Chapter 7Leaving the Frontier

Behind

The Railroad Age The frontier period in the Pacific Northwest

ended on September 8, 1883. The tracks of the Northern Pacific’s rail line

from the Great Lakes to Puget Sound were joined.

A journey that once took three to five months could be made in only five days – or even less.

Federal Land Grants It would have been impossible for private

companies to build a transcontinental railroad. The vast unsettled nature of land was a harsh

fact. There would be trouble with Indians. Land had to be cleared, bridges built, and

tunnels blasted. Heavy steel rails, lumber, and supplies had to

be delivered.

Thousands of workers had to be hired, trained, and paid.

Trains had to be purchased. Help from a very large company or the national

government was needed. The Northern Pacific Railroad received a land

grant subsidy of 40 million acres (an area about the size of the state of Washington) to build a rail line from Lake Superior to Puget Sound.

The Northern Pacific Railroad was the most important corporation in the state’s history.

No other business had a greater influence on Washington’s settlement and economic development.

Read the railroad poster on pg. 110. How did this poster entice settlers?

Railroads and Immigration

The Northern Pacific, and later the Great Northern Railroad, published detailed instructions on how to travel to the Northwest.

Settlers could buy railroad land as low as $1.25 an acre, though some land cost more.

If immigrants didn’t have the money to buy the land, the railroad sold it to them on credit.

The result was a tidal wave of immigration into Washington. Railroad-sponsored migration was the principal cause of the state’s growth after 1880.

Who Were the Immigrants?

By providing a faster way for immigrants to travel to the Northwest, the railroads were actually responsible for the ethnic mix of the state.

In the late 1800s and early 1900s, mostly Canadian, English, German, and Scandinavian immigrants came.

People also came from many other countries.

Scandinavian Immigrants

Puget Sound attracted Scandinavians because its wet climate, high mountains, and many ocean inlets reminded them of home.

Norwegians started a colony at Poulsbo on the Olympic peninsula because it looked like their native fjord in Norway.

Swedes worked for logging companies, doing work that was familiar to them.

Norwegians and Finns were attracted to fishing and Danes to dairying.

German Immigrants German farmers established small settlements

across the Palouse and Big Bend regions.

Italian Immigrants Washington’s Italians arrived with railroad

construction crews. Others came as skilled stone masons to help

rebuild Spokane, Ellensburg, and Seattle after the terrible fires of 1889.

Italian farmers located in the Walla Walla Valley, where they became famous in later years for their sweet onions.

A Natural Resource Economy

Washington’s explosive growth depended on the productive use of its natural resources.

The manufacturing of wood products was important.

Exports also included metals, canned fish, livestock, grain, and fruit.

Lumbering Lumber was our most important industry for

many years. Washington became the nation’s leading

lumber state in 1905. Seattle had grown up as a sawmill town around

Henry Yesler’s steam-powered sawmill. Soon larger mills were built throughout the

Puget Sound region.

Lumbering Tall timber next to deep water meant that trees

could be cut, milled (sawed into boards), and easily exported by ship.

In California, the demand for lumber was insatiable.

Timber companies were helped by the Northern Pacific Railroad. Huge tracts of timberland, first given to the railroads by the federal government, were sold at bargain prices to timber companies.

Time for questions!! Pg. 127, 1 – 8. You may need to skim back

through the reading to answer completely. Look at the pictures too!

Fishing As the fishing industry grew, salmon became a

popular symbol of the Pacific Northwest region. The fish had been the basic food source for

most of the region’s Indian tribes; then fish became not only a food source, but a way to make money.

Fresh, canned, and dried fish were sold to other states and countries.

Most of the fishermen were Scandinavians and Finns.

Fishing The dirty, smelly work in canneries was done

by Chinese. After the turn of the century, a new machine

called the “Iron Chink” was used. The machine cleaned salmon at the rate of one

per second. Each machine could do the work of dozens of workers.

Mining Washington and Oregon never developed

significant gold or silver mining districts, but three Washington cities – Walla Walla, Spokane, and Seattle – were greatly affected by mining rushes in other cities.

Merchants grew rich by supplying food, tents, tools, and clothing to miners on their way to the gold fields of Canada, Alaska, and Idaho.

Coal was discovered in the Puget Sound lowlands and the Cascade Mountains.

Mining Coal was burned to heat homes and to provide the

power that ran machines in factories. Some of the early miners were Chinese. Others

came from England and Wales. The first large group of African Americans in Washington came to dig coal.

Even children were hired to sort the pieces of coal. Discovery of high quality coal in 1886 in Kittatas

County led to the rapid development of Roslyn and Cle Elum.

Agriculture Wheat farming spread rapidly across the

Palouse region of eastern Washington in the late 1800s.

Soon wheat made up forty-five percent of the value of all Washington crops.

Whitman County, in the heart of the Palouse, was the wealthiest county per capita in the United States.

Apples Washington apples had become an important

crop by 1900. Irrigation projects made it possible to run

successful orchards in the Yakima, Wenatchee, and Okanogan Valleys.

Washington fruit growers planted over one million trees in one year.

By 1917, Washington led the nation in apple production.

Ranching and Dairying After farmers started growing wheat on the

Palouse Hills, cattlemen could no longer graze their cows on the grass there.

Cattlemen retreated to the drier uplands and the foothills of the Cascades.

Harsh winters thinned the herds in the 1880s. The winter of 1889-1890 killed half the cattle in the Yakima Valley and nine out of ten animals in the Big Bend.

The mild moist climate of the Puget Sound Lowland and the Oregon Coast was good for raising dairy cows.

There was a growing market for fresh milk, cream, and butter in the rapidly growing cities.

Establishment of condensed milk plants and cheese factories provided additional export markets.

Carnation Company built a large canned milk plant in Kent in 1899.

Urbanization The years from 1880 to 1910 were a time of

spectacular population growth in the Pacific Northwest.

Nowhere was the transition to the urban age as rapid as it was in the state of Washington.

Most of the urban population was found in the region’s four largest communities – Portland, Seattle, Tacoma, and Spokane. By 1910 these four cities contained almost one third of the entire population of Washington, Oregon, and Idaho.

Question Time! Pg. 127, 9 – 14. Remember to go back and

skim the pages to help with your answers!

Linking the Past to the Present

A time of rapid population growth causes problems with transportation, education, housing, law enforcement, and the environment. What problems has a growing population caused in your city, Stanwood?

With a partner brainstorm ideas and make a list of problems. Be ready to discuss with the class.

Tacoma and the Northern Pacific

Leaders of the Northern Pacific Railroad planned to run tracks from St. Paul, Minnesota, all the way to the harbors of Puget Sound.

Cities were often built up around train stations, especially cities that also had a seaport.

People who rode the trains started businesses near train terminals.

Tacoma’s growth rate in the 1880s boomed.

Tacoma.. The world’s largest sawmill was built there in

1886. Then growth slowed down. An economic depression in the 1890s was

especially hard on Tacoma, and opened the way for its rival, Seattle, to forge ahead.

Spokane Built next to the waterfalls of the Spokane

River, so the city’s first advantage was water power.

The water power was first used to run a saw mill and to grind grain into flour.

The water power produced Spokane’s first electricity.

Branch rail lines linked Spokane to mining, timber, and agriculture areas.

Spokane.. Spokane reaped the benefit when silver was

discovered in Idaho’s Coeur d’Alene region in the 1880s.

People brought their new wealth from the mines and settled in Spokane.

Silver from mines in Idaho and British Columbia provided the money to build many of the mansions in Spokane.

Seattle Seattle was only one of a number of possible port

cities on Puget Sound. The city grew by sheer will power and a “booster

spirit” that produced some spectacular results. Seattle took on several ambitious engineering

programs between 1890 and 1910. The crowning achievement of the Seattle spirit,

however, was its successful promotion of the city as the only gateway to the gold of the Klondike.

Portland Portland, Oregon, achieved its importance

because of its location. Portland’s position at the confluence of the

Willamette and Columbia Rivers meant that all the trade of the inland regions flowed down to it. Its deepwater harbor opened it to ocean-going commerce.

The Klondike Gold Rush

Partner read pgs. 122 – 123. Answer questions 15 -16

The Vanishing Indian The flood of new settlers overwhelmed the

Indian people. Indian tribes were crowded out of their original

territory, and most were assigned to reservations.

There were, however, many Indians who had not moved to a reservation. They tried to hold on to their small farms and ranches.

Vanishing Indian.. Congress passed the Indian Homestead Act in 1875. It gave individual Indians the right to own a piece of

property. But Indians rarely had complete papers for their

claims or took the necessary steps to protect their land titles if they did get them.

When whites wanted the land, they often coerced the Indian owner to sell it to them, or managed to get through fraud.

Dividing up Reservation Lands

Trying to be humane to Indians, Congress passed the General Allotment Act. Often called the Dawes Act, the law divided reservation land into individual allotments and encouraged Indians to become farmers.

The Dawes Act was a catastrophe. Land was dry and unsuited for agriculture. Indians sold

their land to whites. When the law was repealed in 1934, more than 30

percent of the Colville and Spokane reservation land was owned by non-Indians.

Boarding Schools American Indian policy was based upon the

idea that there was nothing of value in Indian culture.

The majority of whites thought that it was in the best interest of Indians to abandon their old ways and adopt the ways of the white culture.

The federal government took Indian children from their families on the reservations and sent them far away to boarding schools.

Boarding Schools.. The boarding school experiences was a culture

shock. Indian students had their long hair cut short,

dressed in uniforms, and given new names. They were punished if they spoke their native

language. Boys and girls were taught English, reading,

spelling, geography, and arithmetic. Boys learned carpentry and to run machines.

Girls learned how to make clothes on sewing machines.

Short Answer “My own language had been beaten out of me.

I was no longer an Indian. I guess I was an imitation white man.”

“Never again will we seize your children or teach them to be ashamed of who they are. Never again!”

Choose one quote and explain your feelings. What is your opinion? Elaborate and support.

Statehood On November 11, 1889 Washington was

admitted into the Union along with Montana, North Dakota, and South Dakota.

Washington’s male votes approved the new constitution.

They also rejected the right of women to vote. Olympia was chosen as the state capital.

Questions Answer questions 15 – 20.

Extra credit? Choose an activity on Pg. 126 and prepare to share with the class. 25 points!