AP®︎ US History: Topic 6.2 Flashcards

Offered 160 acres of public land to settlers who lived on and improved it, encouraging western migration and farm ownership despite frequent hardship and fraud

Offered additional western land to settlers who planted trees, an often unsuccessful and fraud-prone attempt to adapt homesteading to the Plains

Encouraged settlers to acquire and irrigate arid western land, though it often produced disappointing results and fraud

Federal bonds, loans, rights of way, and alternating land sections reduced construction risks and financed western railroad expansion

The 1862 act and its 1864 amendments subsidized the Union Pacific and Central Pacific with loans and land to build a transcontinental railroad

Completed in 1869 when the Union Pacific and Central Pacific met at Promontory Summit, Utah, linking the Pacific Coast to the eastern rail network

Common regional times adopted by the railroad industry in 1883 to coordinate schedules across the national rail network

Supported construction of the transcontinental telegraph, completed in 1861, which connected western communities to eastern markets and finance

Major silver deposit discovered in Nevada in 1859 that attracted migrants and investment and fueled the growth of Virginia City

Used pressurized water to wash away hillsides for minerals, increasing production but causing severe erosion and river debris

Unfenced cattle grazing system that declined with barbed wire, expanding farms, overgrazing, falling prices, and the severe winter of 1886–1887

Movements of Texas cattle north to Kansas railheads, where trains carried them to eastern slaughterhouses and consumers

Major cattle trail running north from Texas through Indian Territory to Kansas railheads

Cattle entrepreneur who established stockyards at Abilene, Kansas, in 1867 and helped make it a major cattle-shipping town

Early cattle town and railhead where Texas herds were loaded onto trains for eastern markets

Allowed dressed beef to be shipped long distances, lowering costs and strengthening large Chicago meatpacking companies

Major railroad, grain, and meatpacking center that connected western farms and ranches to national processing and consumer markets

Cheap fencing patented successfully in 1874 that protected crops, established property boundaries, and helped end the open range

Patented a successful and widely used form of barbed wire in 1874

Use of improved farm machinery to cultivate more acreage with less labor, greatly increasing production and helping lower food prices

Semiarid farming method using deep plowing, moisture-conserving cultivation, and fallow land to cope with limited rainfall

Large, capital-intensive Great Plains farms that used wage labor and machinery to grow crops such as wheat on thousands of acres

Market-oriented farming in which producers specialized in crops for distant buyers and relied on machinery, credit, and railroads

A decline in the general price level that made fixed debts harder to repay because they had to be repaid with more valuable dollars

Concentration of transportation, storage, processing, marketing, and credit in large businesses on which independent farmers depended

Practices such as rebates for large shippers and high short-haul rates that disadvantaged small farmers with few transportation alternatives

Collective stores, purchasing arrangements, crop-marketing systems, elevators, and warehouses intended to reduce farmers’ dependence on middlemen

Farm organization founded in 1867 that provided education and fellowship, organized cooperatives, and supported regulation of railroad and warehouse rates

Founder of the National Grange of the Patrons of Husbandry in 1867

State laws supported by the Grange to regulate railroad freight charges and grain warehouse rates

The 1877 Supreme Court decision upholding state regulation of private property, such as grain warehouses, when it affected the public interest

The 1886 Supreme Court decision ruling that states could not regulate railroad traffic crossing state boundaries

Prohibited certain discriminatory railroad practices and created the initially weak Interstate Commerce Commission to regulate interstate railroads

Regional farm organizations that promoted education and cooperatives and increasingly demanded railroad regulation, easier credit, and higher prices

Organization of Black farmers that pursued cooperation and economic reform separately because racial segregation limited collaboration with white alliances

Farm Alliance proposal for federal warehouses and low-interest crop-secured loans so farmers could delay sales until prices improved

Railroads and telegraphs linked western producers and resources with eastern consumers, manufacturers, investors, and financial markets

Built westward from the Missouri River region and joined the Central Pacific in Utah to complete the first transcontinental railroad

Built eastward from Sacramento and joined the Union Pacific in Utah to complete the first transcontinental railroad

Separated gold and other minerals from stream sediments with pans, sluices, or similar equipment

Capital-intensive extraction of underground ore using shafts, pumps, ventilation, mills, and other large-scale equipment

Community that grew rapidly when a mineral discovery or other economic opportunity attracted workers, merchants, and investors

Former boomtown largely abandoned after its resource or economic activity became unprofitable

Communication line completed in 1861 that rapidly connected western communities with eastern markets and financial centers