Documents

• The Homestead Act (1862) -- amidst a war between North and South, Congress lays a foundation for settlement in the West.
• The Pacific Railway Act (1862) -- the government program that spanned a nation.
• Emmeline Wells, "Is It Ignorance?" from The Woman's Exponent, July 1, 1883 -- a defense of plural marriage by a leading feminist of her era.
• Songs of the Plains : A Selection of Cowboy Folk Songs -- lyrics to soothe both man and beast.
• The Buffalo Harvest, by Frank Mayer with Charles B. Roth -- the life and times of a "buffalo runner" in the 1870's.

Images

	5.1 Western surveyors like those who charted a course for the transcontinental railroad		5.2 Directors of the Union Pacific Railroad on a special excursion to the 100th Meridian in Nebraska Territory, October 1866
	5.3 Reporters covering the Union Pacific Railroad excursion to the 100th Meridian in Nebraska Territory, October 1866		5.4 "End of the Track." A Central Pacific Railroad work camp near Humboldt River Canyon, Nevada, in 1868
	5.5 Joining the rails at Promontory Point, Utah, to complete the transcontinental railroad, May 10, 1869		5.6 Cheyenne women dressing buffalo hides outside their camp in 1878
	5.7 George Armstrong Custer (left) and Grand Duke Alexis of Russia at the start of the duke's extravagant buffalo hunt through western Nebraska		5.8 "Trail of the Hide Hunters." Part of the slaughter that drove the buffalo to the brink of extinction
	5.9 Rath & Wright's buffalo hide yard in Dodge City, Kansas, 1878		5.10 "Where we shine." Cowboys celebrate the end of a Texas trail drive in 1897
	5.11 A cowboy keeps watch over the herd on a trail drive through the Matador Range in Texas, 1910		5.12 Cowboys branding "mavericks" in the 1880s
	5.13 Cowboys eating dinner on the range		5.14 "Second Guard." Cowboys bed down while others prepare for night duty
	5.15 The Hayden Survey pack train on the move in the Yellowstone region in 1871. Photograph by W. H. Jackson		5.16 Shoshone Falls on the Snake River in Idaho. Photographed by Timothy O'Sullivan while part of the Wheeler Survey, 1874
	5.17 Shoshone Canyon and Falls on the Snake River, Idaho. Photographed by Timothy O'Sullivan while part of the King Survey, 1868		5.18 Canyon de Chelly, New Mexico, photographed by John Hillers while part of the Powell expedition down the Colorado, 1869
	5.19 The Grand Canyon, photographed by John Hillers' assistant during the Powell expedition down the Colorado River, 1869		5.20 "Dellenbaugh seated in the heart of Ladore Canyon on the Colorado River." Photographed by John Hillers while part of the second Powell expedition down the Colorado, 1872