Chapters 1 and 2

Question 1

subsidy

Answer 1

money or goods given by a person or government to support a project that benefits the public

Question 2

transcontinental

Answer 2

going across a continent

Question 3

time zone

Answer 3

money or goods given by a person or government to support a project that benefits the public

Question 4

Boomtowns

Answer 4

Towns where gold and silver ere found and people struck it rich quickly, but they also lost it quickly. There was no law

Question 5

Ghost towns

Answer 5

AFter all the gold and silver was used up, people left town and they became ghost towns

Question 6

States created by 1890

Answer 6

Colorado Noth Dakota South Dakota Washington Montana Wyoming Idaho

Question 7

Railroads were built

Answer 7

to get the gold and silver from the west to the east to the markets

Question 8

Transcontinental railroad building

Answer 8

Two different companies built the railroad Central Pacific worked eastward from California
Union pacific worked westward from Nebraska
Union pacific hired African Americans and Irish
Central Pacific hired Chinese

Question 9

Transcontinental railroad completion

Answer 9

Finished in May 1869 when the tracks met in Utah

Question 10

Uses of the railroad

Answer 10

Carried workers and goods to west
Carried metals and supplies to east

Question 11

Effects of the railroad

Answer 11

Helped coal industry
Towns built along the railroad, even cities such as Denver, CO
Established time zones
Connected America

Question 12

long drive

Answer 12

a trip of several hundred miles on which ranchers led their cattle to railroads and distant markets

Question 13

vaquero

Answer 13

Mexican cowboy

Question 14

homestead

Answer 14

to earn ownership of land by living on it

Question 15

sodbuster

Answer 15

Great Plains farmers

Question 16

dry farming

Answer 16

a farming method that depends on plowing after every rain to trap moisture in the soil

Question 17

cattle ranching

Answer 17

Cattle was cheap and avaible in TExas and the demand was high in the Northeast
cattle ranchers used the railroad towns of Kansas , Nebraska, Colorado, and Wyoming to ship their cattle east

Question 18

Herding cattle was difficult because

Answer 18

The long drive took two or three months. * Cowhands faced many dangers, such as violent storms and “rustlers” who tried to steal cattle. * They had to control the herd if a stampede started.

Question 19

vaqueros

Answer 19

developed the riding, roping, and branding skills that cowhands used. They also added Spanish words to the language. For example, the word ranch is from the Mexican word rancho.

Question 20

Homestead Act of 1862

Answer 20

Congress passed the Homestead Act in 1862. To homestead means to earn ownership of land by settling on it. The Homestead Act helped people to settle the Great Plains. The act gave free land to anyone who paid a $10 fee and lived on the land for five years. A settler could get up to 160 acres (65 hectares) of land

Question 21

Life on the Great Plains

Answer 21

not easy at all. Farming in the Great Plains was hard. There were few trees, so farmers built houses of sod—packed soil held together by grass roots. The climate was extreme. Some years there was too much rain. This brought floods to the Great Plains. Other years there was not enough rain. Then there would be droughts and brushfires. Winter brought deep snow. This could trap people in their homes and bury the animals. Farm families planned ahead by storing food. The whole family worked on the farm. Children often had so much farm work that they did not have time to go to school. Farmers on the Great Plains were called sodbusters. They came up with new tools and new ways to farm the hard sod. One way was dry farming. With dry farming, farmers plowed the land every time it rained. This trapped water in the soil. Farmers also dug wells. Sodbusters had to cut through tough layers of sod. They used steel plows to plow their fields. They planted a crop called winter wheat. This crop grows well in dry climates. Even with these new methods, farmers often could not grow large enough crops. Many farmers lost their farms

Question 22

Native Americans

Answer 22

By the 1880s, only Indian Territory in present-day Oklahoma had not been settled. The law said only Native Americans could live there. There was one part of Indian Territory that was not assigned to any of the Indian groups. The government agreed to let non-Native American homesteaders settle there. On April 22, 1889, more than 10,000 people lined up at the edge of these lands. A signal was given. Homesteaders rushed into the land to claim a piece for themselves. They found that some people had gone over the line early. These people were called “sooners,” and they got the best land. By 1890, all of America was settled. Life in America had changed, especially for Native Americans.