1923 West - pictures -->

1. as a region

• 1.2 billion acres, 13 new states, last free land in Plains
  
• Homestead Act - 160 acres after 5 yrs., or $1.25 per acre
  
• Timber Culture Act 1873 - 160 acres if plant trees
  
• Desert Land Act 1877 - 640 acres if irrigated in 3 yrs
  
• Cherokee Strip 1889 - last land rush for 2m acres
  

2. as an empire

• not land, but capital, tools, railroad, minerals
  
• 340m acres to speculators; 200m acres to railroads
  
• mining boom - 45% world's gold from CA by 1860
  
• Pike's Peak, Comstock, Homestake, Coeur d'Alene
  

3. as myth

• F.J. Turner wrote his essay in 1893 - "frontier" closed - no "free land"
  
• democracy, melting pot, safety valve, unique traits
  
• George Catlin and F. Remington and Buffalo Bill and Owen Wister
• 1951 film Shane
  

Cattle Boom and Cowboy Era 1866-1886 -- pictures

• longhorns, vaqueros, chaparreras from Spanish
  
• Levi Strauss model 501 in 1850 California
  
• Abilene by Joseph McCoy 1867 - 15% of $40 cow
  
• cowboy remained wage laborer - $10 per week
  
• 12 per herd of 3000- trail dust, deep rivers, fall off horse
  
• cowboys spent their wages in cowtowns at end of trail
• 1/3 cowboys were black or hispanic - Nat Love
  
• barbed wire 1874 by Joseph Glidden
  
• foreign investment attracted - railroad into high plains
  
• Goodnight Ranch in Colorado
• King Ranch in Texas
• Kohrs Ranch in Montana
• ranching replaced trailing in 1880s
• no need for cowboy to wear 2 lb revolver - ranch rules
  
• became large-scale corporate enterprise - not good v. bad
  
• Johnson County War in Wyoming
  

Links:

• Autry Museum of Western Heritage
• Western feature films include My Darling Clementine (1946), Shane (1953), How the West Was Won (1962), Dances With Wolves (1990), Open Range (2003)
• Western history index from Yahoo