Mining and Ranching

1. Chapter 13.2
Mining and Ranching

2. Striking Gold and Silver
Q: How did mining lead to new settlements in the West?
Notes -
1849 California Gold Rush brought about mass migration west.
1858 Prospectors found gold near Pikes Peak in Colorado
1859 Prospectors found silver in the carson river valley present day Nevada
- Became known as the Comstock Lode producing $500 Million dollars worth of
silver over the course of 20 years.

3. The Klondike gold rush
Q: How did mining lead to new settlements in the West?
July 17, 1897 A huge gold strike had been made along the Klondike River in
Canada’s Yukon Territory near the Alaska Border.
Later in 1897 gold was found on the Alaska side of the border
Over the course of 1 year, more than 100,000 Americans rushed to the Klondike
in search of gold and riches

4. Mining Camps become towns
Q: How did mining lead to new settlements in the West?
Reports of gold created a sudden creation of camps and small shanty towns
overnight.
Some Sprawling mining camps developed into towns creating dirt streets and
wooden sidewalks
As towns developed women and children joined the men, changing the rough and
tough tumble camps into respectable communities.
Seattle Washington was one of these mining camps that became the largest and
richest town to grow out of a mining camp

5. Mining as Big Business
Q: Why did mining become a big business?
Surface deposits run out and mining now requires more sophisticated equipment
and technology to extract gold
Large companies with significant resources jumped in on the business of finding
gold using two different methods
- Hydraulic mining: used water under high pressure to blast away dirt
exposing the minerals underneath(This method put a lot of sediment into the
rivers and caused issues choking rivers and creating floods)
- Hard-rock mining: required cutting deep shafts in solid rock to extract the
ore/mineral
Miners became employees of these large companies as success of discovering

6. The Cattle Boom
Origins of Western Ranching & Demand for Beef
Q: What were the four reasons for the the development of the Texas longhorn breed of
cattle?
The first ranchers were the Spanish, who brought cattle to the New World in the 1500s.
These ranchers became adept to raising cattle in dry environments and interbred
spanish and English cattle to develop a new breed that would thrive on the plains: The
Texas Longhorn.
- Hardy and could travel long distances
- Did not need a lot of water
- Could live on prairie grass alone
By 1866 the Demand for beef was
growing at a massive rate in order to
feed the urban populations on the
east coast.
1 Steer in Texas sold for $4 wholesale
and in the market a butcher could
profit $40 from the same steer

7. The Cattle Boom
Cattle Trails
Q: Who worked as cowboys on the cattle drives?
Cattle trails ran from cattle country in Texas to major rail centers.
- The Chisholm Trail which began in San Antonio, ran through Fort Worth, and
ended in the Kansas towns of Abilene and Ellsworth. By 1871 600,000 cattle
traveled the route each year.
The long drives on cattle trails usually lasted 3 months
Cowboys ⅔ of whom were teenage boys between the ages of 12 & 18 guided the
cattle 10-12 miles per day, any faster and the cattle may have died and or caused
a stampede.

8. Ranching as big business
Q: How and why did the cattle boom come to an end?
In the 1870s Joseph Glidden of Dekalb Illinois patented barbed wire as a way to
create a cheap enclosure system for cattle.
Between 1882 and 1886 more than 400 cattle corporations sprang up in
Wyoming, Montana, Colorado and New Mexico.
The Enclosure of the open range led to conflicts between landless cattle owners
and their ranchers and farmers who enclosed the land.
The harsh winters of 1885-1886 & 1886-1887 brought great loss to the cattle
industry
- The cattle migrations were blocked by drifting snow piling up on the barbed
wire fencing preventing cattle from moving south.