This Weeks Class Topics


Traditionally, when one thinks of the expansion of the American West, the event most likely to come to mind is the California Gold Rush of 1849.

While that profitable discovery did boost California's population by 80,000 eager prospectors, there remained an awful lot of land between the Pacific Coast and, say, St. Louis, Missouri.

"Why mention St. Louis?" you might be asking. Because in actuality the young United States started exploring the vast land mass to the west from that very point and almost fifty years before those gold nuggets started hitting the pan in California.

In 1803 President Thomas Jefferson sent a secret message to Congress calling for an expedition into the area west of the Mississippi River to the Pacific Ocean.

He felt that an intelligent military man with perhaps a dozen hand-picked men could successfully chart the entire route and do it on an appropriation of roughly $2,500.

Jefferson's message was secret because France owned the territory in question and such an expedition would surely be considered trespassing.

Then in July of the same year, Napoleon of France, in a surprise move, offered the whole Louisiana Territory to the United States for $15,000,000.

America accepted and overnight the United States grew by about one million square miles, from the Mississippi to the Rockies and from the Gulf of Mexico to Canada.

Shortly before this news, Jefferson had handed his personal secretary, Meriweather Lewis, whom he chose to lead the exploration, his instructions for the expedition "...explore the Missouri River and such principal stream of it, as, by its course and communication with the waters of the Pacific Ocean, may offer the most direct and practical water communication across the continent, for the purposes of commerce".

The President could not have been more clear in his directions.

Lewis & Clark Expedition--1804 Santa Fe Trail--1821

When the need for a second-in-command was addressed, Lewis recommended his good friend William Clark, and thus on May 14, 1804, the Lewis and Clark Expedition started out from St. Louis in search of the Pacific Ocean.

Two and a half years and 8,000 miles later the explorers miraculously returned to St. Louis and a thunderous welcome from a grateful nation. Although the route never became widely used, it provided the impetus for the great western exploration movement. The search for America had begun.

By 1848, when Mexico finally ceded its claim to all U.S. territories to the north of its present day border, the United States had acquired undisputed title to all land westward from the Rockies to the Pacific Coast, north to the 49th parallel and south to the Rio Grande.

It was this "legitimate possession" that fully convinced thousands of settlers to move westward in search of land.

The pioneer spirit that existed in the 19th century was born in part of a need to own land - that intangible urge that it is the soil of their blood and sweat and tears.

Today is not so different from 1888 in that land remains one commodity that can't be created by mass production or any other method - it can only be divided and subdivided--with each parcel and plot becoming smaller, not larger.

What awaited the emigrants from the east, they could only imagine.

The stories that were related to them by explorers and missionaries, just back from the track west, were filled with images of vast , open landscapes, abundant game and pristine rivers and lakes.

One can understand their longing for this type of life, for even then larger cities along the eastern seaboard were moving into the industrial age.

The streets were crowded with itinerant workers and the mid-day skies were constantly blackened by coal smoke from numerous factories.

This change in cities had occurred so rapidly--in many places within a few short years--our early settlers began to experience a nostalgia of sorts for the simpler life they had led before. But of course, nostalgia or not, it still came down to the excitement generated by two words, "Free Land".

For a small filing fee the Federal Government would grant you a title to 320 acres of land.

There was one small catch though--in order to remain eligible for that amount of acreage, you had to work the land.

The government was shrewd enough to realize that by mandating the land could not lay idle they could easily avoid one problem and immediately solve another.

The problem they avoided was one of land speculation, a concern that had long been apparent with the advent of the railroads and cattle ranching.

Smaller acreage such as the 320 mentioned were fairer to the common man and his young family, for a short while requiring equal distribution of land resources. The problem solved was one of political and territorial unrest.

Mexico to the south harbored small gangs of Bandidos who, regardless of the 1848 treaty, still coveted parts of Texas and California and saw the areas as morally belonging to the Mexican government.

Until these areas became more populated with American citizens these gangs would likely come and go as they pleased, stopping to loot and plunder remote western outposts.

The philosophy of "Safety in Numbers" would eventually prove true however, as border attacks from Mexico to the south and renegade Plains Indians to the north eased and finally ceased.

Runaway horses, stampeded cattle, prairie fire, blizzards, heat, sunstroke, Indians, lice, snakes and the pure loneliness of the open plains - all of these and more faced the western pioneers of the 1800s.

Certainly there were those who gave up, moving back to the security of the East, but many more stayed and helped build and shape the West one sod shack at a time, one small farm at a time and eventually one town

at a time. They traveled forth on horseback, in Conestoga wagons...some even walked. For them it wasn't a question of how long it would take, only that it had to be done. And they did it.