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Historical Background

WHEN THE UNITED STATES purchased the vast Louisiana Territory in 1803, President Jefferson believed that this addition to public domain would satisfy the needs of land-hungry Americans for at least 500 years. Yet the acquisition—roughly a quarter of the present contiguous United States—was only the first in a series that in but a few decades extended the Nation's boundary to the Pacific Ocean.

In 1819, 7 years before Jefferson died, the United States rounded out its Southeastern boundary by acquiring Florida from Spain. In 1845 it annexed Texas, which earlier had won its independence from Mexico, and the following year obtained full title to the Oregon country when Britain relinquished her claims by treaty. In 1848 the treaty that ended the Mexican War ceded to the United States approximately the present States of California, Nevada, Utah, Arizona, and New Mexico. And in 1853, by the Gadsden Purchase, Mexico yielded an additional strip of territory along the southern border of Arizona and New Mexico. Thus within only half a century after the Louisiana Purchase the small Republic presided over by Jefferson had become a giant among the nations of the world. Spanning a continent, it consisted of millions of acres of virgin forest, towering mountains, mighty rivers, forbidding deserts, and fertile valleys—and all their resources.

In the last half of the 19th century, the Nation seemingly dedicated itself to disposing of the newly acquired land and its resources as quickly as possible. It passed them into the hands of any individual or corporation who would put them to productive use. Acts designed to divest the Nation of much of the public domain rapidly followed each other through Congress. Spurred by the promise of gold and land, thousands from the teeming East and the Mississippi Valley frontier and thousands more from crowded Europe followed Horace Greeley's maxim and went west in such numbers and haste that Jefferson's estimate of half a millennium for the satisfaction of land hunger proved to be grossly exaggerated.

The settlement of the West was a continuous process—before, during, and after the five decades of land acquisition. Following the War for Independence, settlers pushed their way into the Mississippi Valley. By the time of the Louisiana Purchase, Kentucky, Tennessee, and Ohio had been admitted to the Union as States, and eager pioneers already were leapfrogging past the newly settled regions and across the Mississippi River. The motivations of these restless frontiersmen were many: Economic opportunity, free land, adventure, and escape from debts or the law.

Explorers, fur trappers, and traders quickly penetrated the newly acquired trans-Mississippi West. They charted the wilderness and exploited the natural resources and native inhabitants. But the sturdy farmers, known as sodbusters in the West, who were to break and cultivate the land, were stopped temporarily in their westward movement by the Great Plains—a region the geography books of that day called the "Great American Desert." By the mid-19th century the westward surge had come to a standstill except for the few thousand hardy emigrant-farmers who, beginning in the early 1840's, had crossed the Great Plains and moved into Oregon and California.

Then in 1848 from the Far West came exciting news. Gold had been discovered in California. Farmers abandoned their plows and hurried to the diggings. Their city cousins deserted their employment and followed. Fur trappers forgot the beaver—the silk hat had virtually ended their business anyway—and joined the rush. The line of settlement, which for the most part had stopped at the edge of the Plains, leaped across the deserts and mountains to the golden valleys of the Sacramento River.

Sutter's sawmill at Coloma, California, near which James Marshall discovered gold in 1848 and stirred the Nation. From a painting by Charles C. Nahl. (Courtesy, Bancroft Library, University of California.)

Before long, the mining frontier worked its way eastward into the mineral-rich mountains from the Sierra to the Rockies. The cattlemen's empire, born in Texas at the close of the Civil War, rolled north and west to cover the Great Plains, spill over the mountains to upland plateaus, and even finger onto Southwestern deserts. At about the same time the sod house frontier of the Plains came into being. Settlers staked out the river valleys, cross-hatched the deserts with irrigation ditches, and crowded the cattlemen with whole sections of dry-land crops.

Not all those who rushed west went to the goldfields. Such an exploding population had to be fed, housed, entertained, and provided with other economic necessities. Thus mining created business, stimulated farming and ranching, fostered the west coast fishing industry, enhanced the market for lumber, spurred the establishment and growth of cities, and hastened the construction of roads and railroads.

Yet of all those who played a part in the settlement of the West, the prospector, cowhand, and sodbuster clearly stand out. They epitomize the efforts of the thousands of pioneers who gave substance and reality to the phrase—"from sea to shining sea."