50 Fun Facts About Westward Expansion

Which invention put the Pony Express out of business only 18 months after its riders first set out?

The telegraph line across the continent opened in October 1861 and made horseback mail obsolete at once. The Pony Express, never a financial success, closed two days later.

Which docile animals, able to live on prairie grass, did Oregon Trail emigrants favor for pulling their wagons?

Oxen cost about a third as much as mules, and they could keep moving in difficult conditions such as mud and snow.

Which Native American woman interpreted for the Lewis and Clark expedition while carrying her infant son?

Sacagawea's presence with a baby showed the nations the explorers met that the party came in peace. Her son, Jean Baptiste, was born two months before they left Fort Mandan.

Which French leader sold the Louisiana Territory after failing to crush a revolt in Saint-Domingue?

Napoleon Bonaparte let the whole territory go for $15 million, nearly doubling the size of the United States at a stroke.

What name is given to the forced removal of the Cherokee from Georgia to Indian Territory in 1838?

The Trail of Tears followed the discovery of gold on Cherokee land near Dahlonega, Georgia. Thousands died from disease before reaching their destination or shortly after.

Which mountain range trapped the Donner Party in deep snow during the winter of 1846–47?

The Sierra Nevada caught the party late because a supposed shortcut, the Hastings Cutoff, had slowed them down. Of the 87 members, 48 survived.

Which Great Plains animal's bones were shipped east for fertilizer after hide hunters killed them by the million?

Bison once numbered in the tens of millions, yet fewer than 100 remained in the wild by the late 1880s. The slaughter removed the main food source of the Plains nations.

Which 1862 law offered settlers 160 acres of public land if they lived on it and farmed it for five years?

The Homestead Act passed only after Southern states seceded and their members left Congress. Abraham Lincoln signed it in May 1862.

Which western territory passed the first US law explicitly granting women the right to vote, in 1869?

Wyoming went on to become the first state with women's suffrage when it joined the Union in 1890, and its official nickname is "The Equality State".

Which cavalry commander died alongside two brothers and a nephew at the Battle of the Little Bighorn in 1876?

George A. Custer had graduated last in his class at West Point. Lakota, Northern Cheyenne and Arapaho warriors wiped out five of the twelve troops of his 7th Cavalry.

Which president first wanted a constitutional amendment to justify buying the Louisiana Territory from France?

Thomas Jefferson dropped the amendment idea when his cabinet convinced him otherwise. He decided the purchase protected American citizens, which made it constitutional.

From which country did Secretary of State William Seward buy Alaska for about two cents an acre?

Russia accepted $7.2 million for the territory in 1867. Some opponents, sure the land was useless, labeled the deal "Seward's Folly" or "Seward's Icebox".

Which frontiersman blazed the Wilderness Road through the Cumberland Gap and into Kentucky in 1775?

Daniel Boone cut the route for a land company, the Transylvania Company. A later critic dubbed him "the Columbus of the woods".

Which Texas Revolution battle ended when Santa Anna's troops stormed a San Antonio mission after a 13-day siege?

The Alamo cost nearly every Texian defender his life, and it became a battle cry. Weeks later Texian soldiers shouted "Remember the Alamo!" as they routed the Mexican army.

Which general ordered the attack at San Jacinto and then served as the first president of the Republic of Texas?

Sam Houston is the only person to be elected governor of two different US states, Tennessee and Texas. As a youth he ran away from home to live for about three years in a Cherokee village.

Which phrase is editor John O'Sullivan credited with coining in 1845 for America's supposed right to span the continent?

Manifest Destiny first appeared in an unsigned essay titled "Annexation". Some historians think journalist Jane Cazneau, not her editor, actually wrote it.

Which president, known as "Young Hickory", took the United States to war with Mexico in 1846 and gained California?

James K. Polk pledged to serve only one term and kept his word, one of the few presidents to make and keep such a promise. He left office in 1849.

Which agreement of 1848 ended the Mexican–American War, with Mexico giving up California for a $15 million payment?

The Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo was signed at the main altar of the old Basilica of Guadalupe, on the edge of Mexico City, while American troops occupied the capital.

Which river did the United States claim as the border of Texas while Mexico insisted on the more northerly Nueces?

The Rio Grande is known in Mexico as the Rio Bravo. The contested land between the two rivers, the Nueces Strip, is where the fighting began in 1846.

Which country shared the Oregon Country with the United States until an 1846 treaty split it at the 49th parallel?

Britain kept everything north of the line. American expansionists had demanded the whole region, a call remembered in the slogan "Fifty-four Forty or Fight!"

Which president signed the Indian Removal Act of 1830, which led to southeastern nations being forced west?

Andrew Jackson's law was opposed in Congress by a fellow Tennessean, Davy Crockett, who spoke out against the legislation.

Which Apache leader surrendered for the final time in 1886 after his third breakout from a reservation?

Geronimo later rode on horseback in Theodore Roosevelt's 1905 inaugural parade, yet he died a prisoner of war at Fort Sill in 1909.

Which 1890 massacre in South Dakota left between 250 and 300 Lakota dead after cavalry moved to disarm their camp?

Wounded Knee followed alarm over the Ghost Dance, a new religion that anxious settlers feared was the sign of a dangerous Sioux resurgence.

Which Nez Perce leader's band was cornered just 40 miles from Canada in 1877 after a 1,170-mile fighting retreat?

Chief Joseph is remembered for the surrender speech attributed to him: "From where the sun now stands, I will fight no more forever."

Which Shawnee chief built a Native confederacy against American expansion before dying at the Battle of the Thames?

Tecumseh was a persuasive orator who traveled widely to promote unity between tribes. His confederacy collapsed after he was killed in 1813.

Which 1887 law divided communal tribal lands into individual allotments and sold the "surplus" to non-native settlers?

The Dawes Act helped shrink Native-owned land from 138 million acres in 1887 to 48 million acres by 1934.

What nickname went to settlers who entered the Unassigned Lands before the official start of the 1889 Land Rush?

Sooners were cheats who jumped the high-noon start on April 22, 1889. Oklahoma has nonetheless used the nickname "Sooner State" since the 1920s.

Which South Dakota region, sacred to the Lakota and promised to them in 1868, was overrun by gold miners after 1874?

The Black Hills were illegally seized, the Supreme Court ruled in 1980. The Lakota refused the money awarded because they wanted the land returned.

What name was given to the African Americans who migrated from states along the Mississippi to Kansas in 1879?

Exodusters numbered as many as 40,000, and organizers such as Benjamin "Pap" Singleton of Tennessee helped the movement along.

Which chief justice wrote in Worcester v. Georgia that Georgia could not jail a missionary for living on Cherokee land?

John Marshall supposedly drew a president's retort, "now let him enforce it!", but that famous quotation is believed to be apocryphal.

Which present-day state did Brigham Young's Mormon pioneers begin settling in 1847, when the land was part of Mexico?

Utah's Salt Lake Valley suited Brigham Young because he wanted a place no other colonizers wanted. It became American soil the following year.

Which river carried Lewis and Clark by canoe on the final stretch to the Pacific Ocean in 1805?

The Columbia River is where the explorers built Fort Clatsop, on its south side, and spent the winter before starting for home in March 1806.

Which country gave up Florida to the United States in the Adams–Onís Treaty of 1819?

Spain got something in return: the United States renounced its claims to Texas. The same treaty drew the first American boundary line across the continent.

Which disease killed up to 3 percent of all Oregon Trail travelers during the epidemic years from 1849 to 1855?

Cholera spread at the favorite camping spots, where many thousands of emigrants stopped in turn with essentially no sewage facilities.

Which company built the first transcontinental railroad east from Sacramento, relying heavily on Chinese laborers?

Central Pacific was formed by four northern California businessmen. Its crews laid 690 miles of track to meet the rival line at Promontory Summit.

Which railroad president tapped in the golden "Last Spike" in 1869 and later founded a university in memory of a son?

Leland Stanford used a silver hammer for the ceremony at Promontory Summit. He had already served a term as governor of California.

Which Bavarian-born merchant sold dry goods in Gold Rush California and later mass-produced riveted work pants?

Levi Strauss did not invent the riveted pants himself. The idea came from one of his customers, tailor Jacob Davis, who went into business with him.

Which port city were American envoys sent to Paris to buy when France instead offered the entire Louisiana Territory?

New Orleans and its surroundings were worth up to $10 million to the envoys, who were dumbfounded to be offered a vastly larger territory for $15 million.

Which invention, patented by Illinois farmer Joseph Glidden in 1874, transformed ranching on the Great Plains?

Barbed wire closed the open range, and some cattlemen began cutting fences so their herds could reach grazing land. Texas made fence cutting a felony in 1884.

Which 1853 deal bought land south of the Gila River from Mexico so a southern transcontinental railroad could be built?

The Gadsden Purchase was the last substantial enlargement of the contiguous United States. A cash-strapped Santa Anna government accepted $10 million for it.

Which Oregon valley was the destination of choice for the wagon trains of emigrants on the Oregon Trail?

The Willamette Valley filled with new settlements centered on Oregon City, its early capital, once fur traders' mule paths were widened into a wagon road.

Which Army explorer, sent to scout the Southwest in 1806, gave his name to a Colorado peak he never managed to climb?

Zebulon Pike and his men tried for the summit in November 1806 but gave up the ascent in waist-deep snow.

Which New York newspaper editor is often credited with the westward-expansion advice "Go West, young man"?

Horace Greeley gets the credit, though no one has proven who first used the phrase in print. A rival story about an 1851 Indiana editorial by John Soule fails: the line is in no 1851 edition of that paper.

Which 1859 strike near Virginia City was the first major discovery of silver ore in the United States?

The Comstock Lode drew a young Samuel Clemens, who failed as a miner there and took a job at the local newspaper, where he began writing as Mark Twain.

Which principle in the 1854 Kansas–Nebraska Act let the citizens of each territory decide whether to allow slavery?

Popular sovereignty backfired: pro- and anti-slavery settlers flooded into Kansas to swing the vote, and the armed clashes that followed became known as "Bleeding Kansas".

Which state was the first to be carved from the Northwest Territory, entering the Union in 1803?

Ohio was admitted as the 17th state. The territory it came from had been established as free of slavery, which proved of tremendous importance in the following decades.

Which cattle route, named for a trader of Cherokee and Scottish descent, ran from Texas to the railhead at Abilene?

The Chisholm Trail ended at the stockyards a cattle dealer had built beside the Kansas Pacific tracks, where the herds were sold and shipped eastward.

Which mounted cattle herders of Mexico laid the foundation for the American cowboy's lifestyle and language?

Vaqueros even gave cowboys a nickname: "buckaroo" is generally believed to be an anglicized version of the word vaquero.

Which fur-trade tycoon, America's first multi-millionaire, set up the first US community on the Pacific coast in 1811?

John Jacob Astor called the trading post Fort Astoria, and the coastal town of Astoria, Oregon, is named after him. He later left the fur business for New York City real estate.

Which explorer, called "The Pathfinder" for his western expeditions, became the first Republican nominee for president?

John C. Frémont had earlier been court-martialed after a conflict over who was the rightful military governor of California.