The Four Empires of the West Transcontinental are Railroads Farming Mining and Ranching. They important because they played vital roles in the USA´s Westward expansion.
Railroads
-Union Pacific was a railroad charted to begin in Omaha, Nebraska and expand westward.
-Central Pacific was a railroad charted to begin to begin in Sacramento, California and expand eastward.
-Transcontinental Railroad was a railroad of contiguous network connecting the west and east coasts of the continental US. It revolutionized transportation in Werstern USA
-Promontory Point was the hub where the two railroads Union and Central Pacific met .It linked the eastern railroad system with California's railroad system,
-How did the Government Help? It helped by funding the construction of the Union Pacific transcontinental railroad giving grants and government bonds.
Farming
-Morrill Land Grant was an Act by which Public Lands were donated to the several States and Territories which were to provide colleges for the teaching of Agriculture and the Mechanic Arts.
-Homestead Act of 1862 .To foster settlemen in the west this act gave free land in the west providing the farmer would settle and make improvements in five years
-Farming Exodusters or movement to the dusty west by ex-slaves in Kansas In 1879. The US government was giving away free land.This encouraged thousands of black Americans to move to Kansas and increased population.
-Oklahoma Land Rush It was a race for free land on April 22, 1889 which also encouraged settlement in the west.
-Refrigerated Rail Cars had a great impact as the west became more populated, the demand for fresh food over long distances increased.
-Barbed Wire with its spiky thorns was capable of restraining cattle. Wire fences were cheap and easy to put up making cattle raising available on a much larger scale.
Mining
-California Gold Rush the discovery of gold nuggets in the Sacramento Valley in 1848 sparked the California Gold Rush. It increased population 100 times more.
- Comstock Lode It was the first major discovery of silver ore in the United States in 1859. it triggered a silver rush to the area of Mount Davidson, in the Virginia Range in Nevada.
- Boom /Bust/Ghost Towns
A boomtown was the result of a settlement created when a single resource or activity generated it such as mining.
Bust/Ghost Towns were the result of the decline in the activity that was the source of the population movement.As the economy of the town goes bust it is abandoned becoming a ghost town.
Ranching
Cattle Drives or the movement of herds of cattle along the plains of western USA was a major economic activity between 1856 and 1896, causing the development of "cow towns" across the frontier.
Open Range were public areas north of Texas where herds of cattle were driven to pasturelands to graze and later be shipped off to slaughter.
