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| 1860 |
A Homestead Bill, providing federal
land grants to Western settlers, is vetoed by President Buchanan under
pressure from the South. The veto divides Buchanan's Democratic party,
clearing the way for Abraham Lincoln's election in a three-way race. |
 |
| 1860 |
 The
Pony Express completes its inaugural delivery, bringing mail over
the 1,966 miles from St. Louis to Sacramento in 11 days. Organized
by William H. Russell and Alexander Majors, the service depends on
a string of 119 stations, about 12 miles apart, where the young riders
-- "skinny, expert . . . willing to risk death daily" --
exchange horses to keep advancing at top speed. |
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| 1860 |
Severe drought leads to an exodus
of 30,000 settlers from Kansas. |
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| 1860 |
Lincoln is elected President, pledging
to pass homestead legislation and to oppose the spread of slavery.
His victory provokes South Carolina to secede. |
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| 1861 |
Kansas enters the Union as a free
state. |
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| 1861 |
Colorado and Nevada Territories
are organized as Congress begins to consolidate federal control over
the West, establishing strong local governments loyal to the Union
across the region. |
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| 1861 |
Texas joins the Confederacy, forcing
its legendary Unionist governor, Sam Houston, out of office. |
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| 1861 |
Confederate forces fire on Fort
Sumter in Charleston, South Carolina, unleashing the Civil War. |
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| 1861 |
California declares for the Union
when news of the Civil War reaches the far West more than a month
after the attack on Fort Sumter. |
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| 1861 |
Crews working to complete a coast-to-coast
telegraph line meet at Fort Bridger in Utah Territory. The first transcontinental
telegram, transmitted from Sacramento to Washington, carries a message
from the state's Chief Justice to President Lincoln. Completion of
a transcontinental telegraph line signals the end for the Pony Express. |
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| 1861 |
The Kansas Jayhawkers, a supposedly
pro-Union guerrilla band organized by Charles J. Jennison, begin marauding
across the Missouri border. In December, they attack and occupy Independence,
Missouri, burning much of the city and killing many citizens. |
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| 1862 |
Congress passes the Pacific Railroad
Act, which authorizes the Central Pacific and Union Pacific Companies
to build a transcontinental rail line along the 42nd parallel and
provides public lands and subsidies for every mile of track laid. |
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| 1862 |
Idaho Territory organized. |
|
| 1862 |
Congress passes the Homestead Act,
which allows citizens to settle on up to 160 acres of surveyed but
unclaimed public land and receive title to it after making improvements
and residing there for five years. |
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| 1862 |
The Civil War divides the Five
Civilized Tribes, who brought slaves west with them when they were
forced from their homelands in the South. Most side at once with the
Confederacy, contributing a brigade to the cause. But the Creek Nation
splits into pro-Union and pro-Confederate factions, who battle against
one another throughout the war. |
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| 1862 |
 Sibley's
Brigade, an army of Texas Confederates commanded by General Henry
J. Sibley, invade New Mexico, moving up the Rio Grande. They defeat
a Union force at Valverde, advance through Albuquerque and Santa Fe,
and then turn north toward Colorado's gold fields. But at Apache Canyon
they are ambushed by a squad of Colorado volunteers commanded by the
"Fighting Parson," John M. Chivington, and two days later
they are defeated by a Union force at Glorietta Pass, where Chivington's
irregulars rappel down a cliff face to destroy their supply wagons.
The Texans retreat in disarray, their hopes of conquest shattered
at "the Gettysburg of the West." |
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| 1862 |
Congress passes the Morrill Anti-Bigamy
Act, which targets the Mormon community by prohibiting polygamy in
United States territories. The law is ignored in Utah. |
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| 1863 |
President Lincoln issues the Emancipation
Proclamation. |
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| 1863 |
Union forces prevail at the Battle
of Gettysburg. |
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| 1863 |
Congress organizes the Arizona
Territory. |
|
| 1863 |
Quantrill's Raiders, a Confederate
guerrilla band operating out of Missouri, terrorize Lawrence, Kansas,
killing 150 residents and burning much of the town. Among the Raiders
are Frank and Jesse James, and Cole and Jim Younger, who will use
the hit-and-run tactics taught by their leader, William Clarke Quantrill,
to create vicious outlaw gangs in the post-war West. |
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| 1864 |
Congress organizes the Montana
Territory and admits Nevada into the union, completing the political
organization of the West under local governments loyal to the Union. |
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| 1864 |
A second Pacific Railroad Act is
passed by Congress, one that aims to stimulate investment in the enterprise
by doubling the size of the land grants and improving the subsidies
offered for every mile of track laid. |
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| 1864 |
Sent to punish Navajo raiding parties
in northwest New Mexico, Colonel Kit Carson leads a campaign of destruction
through their villages, burning crops and killing livestock. When
the Navajo surrender, he marches 8,000 of the tribe on a grueling
"Long Walk" across New Mexico to a parched reservation near
Fort Sumner on the Pecos River, where they are held as prisoners of
war until 1868. |
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| 1864 |
 Meeting
with army officers at Fort Weld outside Denver, the Cheyenne chief,
Black Kettle, agrees to lead his people back to their Sand Creek reservation
in order to restore peace after Indian raids on ranches in the area.
He is attacked there by a volunteer force led by John M. Chivington,
the "Fighting Parson" of Glorietta Pass, which sweeps down
on the Cheyenne encampment at dawn and massacres nearly two hundred
men, women and children. Later Congressional and military investigations
condemn the slaughter. |
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| 1865 |
The Confederate surrender at Appomattox Courthouse, Virginia, brings
an end to the Civil War.
 The
Union Pacific Railroad begins moving westward, laying track at an
average rate of one mile per day. In California, Chinese laborers
join the Central Pacific work gangs, providing the strength, organization
and persistence needed to break through the mountains.
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| 1865 |
Mark Twain publishes "The
Celebrated Jumping Frog of Calaveras County," a tall tale set
in a boisterous California mining camp which brings the Western experience
into the mainstream of American literature. |
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| 1866 |
General Philip H. Sheridan takes
command of U.S. forces in the West, proposing to bring peace to the
plains by exterminating the herds of buffalo that support the Indians'
way of life: "Kill the buffalo and you kill the Indians,"
he says. |
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| 1866 |
A Lakota war party led by Chief
Red Cloud attacks a wagon train bringing supplies to newly-constructed
Fort Phil Kearny on the Powder River in northern Wyoming. The Lakota
see the fort, situated to protect travel to Montana mining country
along the Bozeman Trail, as a threat to their territory. When a patrol
led by Captain William J. Fetterman rides out to drive off the war
party, it is lured far from the fort and destroyed to the last man. |
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| 1866 |
Charles Goodnight and Oliver Loving
blaze the first cattle trail, driving a herd of 2,000 longhorns from
Texas to New Mexico in what will become an annual tradition across
the southern plains. |
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| 1866 |
Jesse and Frank James, veterans
of Quantrill's Raiders, launch their legendary criminal career with
a bank robbery at Liberty, Missouri. |
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| 1867 |
Nebraska enters the Union. |
|
| 1867 |
The United States purchases Alaska
from Russia. |
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| 1867 |
The first cattle drive from Texas
up the Chisholm Trail arrives at the railyards of Abilene, Kansas. |
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| 1867 |
The United States and representatives
of the Comanche, Kiowa, Cheyenne, Arapaho and other southern Plains
tribes sign the Medicine Lodge Treaty, intended to remove Indians
from the path of white settlement. The treaty marks the end of the
era in which federal policymakers saw the Plains as "one big
reservation" to be divided up among various tribes. Instead,
the treaty establishes reservations for each tribe in the western
part of present-day Oklahoma and requires them to give up their traditional
lands elsewhere. In exchange, the government pledges to establish
reservation schools and to provide resident farmers who will teach
the Indians agriculture. This same principle of restricting the Plains
tribes to reservations will help shape the Fort Laramie Treaty of
1868. In both cases, the tribes' refusal to give up their free-ranging
traditions and remain confined within the territory assigned to them
leads to devastating warfare. |
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| 1868 |
Congress organizes the Wyoming
Territory. |
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| 1868 |
The Senate approves a treaty permitting
unrestricted immigration from China. |
|
| 1868 |
The Chinese railbuilders of the
Central Pacific finally break out of the High Sierras. |
|
| 1868 |
Chief Red Cloud and General William
Tecumseh Sherman sign the Fort Laramie Treaty, which brings an end
to war along the Bozeman Trail. Under terms of the treaty, the United
States agrees to abandon its forts along the Bozeman Trail and grant
enormous parts of the Wyoming, Montana and Dakota Territories, including
the Black Hills area, to the Lakota people as their exclusive territory. |
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| 1868 |
General Philip Sheridan sends Colonel
George Armstrong Custer against the Cheyenne, with a plan to attack
them during the winter when they are most vulnerable. Custer's troops
locate a Cheyenne village on the Washita River in present-day Oklahoma.
By a cruel coincidence, the village is home to Black Kettle and his
people, the victims of the Sand Creek Massacre in 1864. Custer's cavalry
attacks at dawn, killing more than 100 men, women and children, including
Black Kettle. |
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| 1869 |
John Wesley Powell, a veteran of the Civil War who lost part of
his right arm at Shiloh and a self-taught expert on mountain geology,
leads the first recorded voyage through the Grand Canyon of the
Colorado, winning national acclaim and setting the stage for government
funded scientific study of the West.
 A
Golden Spike completes the transcontinental railroad at Promontory
Point, Utah.
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|
| 1869 |
Wyoming becomes the first place
in the United States where women have the right to vote. |
