the 'Tejanos', who made up about 75% of the population, ended up as laborers employed by the large white ranches which took over their land.
 In New Mexico, only six percent of all claims by Hispanics were confirmed by the Claims Court.
 As a result, many Hispanics became permanently migrating workers, seeking seasonal employment in farming, mining, ranching, and on the railroads.
 Border towns sprang up with barrios of intense poverty.
 In response, some Hispanics joined labor unions, and in a few cases, led revolts.
 The California 'Robin Hood', Joaquin Murieta, led a gang in the 1850s which burned houses, killed miners, and robbed stagecoaches.
 In Texas, Juan Cortina led a 20-year campaign against Texas land grabbers and the Texas Rangers, starting around 1859.
 Instead of the reality of Hispanic life, in the United States the public's image became one of quaint peasants happy with their lot.
The rise of the cattle industry and the cowboy is directly tied to the demise of the huge bison herds of the Great Plains.
 Once numbering over 25 million, bison were a vital resource animal for the Plains Indians, providing food, hides for clothing and shelter, and bones for implements.
 Drought, loss of habitat, disease, and over-hunting steadily reduced the herds through the 19th century to the point of near extinction.
 Overland trails and growing settlements began to block the free movement of the herds to feeding and breeding areas.
 Initially, commercial hunters sought bison to make 'pemmican,' a mixture of pounded buffalo meat, fat, and berries, which was a long-lasting food used by trappers and other outdoorsmen.
 Not only did white hunters impact the herds, but Indians who arrived from the East also contributed to their reduction.
 Adding to the kill was the wanton slaughter of bison by sportsmen, migrants, and soldiers.
 Shooting bison from passing trains was common sport.
 However, the greatest negative effect on the herds was the huge markets opened up by the completion of the transcontinental railroad.
 Hides in great quantities were tanned into leather and fashioned into clothing and furniture.
 Killing far exceeded market requirements, reaching over one million per year.
 As many as five bison were killed for each one that reached market, and most of the meat was left to rot on the plains and at trackside after removal of the hides.
 Skulls were often ground for fertilizer.
 A skilled hunter could kill over 100 bison in a day.
File:Bison skull pile, ca1870.png|thumb|240px|Photograph from the mid-1870's of a pile of American bison skulls to be ground into fertilizer.
By the 1870s, the great slaughter of bison had a major impact on the Plains Indians, dependent on the animal both economically and spiritually.
 Soldiers of the U.S. Army deliberately encouraged and abetted the killing of bison as part of the campaigns against the Sioux and Pawnee, in an effort to deprive them of their resource animal and to demoralize them.
The sharp decline of the herds of the Plains created a vacuum which was exploited by the growing cattle industry.
 Spanish cattlemen had introduced cattle ranching and longhorn cattle to the Southwest in the 17th century, and the men who worked the ranches, called 'vaqueros', were the first 'cowboys' in the West.
 After the Civil War―with railheads available at Abilene, Kansas City, Dodge City, and Wichita―Texas ranchers raised large herds of longhorn cattle and drove them north along the Western, Chisholm, and Shawnee trails.
 The cattle were slaughtered in Chicago, St. Louis, and Kansas City.
 The Chisholm Trail, laid out by cattleman Joseph McCoy along an old trail marked by Jesse Chisholm, was the major artery of cattle commerce, carrying over 1.5 million head of cattle between 1867 and 1871 over the  from south Texas to Abilene, Kansas.
 The long drives were treacherous, especially crossing water such as the Brazos and the Red River and when they had to fend off Indians and rustlers looking to make off with their cattle.
 A typical drive would take three to four months and contained two miles (3 km) of cattle six abreast.
 Despite the risks, the long Texas drives proved very profitable and attracted investors from the United States and abroad.
 The price of one head of cattle raised in Texas was about $4 but was worth more than $40 back East.
By the 1870s and 1880s, cattle ranches expanded further north into new grazing grounds and replaced the bison herds in Wyoming, Montana, Colorado, Nebraska and the Dakota territory, using the rails to ship to both coasts.
 Many of the largest ranches were owned by Scottish and British financiers.
 The single largest cattle ranch in the entire West was owned by American John W. Iliff, 'cattle king of the Plains', operating in Colorado and Wyoming.
 Gradually, longhorns were replaced by the American breeds of Hereford and Angus, introduced by settlers from the Northwest.
 Though less hardy and more disease-prone, these breeds produced better tasting beef and matured faster.
Then disaster struck the cattle industry.
 A terribly severe winter engulfed the plains toward the end of 1886 and well into 1887, locking the prairie grass under ice and crusted snow which starving herds couldn’t penetrate.
 After their livestock died by the thousands, great syndicates and “barons”, already under pressure from declining prices and tightening credit, were financially ruined.
 Many of them had spent much more each year than they made in order to expand their land and cattle empires, but now they were forced to liquidate most of their remaining holdings just to pay for living expenses and to help satisfy a host of demanding creditors.
Sheep grazing took over as sheep were easier to feed and needed less water.
 However, sheep also helped cause ecological changes that enabled foreign grasses to invade the Plains and also caused increased erosion.
 Open range cattle ranching came to an end and was replaced by barbed wire spreads where water, breeding, feeding, and grazing could be controlled.
 This led to 'fence wars' which erupted over disputes about water rights.
 Cattlemen and sheep ranchers sometimes engaged in violence against each other as did large and small cattle ranchers, culminating in the Johnson County War.
File:WyattEarp-andothers.jpg|left|thumb|300px|Wyatt Earp, Bat Masterson, and others on the Dodge City Peace Commission
Anchoring the booming cattle industry of the 1860s and 1870s were the cattle towns in Kansas and Missouri.
 Like the mining towns in California and Nevada, cattle towns such as Abilene, Dodge City, and Ellsworth experienced a short period of boom and bust lasting about five years.
 The cattle towns would spring up as land speculators would rush in ahead of a proposed rail line and build a town and the supporting services attractive to the cattlemen and the cowboys.
 If the railroads complied, the new grazing ground and supporting town would secure the cattle trade.
 However, unlike the mining towns which in many cases became ghost towns and ceased to exist after the ore played out, cattle towns often evolved from cattle to farming and continued on after the grazing lands were exhausted.
 In some cases, resistance by moral reformers and alliances of businessmen drove the cattle trade out of town.
 Ellsworth, on the other hand, floundered as the result of Indian raids, floods, and cholera.
The early years of male-dominated life in cattle towns gave way to a more balanced community of farm families and small businesses as the boom passed.
 Though lawlessness, prostitution, and gambling were significant in cattle towns, especially early on, the greed factor in the mining towns added an extra element of danger and violence.
 Since these towns grew rapidly, law and order often took a while to establish itself.
 Vigilante justice did occur, but in many cases, it subsided when adequate police forces were appointed.
 While some vigilante committees served the public good fairly and successfully in the absence of law officers and judges, more often than not vigilantism was motivated by bigotry and base emotion and produced imperfect justice directed at those considered socially inferior.
 Indian hunting and race riots against the Chinese were severe manifestations of vigilantism.
A contemporary eyewitness of Hays City, Kansas paints a vivid image of a cattle town:
'Hays City by lamplight was remarkably lively, but not very moral.
 The streets blazed with a reflection from saloons, and a glance within showed floors crowded with dancers, the gaily dressed women striving to hide with ribbons and paint the terrible lines which that grim artist, Dissipation, loves to draw upon such faces...
 To the music of violins and the stamping of feet the dance went on, and we saw in the giddy maze old men who must have been pirouetting on the very edge of their graves.'
To control violence, sometimes cowboys were segregated into brothel districts away from the main part of town.
 Cattle rustling was a serious offense sometimes punished by lynching.
 However, free-shooting brawls, also known as 'hurrahing', were not as frequent as in the movies.
 In Wichita, handguns were outlawed within city limits and in many towns some form of gun control existed.
 Also unlike in the movies, marshals rarely shot outlaws, especially in the middle of Main Street in a showdown.
 Famed lawmen such as Wyatt Earp, Bat Masterson, and Wild Bill Hickok, and less remembered ones like Michael Meagher, Thomas James Smith, and Bill Tilghman actually averaged only one or two killings in a year.
File:Gunfight at the OK Corral.jpg|right|thumb|200px|Re-enactment of the Gunfight at the O.K. Corral
A new code of behavior was becoming acceptable in the West.
  People no longer had a duty to retreat when threatened.
  This was a departure from British common law that said you must have your back to the wall before you could protect yourself with deadly force.
 In 1876 an Ohio court held if attacked you were not “obligated to fly”.
 The Indiana Supreme Court upheld the legality of ‘no duty to retreat”.
 The code of the West dictated that a man did not have to back away from a fight.
 He could also pursue an adversary even if it resulted in death.
 He needed to retreat no further than “the air at his back”.
In reality, the main activity of law enforcement in cattle towns was knocking down drunks and hauling them away before they hurt themselves or others, somewhat akin to naval military police controlling shore leave.
 They also disarmed cowboys who violated gun control edicts, tried to prevent dueling, and dealt with flagrant breaches of gambling and prostitution ordinances.
 When the cattle were not in town, Wyatt Earp and other lawmen might be heading up street repair projects or doing other civic chores, or tending to their own business interests.
Much of the banditry of the West was carried out by Mexicans and Indians against Anglo-American targets of opportunity along the U.S. – Mexico border, particularly in Texas, Arizona, and California.
 Pancho Villa, after leaving his father's employ, took up the life of banditry in Durango and later in the state of Chihuahua.
 He was caught several times for crimes ranging from banditry to horse thievery and cattle rustling but, through influential connections, was always able to secure his release.
 Villa later became a controversial revolutionary folk hero, leading a band of Mexican raiders in attacks against various regimes and was sought after by the U.S. government.
 The second major type of banditry was conducted by the infamous outlaws of the West, including Jesse James, Billy the Kid, the Dalton Gang, Black Bart, Butch Cassidy and the Wild Bunch and hundreds of others who preyed on banks, trains, and stagecoaches.
 Some of the outlaws, such as Jesse James, were products of the violence of the Civil War (James had ridden with Quantrill's Raiders) and others became outlaws during hard times in the cattle industry.
 Many were misfits and drifters who roamed the West avoiding the law.
 When outlaw gangs were near, towns would raise a posse (like in the movies) to attempt to drive them away or capture them.
 Seeing that the need to combat the gunslingers was a growing business opportunity, Allan Pinkerton ordered his detective agency to open branches out West, and they got into the business of pursuing and capturing outlaws, like the James Gang, Butch Cassidy, Sam Bass, and dozens of others.
 Pinkerton devised the 'rogues gallery' and employed a systematic method for identifying bodies of criminals.
Central to the myth and the reality of the West is the American cowboy.
 His real life was a hard one and revolved around two annual roundups, spring and fall, the subsequent drives to market, and the time off in the cattle towns spending his hard earned money on food, clothing, gambling, and prostitution.
 During winter, many cowboys hired themselves out to ranches near the cattle towns, where they repaired and maintained equipment and buildings.
 On a long drive, there was usually one cowboy for each 250 head of cattle.
 As open range ranching and the long drives gave way to fenced in ranches in the 1880s, the glory days of the cowboy came to an end, and the myths about the 'free living' cowboy began to emerge.
Many of the cowboys were veterans of the Civil War, particularly from the Confederacy, who returned to ruined home towns and found no future, so they went west looking for opportunities.
 Some were Blacks, Hispanics, and even Native Americans, Britons, and Scotsmen.
 Nearly all were in their twenties or teens.
 The earliest cowboys in Texas learned their trade, adapted their clothing, and took their jargon from the Mexican vaqueros or 'buckaroos', the heirs of Spanish cattlemen from Andalusia in Spain.
 Chaps, the heavy protective leather trousers worn by cowboys, got their name from the Spanish 'chaparreras', and the rope was derived from 'la reata'.
 All the distinct clothing of the cowboy—boots, saddles, hats, pants, chaps, slickers, bandannas, gloves, and collar-less shirts—were practical and adaptable, designed for protection and comfort.
 The cowboy hat quickly developed the capability, even in the early years, to identify its wearer as someone associated with the West.
  The most enduring fashion adapted from the cowboy, popular nearly worldwide today, are 'blue jeans', originally made by Levi Strauss for miners in 1850.
 It was the cowboy hat, however, that came to symbolize the American West.
The modern rodeo or 'Frontier Day' show is the only American sport to evolve from an industry.
 It exists on both the amateur and professional level, and it remains a favorite form of entertainment in many towns of the West.
 Rodeos combine the traditional skills of the range cowboy - calf and steer roping, steer wrestling, team roping, bronco riding, and horsemanship with the showmanship of bull riding, and barrel racing.
As the frontier moved westward, the establishment of U.S. military forts moved with it, representing and maintaining federal sovereignty over new territories.
 The military garrisons usually lacked defensible walls but were seldom attacked.
 They served as bases for troops at or near strategic areas, particularly for counteracting the Indian presence.
 For example, Fort Bowie protected Apache Pass in southern Arizona along the mail route between Tucson and El Paso and was used to launch attacks against Cochise and Geronimo.
 Fort Laramie and Fort Kearny helped protect immigrants crossing the Great Plains and a series of posts in California protected miners.
 Forts were constructed to launch attacks against the Sioux.
 As Indian reservations sprang up, the military set up forts to protect them.
 Forts also guarded the Union Pacific and other rail lines.
 Other important forts were Fort Sill (Oklahoma), Fort Smith (Arkansas), Fort Snelling (Minnesota), Fort Union (Montana), Fort Worth (Texas), and Fort Walla Walla (Washington).
 By the 1890s, with the threat from Indian nations eliminated, and with migrant populations increasing enough to provide their own law enforcement, most frontier forts were abandoned.
 Fort Omaha (Nebraska) was home to the Department of the Platte, and was responsible for outfitting most Western posts for more than 20 years after its founding in the late 1870s.
File:fort Snelling.jpg|right|thumb|240px|Fort Snelling
As settlement sped up across the West after the transcontinental railroad was completed, clashes with Native Americans of the Plains and southwest reached a final phase.
 The military's mission was to clear the land of free-roaming Indians and put them onto reservations.
 The stiff resistance after the Civil War of battle-hardened, well-armed Indian warriors resulted in the Indian Wars.
File:Sitting Bull.jpg|left|thumb|160px|Chief Sitting Bull
In the Apache and Navajo Wars, Colonel Christopher 'Kit' Carson fought the Apache around the reservations in 1862.
 Skirmishes between the U.S. and Apaches continued until 1886, when Geronimo surrendered to U.S. forces.
 Kit Carson used a scorched earth policy in the Navajo campaign, burning Navajo fields and homes, and stealing or killing their livestock.
 He was aided by other Indian tribes with long-standing enmity toward the Navajos, chiefly the Utes.
 He later fought a combined force of Kiowa, Comanche and Cheyenne to a draw at the First Battle of Adobe Walls, but he managed to destroy the Indian village and winter supplies.
 On June 27, 1874 'Bat' Masterson and a small group of buffalo hunters fought a much larger Indian force at the Second Battle of Adobe Walls.
Red Cloud's War was led by the Lakota chief Makhpyia luta (Red Cloud) against the military who were erecting forts along the Bozeman trail.
 It was the most successful campaign against the U.S. during the Indian Wars.
 By the Treaty of Fort Laramie (1868), the U.S. granted a large reservation to the Lakota, without military presence or oversight, no settlements, and no reserved road building rights.
 The reservation included the entire Black Hills.
Captain Jack was a chief of the Native American Modoc tribe of California and Oregon, and was their leader during the Modoc War.
 With 53 Modoc warriors, Captain Jack held off 1,000 men of the U.S. Army for 7 months.
 Captain Jack killed Edward Canby.
The Great Sioux War of 1876-77 was conducted by the Lakota under Sitting Bull and Crazy Horse.
 The conflict began after repeated violations of the Treaty of Fort Laramie (1868) once gold was discovered in the hills.
 One of its famous battles was the Battle of the Little Bighorn, in which combined Sioux and Cheyenne forces defeated the 7th Cavalry, led by General George Armstrong Custer.
The end of the Indian Wars came at the Massacre of Wounded Knee (December 29, 1890) where Sitting Bull's half-brother, Big Foot, and some 200 Sioux were killed by the U.S. 7th Cavalry Regiment.
 Only thirteen days before, Sitting Bull had been killed with his son Crow Foot in a gun battle with a group of Indian police that had been sent by the American government to arrest him.
In 1889, President Benjamin Harrison authorized the opening of  of unoccupied lands in the Oklahoma territory acquired from the native tribes.
 On April 22, over 100,000 settlers and cattlemen (known as 'boomers') lined up at the border, and with the army's guns and bugles giving the signal, began a mad dash into the newly opened land to stake their claims (Land Run of 1889).
 A witness wrote, 'The horsemen had the best of it from the start.
 It was a fine race for a few minutes, but soon the riders began to spread out like a fan, and by the time they reached the horizon they were scattered about as far as the eye could see'.
 In a day, the towns of Oklahoma City, Norman, and Guthrie came into existence.
 In the same manner, millions of acres of additional land was opened up and settled in the following four years.
File:Invaders.gif|Right|350px|thumb|'The Invaders' of The Johnson County Cattle War.
 Photo Taken at Fort D.A. Russell near Cheyenne, Wyoming May 1892.
The Johnson County War was a range war which took place in Johnson County, Wyoming, in the Powder River Country in April 1892.
 The large ranches were organized as the Wyoming Stock Growers Association (the WSGA) and hired killers from Texas; an expedition of 50 men was organized, which proceeded by train from Cheyenne to Casper, Wyoming, then toward Johnson County, intending to eliminate alleged rustlers and also, apparently, to replace the government in Johnson County.
 After initial hostilities, the sheriff of Johnson County raised a posse of 200 men and set out for the ruffians' location.
 The posse led by the sheriff besieged the invading force at the TA Ranch on Crazy Woman Creek.
 After two days, one of the invaders escaped and was able to contact the acting governor of Wyoming.
 Frantic efforts to save the besieged invaders ensued, and telegraphs to Washington resulted in intervention by President Benjamin Harrison.
 The Sixth Cavalry from Fort McKinney was ordered to proceed to the TA ranch and take custody of the invaders and save them from the posse.
 In the end, the invaders went free after the court venue was changed and the charges were dropped.
In his highly influential Frontier Thesis in 1893, Frederick Jackson Turner concluded that the frontier was all but gone.
 (But with the discovery of gold in the Klondike in 1896, a new frontier was opened up in the vast northern territory.
 Alaska became known as 'the last frontier'.)
 After the eleventh U.S. Census was taken in 1890, the superintendent announced that there was no longer a clear line of advancing settlement, and hence no longer a frontier in the continental United States.
 The West was finally conquered, achieving Manifest Destiny, in less than one hundred years after the frontier breached the Mississippi River.
 By century's end, the population of the West had reached an average of two people per square mile, which was enough to be considered 'settled'.
 Towns and cities began to grow around industrial centers, transportation hubs, and farming areas.
 In 1880, San Francisco dwarfed all other Western cities with a population of nearly 250,000.
 Over opposition from mining and timber interests, the federal government began to take steps to preserve and manage the remaining public land and resources, hence exercising more control over the affairs of Westerners By simplifying reality and grossly exaggerating the truth, the novels captured the public's attention with sensational tales of violence and heroism, and fixed in the public's mind stereotypical images of heroes and villains—courageous cowboys and savage Indians, virtuous lawmen and ruthless outlaws, brave settlers and predatory cattlemen.
 Millions of copies and thousands of titles were sold.
 The novels relied on a series of predictable literary formulas appealing to mass tastes and were often written in as little as a few days.
 The most successful of all dime novels was Edward S. Ellis' Seth Jones (1860).
 Ned Buntline's stories glamorized Buffalo Bill Cody and Edward L. Wheeler created 'Deadwood Dick', 'Hurricane Nell', and 'Calamity Jane'.
File:ishi.jpg|thumb|200px| Alfred L. Kroeber with Ishi in 1911.
 Ishi is believed to be the last Native American in Northern California to have lived the bulk of his life completely outside the European American culture.
Buffalo Bill Cody grabbed the opportunity to hop on his own bandwagon and to promote his own legend as well as other Western stereotypes.
 He presented the first 'Wild West' show in 1883, creating a caricature of the Old West with skits and demonstrations by Indians and cowboys hired for the occasion.
 He offered feats of roping, marksmanship, and riding, including those of sure-shooting Annie Oakley.
 Cody took his show to Europe and was wildly received, further spreading the myth of the West to nations abroad.
Toward the close of the century, magazines like Harper's Weekly featured illustrations by artists Frederic Remington, Charles M. Russell, and others, and married them to action-filled stories by writers like Owen Wister, together conveying vivid images of the Old West to the public.
 Remington lamented the passing of an era he helped to chronicle when he wrote, 'I knew the wild riders and the vacant land were about to vanish forever...I saw the living, breathing end of three American centuries of smoke and dust and sweat.'
The discovery, exploration, settlement, exploitation, and conflicts of the 'American Old West' form a unique tapestry of events, which has been celebrated by Americans and foreigners alike—in art, music, dance, novels, magazines, short stories, poetry, theater, movies, radio, television, song, and oral tradition—continuing to today.
;General
 Cowboy action shooting is a competitive shooting sport which originated in the early 1980s that requires shooters to compete using firearms typical of the mid to late 19th century including single action revolvers, lever action rifles (chambered in pistol calibers) and side by side double barrel shotguns or pump action shotguns with external hammers.
 Cowboy hat a hat 
 Boss of the plains also a hat 
 Historical reenactment : an activity in which participants recreate some aspects of a historical event or period.
 National Cowboy & Western Heritage Museum : museum and art gallery, in Oklahoma City, Oklahoma, housing one of the largest collections in the world of Western, American cowboy, American rodeo, and American Indian art, artifacts, and archival materials.
 Reno Gang : Southern Indiana post civil war gang.
 First Train Robbers in US History.
 10 members lynched by vigilante mob in 1868.
 Rodeo : demonstration of cattle wrangling skills.
 The Oregon-California Trails Association preserves, protects and shares the histories of emigrants who followed these trails westward.
 Wanted poster : a poster, popular in mythic scenes of the west, let the public know of criminals whom authorities wish to apprehend.
 Wild West Shows : a following of the wild west shows of the American frontier.
;People
 List of American Old West outlaws : list of known outlaws and gunfighters of the American frontier popularly known as the 'Wild West'.
 Big Nose George
 List of cowboys and cowgirls
 Schoolmarm : A female teacher that usually works in a one-room schoolhouse
 List of Western lawmen : list of notable law enforcement officials of the American frontier.
 They occupied positions as sheriff, marshal, Texas Rangers, and others.
 Gunfighter 
 :Category:Gunmen of the American Old West  
 :Category:Lawmen of the American Old West 
 :Category:Outlaws of the American Old West
;Fiction
 Chris Enss : author of historical nonfiction that documents the forgotten women of the Old West.
 Zane Grey : author of many popular novels on the Old West 
 Karl May : best selling German writer of all time, noted chiefly for wild west books set in the American West.
 Winnetou : American-Indian hero of several novels written by Karl May.
 Deadlands : an alternate history western horror roleplaying game.
 Dust Devils : a western roleplaying game modeled after Clint Eastwood films and similar darker Westerns.
 List of Western computer and video games: a list of computer and video games patterned after Westerns.
 Lamar, Howard, ed.
 The New Encyclopedia of the American West (1998); this is a revised version of Reader's Encyclopedia of the American West ed.
 by Howard Lamar (1977)
 Mitchell, Lee Clark.
 Westerns: Making the Man in Fiction and Film (1998)
 Jules David Prown, Nancy K.
 Anderson, and William Cronon, eds.
 Discovered Lands, Invented Pasts: Transforming Visions of the American West (1994)
 Slotkin, Richard.
 The Fatal Environment: The Myth of the Frontier in the Age of Industrialization, 1800-1890 (1998)
 Slotkin, Richard.
 Gunfighter Nation: The Myth of the Frontier in Twentieth-Century America (1960)
 Smith, Henry Nash.
 Virgin Land: The American West as Symbol and Myth, Cambridge, Mass: Harvard University Press, 1950 ISBN 0674939557
 Tompkins, Jane.
 West of Everything: The Inner Life of Westerns (1993)
;Books
;Culture
;History
 .
 The West Film Project, WETA-TV, 2001.
  by Ida Ellen Rath, 1964 w/ photos
;Media
  Free to read and full text search.
  - Tucson Weekly, September 2, 1999
be-x-old:Дзікі Захад
bg:Див Запад
ca:Vell oest
cs:Divoký západ
da:Det Vilde Vesten
de:Wilder Westen
el:Άγρια Δύση
eo:Sovaĝa okcidento
es:Viejo oeste
fi:Villi länsi
fr:Conquête de l'Ouest
ga:An tIarthar Fiáin
he:המערב הישן של אמריקה
hr:Divlji zapad
lv:Mežonīgie rietumi
mk:Дивиот Запад
nl:Wilde Westen
no:Ville Vesten
pl:Dziki Zachód
pt:Velho Oeste
ru:Дикий Запад
sh:Divlji Zapad
sk:Divoký západ
sv:Vilda Västern
tr:Vahşi Batı