The Donner Party

In July, 1846, a group of 87 westward-bound pioneers made a bold decision. They would take a new shortcut to California instead of using the Oregon Trail. Named for its leader, George Donner, the Donner party was seeking a new life in a new land. Instead, it found disaster.

The new trail turned out to be no shortcut. The trip was hard and slow, and some families had to abandon their supply wagons. The party also had to travel west across Utah’s  Salt Desert. Food was scarce when the party reached the Sierra Nevada mountains in October, much later than it had planned.

The trail the Donner party followed  was called Hastings Cutoff. It was named for Lansford Hastings, a well, known western guide. A book by Hastings praising the shortcut helped convince the Donner party to take the trail.

An early blizzard trapped the Donner party in the mountains. The settlers hoped the weather  would improve, but more snow fell. In December, some party members left on snowshoes to find help. The rest ate their animals and then the animals’ hides. Some of the settlers starved to death. Some survived by eating the flesh of their dead comrades. Only 40 people survived the terrible winter in the mountains.

You can access a teacher’s guide and some other information here and find diary entries here.

John Wesley Powell

John Wesley Powell was one of the most daring explorers of the American West. In 1869, he personally financed and launched a bold expedition to study the Colorado River and the Grand Canyon. Powell’s four-boat flotilla completed the perilous 900-mile journey down the Green and Colorado rivers in 14 days.

The expedition was so successful that the U.S. government financed a second trip in 1871. This time, the party included photographers, and the images they captured gave most Americans their first look at the splendors of the West. Later, as a member of the U.S. Geological Survey, Powell made more than 30 trips through Arizona, Colorado, and Utah. His detailed reports and precise maps set the standard for generations of geographers.

In 1878, Powell had turned his attention to preserving the land he knew so well. He sought government protection for natural resources and lobbied against irrigation, which he predicted would disrupt the fragile ecology. Powell also worked to preserve the culture of vanishing Native American tribes. He created the first classification system for Indian languages and, in 1878, became the first director of the Bureau of Ethnology at the Smithsonian Institution.

While Powell is remembered for his exploration and preservation exploits it is not as well known that during the Civil War he served in the Union army and lost an arm at Shiloh.

California

California: An Interpretive History

Exploring for Spain in 1542, Juan Cabrillo was probably the first European to see California. He was followed in 1579 by England’s Sir Francis Drake. Although each explorer laid claim to the territory for his country, only Spain established settlements. Mexico annexed California in 1822, but thereafter showed little interest in the region.

On July 7, 1846, California was claimed for the United States by Commodore John D. Sloat, who raised the US flag over Monterey. This was followed by the defeat of Mexican troops in California by US forces.

California was officially transferred to the United States in 1848. The following year, when gold was discovered in a creek at Sutter’s Mill, California’s famous Gold Rush began.

The majority of today’s Californians live in urban areas, most notably San Francisco in the north and Los Angeles in the south. California is widely known for superb natural beauty – mountains, shore, and desert. The state’s two leading economic activities are agriculture and manufacturing. California’s most glamorous locale is Hollywood, headquarters of the movie industry.

California contains the highest and lowest points in the country (excluding Alaska): 15,000 foot-high Mount Whitney and Death Valley which is 282 feet below sea level.

Dallas

The shining skyscrapers of Dallas are visible from far across the praries of northeastern Texas. Considered the financial center of the Southwest, Dallas is the home of banks, oil companies, insurance companies, and many other businesses. It is also a culturual center and an important transportation hub.


Dallas was born in 1841, when John Neely Bryan built a trading post on the banks of the Trinity River. The town that grew around his log cabin was named for George M. Dallas, a United States Vice President who heped Texas achieve statehood. The arrival of the railroad in the 1870s allowed the farmers near Dallas to ship cotton they grew in the rich prarie soil. When oil fields opened in east Texxas in the 1930s, Dallas became the headquarters for hundreds of oil companies.

After World War II, Dallas becoame a center of manufacturing, financial services, and trade shows. Skyscrapers shot up. The tallest of these, National Bank Plaza, is 72 stories high. Prosperity helped Dallas become a center for culture and recreation. Its theater, opera, and music groups are world famous. So are its museums, its zoos; and its football team, the Dallas Cowboys. The Texas State Fair is the country’s largest, drawing three million people to Dallas each October.

John F. Kennedy Memorial Plaza in Dallas is near the spot where Kennedy was shot in November, 1963.

Cowboys and Cattle Drives

At the end of the Civil War, there were five million cattle in Texas, but the market for them was in the North and East. A steer worth $4 in Texas could be sold for $40 in those markets - if the cattleman could get the steer there. So Texas ranchers began using “cowboys” to drive their herds north to “cowtowns” on the railroad in Kansas. The great cattle drives began in 1866 and went on for 20 years. Their routes became famous: the Western Trail, the Loving Trail, and the Chisholm Trail. At the cowtowns – Abilene, Ellsworth, Wichita, Dodge City – the steers were loaded aboard trains and sent to market.

Cattle drives were hard and dangerous work. Herds could be stampeded by lightening or thunder. There were flooded rivers to cross, but in dry times water was scarce. Cowboys had to guard against Indians and rustlers. The cowboys took their meals at the chuck wagon and at night slept under the stars. But in the end of the drive they could “cut loose”. In Dodge City, a cowboy wrote, “glasses clinked, dice rattled….violins, flutes, and cornets sent eager strains of waltz and polka…As the night sped on, the saloons became clamorous with….songs and laughter.”

The largest cattle drive on record took place in 1869, when 200 cowboys set out for Texas with a herd of 15,000 steers.

The Navajo

More than 500 years ago, a group of people migrated southward from Canada and Alaska to the present-day American Southwest. These newcomers, the Navajo, soon became the dominant tribe in the region.

Today, they are the largest Native American tribe in the United States.
When Spaniards and Mexicans arrived in the area in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, the Navajo fought to remain free. But the intruders changed the Navajo way of life. Sheep, introduced by the Spanish, became an important source of food, their wool was used in the weaving of colorful blankets and rugs. Horses allowed the Navajo to travel long distances. And Mexican silversmiths taught them how to make beautiful turquoise and silver jewelry.

When the U.S. acquired the region in 1848, the struggle over Navajo lands grew intense. Years of warfare and forced resettlement resulted in the death of thousands. Finally, in 1868, the government signed a peace treaty with the Navajo that returned a portion of their homeland.

Over the years, the tribe began to benefit from oil, gas, and coal that were found on its land.

Today, 150,00 Navajo live on a reservation that covers 25,000 square miles. The reservation is three times the size of Massachusetts! They maintain a strong sense of tribal identify while continuing to play an important role in the live of America’s Southwest.

Wordless: Lander's Peak

This painting is Landers Peak in the Rocky Mountains by Albert Bierstadt, a German-American painter. Bierstadt is known for large landscapes of the American West. In order to fuel his inspiration Bierstadt often traveled with westward expansion expeditions.

Bierstadt’s works are considered to be part of the Hudson River School---a group of painters that used Romantic details and almost glowing light (luminism).

You can see Bierstadt’s complete works here

Find other wordless images published by other bloggers here.

Pony Express

A lone rider gallops through the sagebrush, his horse’s hooves pounding rhythmically on the dry ground. Bulging leather mailbags strapped to his saddle show why he is traveling so fast: He works for the Pony Express, a private service that carries mail fromn Missouri to California in just eight days.

Before April 1860, when the Pony Express was founded, mail bound for California went by stagecoach and took three weeks to arrive. Pony Express riders took a more direct – and dangerous – route across praries, deserts, and mountains. They covered the 2,000 miles from St. Joseph, Missouri to Sacramento, California, in relays. Each rider traveled up to 75 miles, changing horses at stations built 10 to 15 miles apart along the route.

Along the daring Pony Express riders were some of the West’s most famous figures, including “Buffalo Bill” Cody. They faced blizzards, flash floods, mountain lions, bandits, and Indian attacks for a salary of $50 a month. Their bravery captured the hearts of Americans. But the Pony Express lived only about 18 months. The click of telegraph keys replaced the pounding of horses’ hooves on October 21, 1861, when the first transcontinental telegraph line was completed.

The Pony Express charged $5 to deliver each half-ounce letter. Each rider carried 20 pounds of mail.

Wyatt Earp

In legend, Wyatt Earp was a brave lawman who cleaned up western towns such as Dodge City, Kansas, and Tombstone, Arizona. In fact, he was not a heroic character. The real Earp was a professional gambler. He worked as a peace officer in a few places, but he broke the law as often as he enforced it. He was arrested at least twice, once for stealing a horse.

Earp is famous for the “Gunfight at the O.K. Corral” in Tombstone in 1881. In the O.K. Corral legend, Earp, his two brothers, and Doc Holliday saved Tombstone from the Clantons, a gang of cattle rustlers. But the real gunfight was not about rustling. It resulted from a feud between the Earps and the Clantons. Some accounts of the famous gunfight claim that the Earps killed three of the Clanton gang in cold blood. Wyatt Earp was later involved in other gunfights, and he left Arizona with a posse in pursuit. Eventually he moved to California, where he put away his gun and invested in real estate.

Perhaps because he was the only participant unhurt in the O.K. Corral gunfight. Earp was glorified in popular fiction. Later, movies and television made him a hero. As the idealized lawman, Wyatt Earp became one of the enduring legends of the Old West.

The famous Earp-Clanton gunfight didn’t take place at the O.K. Corral. It broke out in an empty lot around the corner.

The Stagecoach

A stagecoach clatters into a western frontier town and pulls to a stop, sending up a cloud of dust. The excited townspeople crowd around it. They crane their necks to see passengers step off the coach, and they watch as mail and packages are unloaded. The stagecoach is their link to the outside world.

The stagecoach got its name from its long trip in stages, stopping at stations for fresh horses, food, and rest. Stagecoach lines were introduced in Europe in the seventeenth century. In the early days of the United States, they were important links between eastern cities.

As Americans moves west, stagecoaches did too. They were the only means of cross-country transportation in the West until the railroads replaced them in the late 1800s. Western coaches carried six to nine passengers and were pulled by four to six horses. The driver sat outside, and luggage was strapped on the roof. Sometimes coaches were attacked by bandits or Indians, so an armed assistant rode “shotgun” next to the driver. But on most runs, as the coach jolted along rough, dusty trails, a backache was a bigger risk than robbery.

The Overland Mail Company began to carry mail from St. Louis, Missiouri, to San Francisco, California, in 1857. It’s stagecoaches me the trip in 25 days.

Kit Carson

Kit Carson was one of America’s most famous frontiersmen. As a hunter, a guide, and a soldier, he played an important role in opening the West for settlement.

Carson grew up in Missiouri, but headed west in search of adventure when he was 17. For years he lived the rugged existence of a mountain man, trapping furs in the Rocky Mountains and frequently fighting for his life against Indians and thieves. In 1842, he met Lieutenant Colonel John C. Fremont, who was assigned to explore the West for the United States government. Carson served as Fremont’s guide on three separate expeditions. Their journeys through the mountains made both men equally famous and opened the way for thousands of settlers.

During the Mexican War, Carson served in the army in California. When U.S. troops were nearly defeated at the Battle of San Pasqual, he crawled through enemy lines and walked 30 miles to get help. Carson fought on the Union side in New Mexico during the Civil War. Later, he participated in campaigns that forced the Apache and Navajo Indians on reservations and caused the deaths of thousands. Although at first Carson protested the army’s cruel treatment of Native Americans, he carried out the orders of his superiors. Carson died in 1868 at the age of 59, but his name lives on as one of the legends of the West.

Carson City, Nevada’s capital, is named in honor of Kit Carson.