Lewis and Clark Timeline
Post Expedition 1881 - 1890

1881

James A. Garfield is inaugurated as the twentieth President of the United States.

President Garfield is shot in the Washington, D.C. railroad station by Charles J. Guiteau, a disgruntled office seeker. Garfield dies two months later from the effects of the bullet wound. Guiteau is hanged in Washington.

Chester A. Arthur is inaugurated as the twenty-first President of the United States.

Clara Barton, who worked in Civil War hospitals and with the International Red Cross in Geneva during the Franco-Prussian War, returns to the U.S. to establish the American Red Cross.

Sitting Bull and his band of 187 return to the United States from Canada, surrendering to officials at Fort Buford, North Dakota.

Helen Hunt Jackson publishes A Century of Dishonor in the effort to publicize the desperate plight of American Indian people that has resulted from U.S. Indian policy.

The second transcontinental railroad is completed with the linking of the Santa Fe and Southern Pacific Railroads at Deming, New Mexico.

1882

The U.S. Senate approves the Geneva Convention treaty, which provides for the care of the wounded in wartime.

The Standard Oil Trust, the most famous American cartel, is organized. Using laws governing trust funds, John D. Rockefeller and his associates create a monopoly within the oil industry, evading anti-monopoly laws of the time by becoming "trustees" of the stock and absorbing many rival oil companies.

The Pearl Street Electric Power Station, operated by steam and built by Thomas A. Edison, goes into operation in New York City. It supplies power for four hundred incandescent lights in fifty-nine buildings.

Immigrants totaling 250,630 arrive in the U.S. as a result of a severe economic depression in Europe. Immigrants settle mostly in established colonies in the Mid-West.

1883

Gold is discovered in the Coeur D'Alene region of northern Idaho.

The Civil Service Commission is established by the Pendleton Act, legislation which seeks to replace the spoils system by a merit system.

The modern U.S. Navy is founded when Congress authorizes the construction of three steel cruisers and one dispatch boat.

The Brooklyn Bridge is completed from lower Manhattan to Brooklyn, New York. It is the largest suspension bridge in the world to this date.

The Southern Immigration Association is formed in order to promote European immigration to the South.

William Frederick "Buffalo Bill" Cody organizes his first Wild West Show.

Mark Twain publishes Life on the Mississippi, recollections of the heyday of steamboating on the great river before the Civil War.

1884

Belva A. Lockwood, a lawyer, is nominated for the Presidency of the United States by the Equal Rights Party, formed by a group of suffragists.

Otto Mergenthaler patents his mechanical typesetter, which casts and sets type for printing. Called the linotype machine, it revolutionizes mass circulation newspaper production.

An American Indian tries to vote in an election in Omaha, Nebraska, but a federal court rules in Elk v. Wilkins that the 14th Amendment does not apply to Indians; a tribal member cannot simply become a citizen of the U.S.

The U.S. Bureau of Labor is created as part of the Department of the Interior.

The cornerstone of the Statue of Liberty's pedestal at Bedloe's Island in New York harbor is laid.

Mark Twain publishes The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, a profound study of race relations and tolerance.

1885

Grover Cleveland is inaugurated as the twenty-second President of the United States.

Beef prices crash as a result of the over-stocking of ranges during the cattle boom of previous years.

Congress passes the Contract Labor Act, under which the immigration of laborers under contract to work for the cost of passage is forbidden. Exceptions are allowed for skilled, professional, and domestic workers.

The largest lead source in the world at the Bunker Hill and Sullivan Mines, is discovered in Kellogg, Idaho. The Sunshine silver mine in Shoshone County is found at the same time.

Mark Twain publishes the first edition of Ulysses S. Grant's personal memoirs. Grant, almost penniless, dies before success of his book, but his family receives nearly $500,000 from its sale.

The first "skyscraper" is completed; Chicago's Home Life Insurance Building is made possible by the new use of all-iron frame construction.

1886

A bomb is thrown at police dispersing a meeting of labor leaders at Haymarket Square in Chicago. Eight policemen are killed and seventy policemen as well as other participants are injured.

The American Federation of Labor is organized in Columbus, Ohio, and Samuel Gompers becomes its first President.

The Apache Chief, Geronimo, is captured in Arizona by Federal troops commanded by General Miles. The last major Indian War is ended.

The U.S. Supreme Court invalidates a state railroad regulation law, ruling that only Congress can control interstate commerce, in Wabash, St. Louis & Pacific Railroad Company v. Illinois.

The great "die-up" of underfed cattle in overstocked ranges during the disastrous winter of 1886-87 signals the end of the cattle boom.

1887

The Dawes Severalty Act provides for the division of Indian Lands among Indian families, with 160 acres granted per head of household. Intended as a way to make American Indian people live in the style of Euro-American farmers, the act instead breaks up the large Indian reservations, with surplus land going to white settlers. Indians lose millions of acres of land.

The American Protective Association, a powerful anti-Catholic, Pro-isolationist movement, is founded in Clinton, Iowa.

The free delivery of mail is provided in all communities with a population of at least ten thousand.

George Eastman of Rochester, New York, patents the first successful roll film for cameras.

President Cleveland signs a routine War Department order authorizing the return to the South of captured Confederate battle flags. The protest from Union veterans and Republican politicians is so great that Cleveland cancels the order.

1888

The first electric automobile designed by Philip W. Pratt is demonstrated in Boston.

Congress authorizes a commission to mediate labor disputes between interstate railroads and their workers.

The Department of Labor, without Cabinet status, is established.

First the Great Plains, then New York City and the East Coast are paralyzed by a March blizzard which lasts thirty-six hours. Four hundred die.

1889

Benjamin Harrison is inaugurated as the twenty-third President of the United States.

The first Oklahoma land rush officially begins at noon, April 22, as more than twenty thousand people line up at the border for the rush into unstaked territory. This and subsequent land rushes were made possible by the Dawes Act of 1887, which reduced the acreage of Indian lands.

Nellie Bly, a reporter for The New York World, sets out on a round-the-world trip in an attempt to better the record of Jules Verne's fictional journey in Around the World in Eighty Days. Bly is successful when she reaches home in seventy-two days, six hours, eleven minutes, and fourteen seconds.

John L. Sullivan defeats Jake Kilrain, after seventy-five rounds, in a bare-knuckle championship fight.

North Dakota and South Dakota are admitted as the thirty-ninth and fortieth states in the Union.

Montana is admitted as the forty-first state in the Union.

Washington is admitted as the forty-second state in the union.

1890

The Sherman Antitrust Act is the first Federal legislation directed at control of monopolies.

The Lakota (Sioux) chief Sitting Bull is killed by soldiers in South Dakota during a U.S. Army effort to curb the influence of the "Ghost Dance," a religious rite thought to be dangerous to the white population in the area.

The last armed conflict between the U.S. Army and the Lakota (Sioux) Indians takes place at Wounded Knee Creek. In the fight the Indians suffer over 200 dead (including 44 women and 18 children) and 51 known wounded. The army has 25 killed and 39 wounded. Wounded Knee ends the long history of the Indian wars.

Through the efforts of environmentalist John Muir, two million acres in the Sierra Mountains behind the Yosemite Valley, as well as the area surrounding groves of giant Sequoia trees, are declared National Parks by Congress and signed into law by President Harrison.

Idaho is admitted as the forty-third state in the Union.

Wyoming is admitted as the forty-fourth state in the Union. As a territory it had given women the right to vote in 1869. It thus becomes the first state in the U.S. to grant women suffrage.

Eleventh census: U.S. population - 62,948,000. The census declares that a frontier has ceased to exist in the U.S.