Nineteenth-century History
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The Homestead Act of 1862

The Homestead Act of 1862

Today marks the 146th anniversary of the signing of The Homestead Act. Like The General Mining Act of 1872, The Homestead Act of 1862 was designed to encourage people to settle the west. By the time the act was signed into law by President Abraham Lincoln on May 20, 1862, eleven southern states had ...
Indians and the Imperial Powers of Europe

Indians and the Imperial Powers of Europe

At the university library, I came across a book by the title A Companion to The American West, edited by William Deverell, and have been slowly working my way through it. The book is a series of essays that talk about what the American west is, how the west is defined and how the definition...
Rocky Mountain Mining Towns: Bannack, Montana

Rocky Mountain Mining Towns: Bannack, Montana

The first part of the new series about mining towns in the Rocky Mountains will begin with Bannack, Montana. Nothing, but a ghost town now, Bannack was the site of a major gold discovery in 1862. The town was founded the same year as a result of the discovery and is named after the local...
Who were the real cowboys? (Part 1)

Who were the real cowboys? (Part 1)

“Always drink upstream from the herd.” That was the advice of just one of hundreds of anonymous cowboys of the 19th century. While many of us are familiar with romanticized cowboys such as those played by John Wayne and Clint Eastwood in western films, many of us do not know much about t...