1840's Natural Environment

Throughout the 1840’s and 1890’s the natural environment shaped the development of the West beyond the Mississippi like, where the best and worst settlement would be in the West, how there was a struggle for the expansion that the settlers of the West were pushing for and, how aspects like cattle and mining would influence the settlers. There were many environmental changes, as well as expansion in the West, and the increase in knowledge and development in industries, that were occurring, and causing the development of the West beyond the Mississippi to be impacted along with the lives of those who lived there. The environment, which determined if people could settle or not, was the most contributing factor that shaped the West in the 1840’s
Levi Savage declared that, “we could not cross the mountains with a mixed company of aged people, women, and little children, so late in the season without much suffering, sickness, and death.” The Oregon Trail caused very unhealthy conditions for settlers coming to the West. The cold weather, scarcity of food, and fatigue from overexertion, soon produced things like dysentery and later on, death. In Lucy Henderson Deady’s Diary from 1850, (document E), she goes into details about what her and her family experienced when they used the Oregon Trail to get to the West. When people on the Oregon Trail got infected with dysentery there was no medicine to combat it. Lucy’s mother brought laudanum as medicine and gave it to he little sister Lettie, who later died. After a while they finally mad their way through to Oregon. “We had been eight months on the road instead of five, we were out of food, and our cattle were nearly worn out….” said Lucy Deady in her diary. During the winter season they lived off of boiled wheat and boiled peas because their conditions were so bad. In the environmental map of the Western United States, (document A), it shows the different
In President James K. Polk’s message to Congress on December 2, in 1845, (document B), he talks about the Oregon Territory, “... and would leave on the British side two-thirds of the whole Oregon Territory, including the free navigation of the Columbia and all the valuable harbors on the Pacific….” People in the United States could not settle on the Oregon Territory unless we owned it. The Oregon Trail allowed for these settlers to migrate to the western part of the United States. If we do not have the harbors on the Pacific we can not trade. The Pacific Railway Act of 1862 gave builders of the Union Pacific and Central Pacific railroads five square miles of public land on each side of their right-of-way for each mile of track laid. The Pacific Railways would also help us with trading and expand the western United States economically. In the image by W.G.M. Samuel in 1849 in the West Side Main Plaza, in San Antonio Texas (document D), showed a fairly large cow town. Cow towns were located along the railroad lines as the finishing point of the long drive. Cattle towns were complete with saloons, hotels, restaurants, and general stores. These general stores became the social centers of the cow towns. The image also shows a Law and Cattle Frontier, which was hard to keep law and order in. In 1869 and 1870 the Wyoming Territorial Legislature, (document F), made