Answer:
Explanation• 1834 Permanent Indian Frontier set up
• 1843 First settlers arrive in Oregon encouraged by government legislation
• 1844 Mormon persecution in Nauvoo
• 1846 Donner Party head west but meet with disaster and death
• Mormons travel to the Great Salt Lake having been driven out of Nauvoo
• 1848 Gold discovered in California
• 1850s First homesteaders move to the Plains
• 1851 Fort Laramie Treaty (1)
• 1858–59 Gold discovered in the Pikes Peak region of the Rocky Mountains
• 1859 Gold mines opened in Colorado and Nevada
• 1861 Start of the American Civil War between North and South America
• 1862 Homestead Act
• Little Crow’s War
• Pacific Railway Act passed and work begins on the transcontinental railway
• 1864 Sand Creek Massacre
• 1865 End of the American Civil War
• Slavery abolished in the US
• 1866 Group of US army soldiers wiped out at Fetterman’s Trap by Plains Indians
• Red Cloud’s War on the US Government in their attempt to build forts in Montana
• Goodnight and Loving reach Fort Sumner with 1,700 cattle
• 1867 Medicine Lodge Creek
• Abilene becomes the first cow town
• ‘The Beef Bonanza’
• 1868 ‘The Winter Campaign’
• Fort Laramie Treaty (2)
• 1869 Railroad completed despite opposition from some Americans
• 1870 Cattle Ranching begins on the Plains which led to the ‘Open Range’
• 1873 Timber and Culture Act
• 1874 Barbed wire begins to be mass-produced
• Wind-powered water pump introduced
• Custer leads expedition to the Black Hills ignoring the
• Treaty of Fort Laramie
• 1876 The Great Sioux War begins between the US Army and the Sioux Indians
• Battle of the Little Big Horn
• 1881 Sitting Bull and followers surrender to the American government
• 1885 All Plains Indians are resettled on to reservations
• Northern herd of buffalo is completely destroyed
• 1886 Severe winter leads to smaller ranches with barbed fences and wind pumps that eventually lead to
the end of the cowboy era
• 1887 Dawes Act
• 1890 Battle of Wounded Knee
• US government closes frontier in which the Plains Indians had lost their land
• 1892 Johnson County War
American West key dates
These are the key dates to learn for the American West.
