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Railroads
Roads of rails called Wagonways were being used in Germany as early as 1550. These primitive railed roads consisted of wooden rails over which horse-drawn wagons or carts moved with greater ease than over dirt roads. Wagonways were the beginnings of modern railroads. By 1776, iron had replaced the wood in the rails and wheels on the carts. Wagonways evolved into Tramways and spread though out Europe. Horses still provided all the pulling power. In 1789, Englishman, William Jessup designed the -
Louisiana Purchase
After Napoleon's initial refusal, Jefferson sent James Monroe as well to France, in hopes of convincing Napoleon to reconsider. The French leader did more than that: He offered to sell all of the Louisiana Territory, more than 828,000 square miles! Livingston and Monroe quickly accepted and offered to pay $15 million. Both sides agreed, and the Louisiana Territory became American. The final transfer came in 1803. Such a large land had many Americans living in it, but the bulk of it was unknow -
Lewis and Clark
The Lewis and Clark Expedition (1804–1806) was the first United States expedition to the Pacific Coast. Commissioned by President Thomas Jefferson and led by Meriwether Lewis and William Clark, the expedition had several goals. According to Jefferson himself, one goal was to find a "direct & practicable water communication across this continent, for the purposes of commerce" (the Northwest Passage). In order to make a firm claim of “discovery” to the Pacific Northwest and compete with the Br -
OR Trail
The Oregon Trail is a 2,000-mile (3,200 km) historic east-west wagon route that connected the Missouri River to valleys in Oregon and locations in between. It flourished from the 1840s until the coming of the railroad at the end of the 1860s. The trip on foot took four- to six-months. It was the oldest of the northern commercial and emigrant trails and was originally discovered and used by fur trappers and traders in the fur trade from about 1811 to 1840. In its earliest days much of the future -
Gold Rush
The California Gold Rush (1848–1855) began slowly on January 24, 1848, when gold was found by James W. Marshall at Sutter's Mill, in Coloma, California.[1] The first to hear confirmed information of the gold rush were the people in Oregon, Sandwich Islands, (Hawaii), Mexico, Peru and Chile and they were the first to start flocking to the state in late 1848. By 1850 the U.S. California Census showed 92,600 people in California to which about 30,000 more people should be added because the Censuse
