Fun Facts
Great Pioneer Projects You Can Build Yourself

In 1843, Marcus Whitman led100 wagons with 5,000 head of cattle from Independence, Missouri, to the Willamette Valley in Oregon. This became known as The Great Migration, and inspired thousands more pioneers to head west.

On many days a wagon train heading west would only travel ten to fifteen miles. On rainy and muddy days the caravan might only travel one mile! It would take the wagon train five to seven days just to travel the distance we can drive a car in a single hour.

The Homestead Act was a law made in 1862 by the U.S Congress. The law said that anyone that was over age 21, and was at the head of the family could have 160 acres of land if they improved it in five years, or they could buy it for a small amount of money. This law helped approximately 60,000 families find new homes. The law ended in 1976, everywhere in the U.S, except Alaska, where it was ended in 1986.

The Pony Express spread 500 horses from St. Joseph, Missouri to San Francisco, California in 190 stations spread about 10 miles apart. Every day, up to 40 riders lef the stations at a full gallop. Riders would jump on a fresh horse every 10 miles, and after 70 miles would toss their mail bag to a new rider. A letter posted in Missouri reached California in about 10 days.

The Transcontinental Railroad went from Omaha, Nebraska to Sacramento, California, covering 2,000 miles of the great western wilderness. Its completion in 1869 was seen as a great symbolic unifier for the United States after it been torn apart by the Civil War.

In the 1880’s and 1890’s settlers struggled through great drought, dust storms, and swarms of locusts that ate everything, including curtains, clothing, and even broom straws.

When the first wagon trains set out across the Great Plains, millions of buffalo covered the prairie. By 1883, a team of scientists sent from Washington to count the buffalo found only 200 left on the prairie.