There were many policies which contribute a lot to change population and economic patterns of the american west .
Much of the West became part of the United States through the Louisiana Purchase of 1803; the Southwest, however, was a Mexican possession until 1848. The Lewis and Clark Expedition of 1804–06 established much of what would become the Oregon Trail and thereby facilitated settlement of the Pacific Northwest.
The Mormons, fleeing from harassment in Midwestern states, reached Utah in 1847, built Salt Lake City, and began a vigorous colonization of all parts of the Rocky Mountain West. The discovery of gold in California in 1848 brought a burst of migration to the West Coast and led to California’s admission to the union in 1850, barely two years after it had been ceded from Mexico.
The rest of the West, however, remained sparsely populated. The American Civil War changed that conception. In 1862 the Homestead Act was passed by Congress. In 1869 the first transcontinental railroad was completed, and in 1873 barbed-wire fencing was introduced. Coupled with improvements in dry farming and irrigation and the confinement of American Indians to reservations, the Great American Desert grew steadily in population.
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