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Homestead Act
Signed into law by President Abraham Lincoln on May 20, 1862, the Homestead Act encouraged Western migration by providing settlers 160 acres of public land. In exchange, homesteaders paid a small filing fee and were required to complete five years of continuous residence before receiving ownership of the land. -
Transcontinental Railroad Completed
A golden spike was driven at Promontory, Utah, signaling the completion of the first transcontinental railroad in the United States. The transcontinental railroad had long been a dream for people living in the American West. -
Industrialization
In modern history, the process of change from an agrarian and handicraft economy to one dominated by industry and machine manufacturing. -
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Gilded Age
The Gilded Age in United States history is an era that occurred during the late 19th century, from the 1870's to about 1900. -
Telephone Invented
While Italian innovator Antonio Meucci (pictured at left) is credited with inventing the first basic phone in 1849, and Frenchman Charles Bourseul devised a phone in 1854, Alexander Graham Bell won the first U.S. patent for the device in 1876. -
Reconstruction Ends
The Compromise of 1877 (the Great Betrayal) was an informal, unwritten deal, that settled the intensely disputed 1876 U.S. presidential election. It resulted in the United States federal government pulling the last troops out of the South, and formally ended the Reconstruction Era -
Light Bulb Invented
Edison and his team of researchers in Edison's laboratory in Menlo Park, N.J., tested more than 3,000 designs for bulbs between 1878 and 1880. In November 1879, Edison filed a patent for an electric lamp with a carbon filament. -
Dawes Act
Approved on February 8, 1887, "An Act to Provide for the Allotment of Lands in Severalty to Indians on the Various Reservations," known as the Dawes Act, emphasized severalty, the treatment of Native Americans as individuals rather than as members of tribes. -
Klondike Gold Rush
The Klondike Gold Rush of 1897-1898 drew 100,000 people away from their homes on a spectacular adventure that pitted humans against nature, time, and each other.