Settlement in the West, 1877–90 (AQA A-Level History): Revision Notes

Settlement in the West, 1877–90

The period from 1877 to 1890 witnessed dramatic transformation across the American West. Railway construction accelerated westward expansion, while developments in farming technology and cattle ranching fundamentally reshaped the region during the Gilded Age. By 1890, the US Census Bureau declared that the frontier had effectively closed, prompting historians to reconsider what westward expansion meant for American identity.

The expansion of transcontinental railways

The completion of the Pacific Railway marked a turning point for westward movement. By the 1890s, four additional transcontinental lines connected the East and West coasts:

• Northern Pacific (completed 1883) stretched from Duluth, Minnesota to Portland, Oregon.
• Southern Pacific (completed 1883) linked New Orleans with San Francisco.
• Atchison, Topeka and Santa Fe (completed 1884) connected Kansas City with Los Angeles and San Diego.
• Great Northern (completed 1893) extended from St Paul, Minnesota to Seattle on the Pacific coast.

This massive infrastructure project required substantial financial backing from both federal and state governments. The federal government provided land grants totalling 70 million hectares, while state governments contributed $200 million in direct funding alongside an additional 19 million hectares of land.

Corruption and economic impact

Despite the corruption, railways delivered considerable economic benefits to both the nation and the West. Railroad companies retained alternate sections of land along their tracks, which fetched twice the normal price of $1.25 per acre. Government traffic received a 50 per cent discount on land-grant lines. The railways fundamentally changed the West by enabling mass migration of people and goods, while raw materials could be efficiently transported eastward. Industries producing iron, steel, and lumber experienced substantial growth stimulated by railway demand. The transformation of the West into a region dominated by cattlemen and farmers resulted directly from railway accessibility.

Agricultural development on the Plains

Most westward migrants earned their living from the land. While some worked as ranchers, cowboys, or shepherds, the majority depended on crop production. Settlers on the Plains confronted formidable environmental challenges. Neighbours often lived miles apart, creating particular difficulties for women during childbirth.

Although land prices remained relatively low, the equipment necessary for farming—horses, livestock, wagons, wells, fencing, seed, and fertilisers—proved expensive. Freight charges and loan interest rates imposed crippling financial burdens on farmers.

Innovations and mechanisation

Technological advances overcame many obstacles facing Plains agriculture, making farming not only possible but occasionally profitable. Dry farming methods enabled farmers to cultivate particular varieties of corn and wheat even in areas with minimal rainfall. American factories produced increasing quantities of farm machinery, including reapers, threshing machines, binders, and combine harvesters, facilitating wheat and maize farming on an unprecedented scale.

In 1873, Joseph Glidden produced the first effective barbed wire, providing an affordable fencing solution that allowed land to be enclosed cheaply. Deep-drilled wells combined with steel windmills supplied much-needed water to arid regions.

Agricultural productivity and output

The boom and bust cycle

During the 1870s, cereal prices collapsed due to market oversupply. Corn, which sold for 78 cents per bushel in 1867, fell to 31 cents by 1873. Many farmers who had borrowed extensively to finance their homesteads and purchase machinery faced bankruptcy.

Conditions improved temporarily in the late 1870s as cereal prices recovered. However, boom and bust patterns became the norm on the Plains. The late 1880s and early 1890s brought renewed economic hardship. Many financially devastated Plains farmers approached open revolt against big business interests and state and federal governments. Most supported the Populist Party (also known as the People's Party), which advocated for:

• Government control of transport and communications
• A graduated income tax
• Regulation of monopolies and utilities
• Increasing silver content in currency to expand money supply

Populist presidential candidate James B. Weaver secured one million votes in the 1892 election.

Cattle ranching and the open range

Following the Civil War, the ranching frontier centred on Texas, where climatic conditions proved ideal for raising cattle. Land use policies implemented during Governor John Ireland's administration enabled individuals to accumulate substantial acreage. Ranchers could acquire grazing land at 50 cents per acre.

The Chisholm Trail and cattle drives

In 1867, Joseph McCoy established a route enabling cattle to be driven north from southern Texas to Abilene, Kansas, along the Chisholm Trail to the west of settlement areas. This journey became known as the Long Drive. From Abilene, the Kansas and Pacific Railroad transported cattle to slaughterhouses in Chicago. Between 1866 and 1885, approximately 5.71 million cattle travelled north via this route.

The meatpacking industry

In 1868, Philip D. Armour established a meatpacking business in Chicago, followed by competitors Gustavus Swift and Nelson Morris. Meatpacking operations adopted assembly-line processes long before such methods became standard in other industries. Each worker performed a specific task on the production line. Upton Sinclair's 1906 novel The Jungle graphically portrayed the harsh working conditions and exploitation faced by immigrants in Chicago's meatpacking facilities.

As railway lines extended further westward, new trails emerged, eclipsing Abilene as the primary cattle destination. New cattle towns developed, including Ellsworth, Wichita, and Dodge City. Additional herds were driven on a second long route to stock ranches in Colorado, Wyoming, Montana, and the Dakotas.

Cowboys and cattle drives

During the heyday of the long drive and open range, cowboys dominated the western landscape. In the two decades following the Civil War, approximately 40,000 cowboys worked on the Plains. Most were in their teens or early twenties and came from diverse backgrounds. Some were former Confederate soldiers seeking new opportunities. Roughly one-third were Mexican, African American, Asian, or Native American. Nearly all were expert horsemen—an essential skill since cowboys essentially lived on horseback during the two months that most cattle drives required.

Upon reaching journey's end, cowboys typically celebrated boisterously in the cattle towns.

The development of cattle ranching

Cattle drives proved relatively short-lived. As railroad networks spread across the West, cattlemen recognised they could operate more efficiently by establishing permanent cattle ranches on the Plains. By 1880, ranching had expanded northwards from Texas as far as Canada. Ranchers quickly appropriated huge tracts of grazing land, rarely troubling to acquire legal title to what remained largely public domain. They maintained their claims through force, fraud, and perjury.

Vigilante systems emerged rapidly, providing a rough form of order.

Leading ranchers formed livestock associations which developed codes defining land and water rights and establishing systems for recording cattle brands. These associations operated with reasonable effectiveness in most instances, though they were not universally popular. Some associations behaved arbitrarily and unjustly, often favouring large ranchers at the expense of smaller operators.

The greatest boom in the open range cattle trade occurred in the early 1880s when Eastern and European investors poured capital into the 'Beef Bonanza'. By 1883, British companies owned or controlled nearly 8 million hectares of western grazing land. By the mid-1880s, the open range cattle business resembled the large-scale corporate enterprises characteristic of US industry in the late nineteenth century. The Swan Land & Cattle Company of Wyoming, for instance, owned extensive land supporting 100,000 head of cattle. Cowboys, in effect, became farmhands, riding only the portion of range owned or controlled by their employer.

The end of the open range

Most survivors retreated to smaller, fenced-in ranches using barbed wire to enclose land they actually owned, equipped with shelter to protect animals from the elements. These methods enabled more scientific cattle breeding.

By 1890, the open range era and the age of the cowboy had effectively ended. Nevertheless, the open range cattle industry, supported by railway expansion and the development of refrigerator carriage (introduced in 1875), transformed American dietary habits. Americans shifted from being primarily pork-eating to beef-eating consumers.

The closing of the frontier

Settling the West meant eliminating the wilderness and the 'uncivilised' portion of the American continent. For some Americans, this represented the loss of America's essence—freedom itself.

The Turner thesis and historical debate

Turner's argument

Frederick Jackson Turner emerged as a particularly influential figure in shaping historical understanding of westward expansion and its role in American development. In 1893, Turner, a young historian, presented a conference paper entitled The Significance of the Frontier in American History. Turner had grown up in Wisconsin, where pioneering life remained a recent memory. In contrast, he received his education at Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore, where European cultural influences and expectations remained strong.

Turner argued that American development exhibited "not merely advance along a single line, but a return to primitive conditions on a continually advancing frontier line, and a new development for that area." He contended that this westward expansion, "with its few opportunities, its continuous touch with the simplicity of primitive society, furnish the forces dominating American character." In Turner's view, understanding American history required recognising that "the true point of view in the history of this nation is not the Atlantic coast, it is the Great West."

Impact and influence

Turner's ideas encouraged contemporary Americans, particularly presidents, to reconsider national identity. If frontiers and what they represented had made the USA exceptional, perhaps the nation should seek new frontiers beyond its geographic boundaries. Turner's work also contributed to creating a myth of the frontier lands—the notion that the 'West' was fundamentally different and essential to the image of a strong America.

Turner proposed a new interpretive framework for examining American history. However, his frontier thesis subsequently attracted substantial criticism from later historians.

Historical criticisms of the frontier thesis

In 1942, Professor George Wilson Pierson challenged the Turner thesis in The Frontier and American Institutions: A Criticism of the Turner Thesis. Pierson argued that numerous factors influenced American culture beyond the frontier. Although he respected Turner's contribution, Pierson examined American development more broadly, acknowledging factors beyond the frontier in shaping the nation.

Ray Allen Billington in Westward Expansion, a History of the American Frontier, published in 1949, noted that Turner never actually defined what constituted the frontier. Billington challenged Turner's view that the frontier served as a safety valve for urban dwellers. Subsequent research demonstrated that land speculators purchased most western land, and that nineteenth-century migration patterns directed people primarily towards cities rather than the frontier.

Historian J. A. Burkhart, writing in The Wisconsin Magazine of History in September 1947, acknowledged that some aspects of Turner's interpretation stood corrected while others required further exploration. The West was not, as Turner suggested, a safety valve for oppressed industrial labourers after the Civil War. Moreover, Turner appeared to have generalised excessively about western experience. He probably overemphasised the distinctive character of the American frontier experience, potentially overshadowing other influences. His consistent insistence on the frontier's importance in American life and history, while valid regarding democracy, failed to credit European influences sufficiently in accounting for American institutional development. Turner appears to have been somewhat too enthusiastic about the frontier as a formative element of American character and personality.

Aspect of Turner's thesis	Supporting evidence	Criticisms
Frontier as 'safety valve'	Accessible land provided opportunity for social mobility	Research showed most western land bought by speculators; migration primarily to cities, not frontier
Frontier created self-reliant individualism	Harsh conditions required independence and resourcefulness	Ignored collective efforts, community building, and government support through land grants
Frontier shaped American democracy	Abundance of resources created equality of opportunity	Failed to credit European influences; ignored exclusion of women, Native Americans, and minorities
Frontier made America unique	No European-style hereditary aristocracy developed	Oversimplified complex factors; promoted American exceptionalism at expense of comparative analysis