HOMESTEADING

UNIT 1, LESSON 5

WHERE WE’RE HEADED

• When the Homestead Act opened the plains, settlers moved westward to find their own land.

• To carve out homesteads, farmers fought drought, grasshopper plagues, and the tangled roots of the grass itself. They used inventions like barbed wire and windmills to transform the "Great American Desert" into a thriving agricultural region.

LESSON OBJECTIVES

• Describe the hardships farmers faced on the

plains.

• Explain why people moved westward to settle the

Great Plains.

• Identify the solutions farmers came up with to

meet the challenges of life on the plains.

page 19

The Plains states

stretch from Texas

to Canada and

from Kansas and

Iowa to the Rocky

Mountains. The

Plains states are

Iowa, Kansas,

Minnesota,

Missouri,

Nebraska, North

Dakota, South

Dakota, and

Wyoming.

THE GREAT AMERICAN DESERT

.

THE PLAINS REGION • It wasn’t an easy place to farm

• There were hardly any trees

• Very little water

• The soil was very rich

• Native grasses

• Weather was either really hot or really cold!

• Tornados

• Insect invasions

• Droughts

• Loneliness

DID ANY OF THIS REALLY MATTER?

Homesteaders on the

Great Plains.

____________________ (1862)

• For $10 any citizen, or any person who had

filed to become a citizen, could have 160 acres

of public land.

WHO WERE HOMESTEADERS?

• Many were ____________________.

A photographer was on hand to shoot history’s greatest

land rush: on April 22, 1889, 6 million acres of

“unoccupied” Oklahoma land were claimed.

PROBLEMS FOR HOMESTEADERS? WHAT DO YOU THINK?

PROBLEM SOLVED!

• ____________________ invented barbed wire.

PRONGHORNS ABOUNDING (PAGE 21)

FARMERS ARE HAPPIER, WHY AREN’T THE COWBOYS?

NEW AGRICULTURE ON THE PLAINS

• Early American farmers had been self-

sufficient.

THIS WOULD CHANGE – AND QUICKLY

o Self-sufficiency wasn’t well suited for the Plains

or the times.Home on the Grange

In 1867, Oliver Hudson Kelley founded a social and political

organization for farmers called the National Grange of the

Patrons of Husbandry. (Husbandry means “farming,” and

more specifically, the application of scientific principles to

farming, especially animal breeding. And the word grange

comes from England, where a grange was a farm or a farm

building for storing grain, like a barn.) The Grange was a way

for farmers to band together and protect their interests.

Working people were joining unions; farmers joined the

Grange. It grew rapidly, especially in Minnesota, Wisconsin,

Illinois, and Iowa. The grangers (that’s what members were

called) influenced lawmakers and established cooperative

stores and mills. They made politicians pay attention to the

farmers’ concerns

___________________ AND THE STEEL PLOW

____________________ MECHANICAL REAPER

WHO WAS MCCORMICK? (PAGE 24)

• Cyrus Hall McCormick was a Virginia boy, born in the beautiful

Shenandoah Valley, of Scotch-Irish Presbyterian parents. As a child, he

spent many hours in his father’s workshop. He rarely wasted time or

played games. It was his father, Robert, who understood the need for a

mechanical reaper and attempted to invent one.

• He mounted scissor like knives on a long bar pulled at the side of a horse

or mule or ox. Cyrus improved the invention. He sold a few of his reapers

in Virginia, but Shenandoah land is hilly and farms are small. When he

took a trip to the Middle West—and saw the vast, flat plains—Cyrus

McCormick knew his future was there.

• Then he met the mayor of Chicago, who was a shrewd businessman; the

mayor lent Cyrus money to build a big factory to make reapers. That

factory became one of America’s greatest business successes.

MCCORMICK: A BUSINESS SUCCESS!

• Before McCormick, the

Industrial Revolution had

been mostly a city

____________________.

• He brought that

revolution to farm life.

• He guaranteed his

machines.

Cyrus McCormick’s reaping machine, patented in

1831, could cut 10 times more wheat in a day

than a farmer could using a scythe.

THE MECHANICAL REAPER

• They were

expensive.

• Solution?

McCormick improved his reaper over time by

combining it with other tools. This machine,

on a large farm in Oregon, is pulled by a team

of horses. Smaller farms needed smaller

machines and far fewer animals.

SOME FASCINATING STATISTICS

• Note this statistic: in the 30 years between 1860 and 1890, more land was turned into farmland in the United States than in all the years from 1607 to 1860.

• In 1879 the McCormick factory produced 18,760 reapers; two years later it made nearly 49,000 machines.

• Railroads brought large-

scale commercial farming

to the Midwest, and that

began the reign of King

Wheat. Wheat exports

rose from 2 million

bushels in 1860 to 90

million bushels in 1890.

Today we export over a

billion bushels a year,

feeding people in many

other nations.

SOME WON, SOME LOST

o The small farmer was

often hurt…

o Age of the new farmer.

POOR FARMING DID HAVE ITS CONSEQUENCES

o Because the U.S. seemed so large, American

farmers typically farmed wastefully.

o When the land wore, they moved on to better

land.

o By the end of the 19th century, there wasn’t any

frontier left.

One hundred

million acres is

about the size of

Ohio, North

Carolina,

Maryland, and

Illinois combined.

Some experts say

twice that

amount of land

was seriously

eroded.

THE HATCH ACT (1887) & MORRILL ACT (1890)

o Gave states large land grants to establish

agricultural colleges.

o Established experiment stations in each state.

George Washington Carver,

an agricultural chemist,

developed new products

from peanuts, sweet

potatoes, and soybeans.

He wanted to encourage

crop diversity in the

American South, where

cotton had exhausted the

land.

American Horticulturist

Luther Burbank developed

hundreds of varieties of

new fruits, vegetables,

grains, cacti, and flowers.

The russet potato is

the most commonly

grown variety of

potato in Idaho, a

major potato-growing

region.

HOMEWORK

• Complete the Settling the Plains:

Challenges & Solutions sheet.

• B. Use What You Know (Optional)

• Write three diary entries

describing the prairie and

detailing the difficulties

homesteaders faced.

• Complete Lesson 5 Assessment.

• Read Chapter 6, pages 27-34.