CHAPTER XXV

THE VANISHING FRONTIER

The Conquest of the Continent.-The history of our country began when little bands of Europeans first gained a foothold The making upon the eastern coast of America three hundred years ago.

of our

country

Behind these first settlements there lay a vast untamed continent. Pushing ever westward, our people have steadily conquered the wilderness, clearing away the forests, cultivating the fields, opening the mines, building roads, and laying the foundations of towns and cities. During the last fifty years this conquest of the continent has been completed. It is no longer possible for a young man to go west, settle upon cheap public land, and grow up with the country. The frontier in the United States has disappeared forever. Before we read the last chapter in its history let us briefly review the story of the long and heroic westward march of the American pioneer.

The Appalachian mountain system confined the colonists to the Atlantic seaboard for more than a century. Just before the Revolution, Boone, Robertson, and other bold frontiersmen, led the vanguard of a swarm of pioneers through the gaps of the pioneer the Alleghanies into the forest lands in the upper valleys of the

Westward march of

Occupying
the
Mississippi
Valley

Cumberland, the Tennessee, and the Ohio. These hardy backwoodsmen and the steady stream of settlers which followed where they showed the way, built log cabins, fought the Indians, set up new governments, and in the course of time, added to the young nation the great states of Kentucky, Tennessee, and Ohio. Year after year the restless and the ambitious sought their fortunes in the West. Just after the War of 1812 a great wave of pioneers poured into the Mississippi Valley. The wheat and corn lands of the North and the cotton fields of the South began to be developed. Indiana, Mississippi, Illinois, Alabama, and Missouri were admitted into the Union between 1816 and 1821. During the next thirty years the other great agricultural states in the heart of the Mississippi Valley were occupied, and American pioneers crossed the border into Texas, which they won from Mexico and at last added to the United States.

In the meantime, roving fur traders, devoted missionaries, and adventurous army officers were finding the best trails across

the continent. Soon after 1840 a few pioneers began to make Winning the their way to the attractive lands in western Oregon, and the Far West discovery of gold in 1848 caused a rush of settlers to the Pacific Coast. California entered the Union in 1850, and Oregon became a state before the Civil War began.

For a long time the vast region between Missouri and California was believed to be a land of dry plains and barren moun

A Silver Mining Camp Nestled in the Mountains of Nevada

tains, and was called the great American desert. But this sup- Myth of the posed desert has been found to contain much fertile farm land, great American pasturage for unnumbered cattle and sheep, great forests of desert the finest timber, and a wealth of minerals of almost every sort. The story of the occupation and the development of the great plains and of the Rocky Mountain region is the last chapter in the history of the pioneer in the United States.

The Growth of Mining in the Rocky Mountain Region.We have seen how the discovery of gold drew great numbers of

Prospectors men to the Pacific Coast. Before long some of these mer. began for gold to wonder if the precious metal which they sought might not be found in the vast mountain ranges which they had crossed on their way to the Californian gold fields. Lured by this thought, venturesome men wandered far and wide through the western mountains in search of gold. Most of these prospectors found little but hardship and disappointment, but here and

New gold fields developed

there a few of them located deposits of gold, silver, and other valuable metals.

In 1859 a rich deposit of silver was found in the western part of the present state of Nevada. When the news of this discovery reached California a throng of miners rushed across the Sierra Nevada Mountains. Presently gold was found in the same locality, and in later years rich gold deposits were discovered at various places in Nevada. About the time that the first mining camps were establshed in Nevada, gold was discov

Only a few simple and inexpensive tools are needed ered near the present

for this kind of mining.

site of Denver and soon rich finds were made at other places in Colorado. The report of this discovery started a new rush across the plains, much like that of the "Forty-niners" to California. The discovery of another rich gold field on the eastern slope of the Rocky Mountains in 1861 led to the rapid development of the mining town of Helena in Montana. Sooner or later, prospectors found the precious metals in all the Rocky Mountain territories, and in 1874 gold

was discovered in the Black Hills in the southwestern corner of South Dakota. The more recent finding of rich gold deposits in the Klondike region and at Cape Nome in Alaska has attracted swarms of treasure hunters to that northern land.

is mined

The first gold found in the West was mingled with sand and gravel which the streams had carried down from the mountains and deposited in the valleys. The miner put this How gold gold-bearing earth into a pan with water, and shook the pan. As the particles of gold were many times heavier than the rest of the material they sank to the bottom of the pan where it was easy for the miner to gather them. Nuggets, or pieces of gold of considerable size, were sometimes found. A man needed only a few simple and inexpensive tools to engage in this kind of mining for himself. Gold, silver, and other metals were later found in veins of rock in the mountains. This rock was dug out of mines which were often hundreds or thousands of feet deep. There are various ways of extracting the metals from the ore taken from the mines. In some cases it is crushed into powder by powerful stamping machinery, and then the metal is extracted from the powdered rock by chemical processes. In other cases the ore is put through a blast furnace in a plant called a smelter, and the metals are separated by means of heat. As a great deal of money is needed to buy the expensive machinery used in operating the mines and in extracting the metals from the ore, this kind of mining soon fell into the hands of great mining companies for whom the actual miners worked for wages. Great stamp-mills and smelters may now be seen at Denver and Pueblo, Colorado, at Anaconda, Montana, and at many other mining centers in the Rocky Mountain states.

The early mining camps of the Far West grew like mushrooms, and the life in them was always rough and sometimes lawless. A visitor to one of these camps describes its appear- Western ance in the following words: "Frame shanties pitched together mining as if by accident; tents of canvas, of blankets, of brush, of camps potato sacks, and old shirts, with empty whiskey barrels for chimneys; smoking hovels of mud and stone; pits and shanties with smoke issuing from every crevice; piles of goods and rubbish on craggy points, in the hollows, on the rocks, in the mud, in the snow-everywhere-scattered broadcast in pellmell confusion." Sometimes a mining field was disappointing,

ers' wagons

and then such camps vanished almost as quickly as they came; but when the new mines proved to be permanently profitable, law and order were soon established, more substantial houses were built, and the rude camp grew into a thriving town.

The early Rocky Mountain mining camps were far away from the settled parts of the country, and at first their growth Pack-trains was hampered by the lack of facilities for transportation. The and freight- prospectors and early miners carried their tools and supplies upon packhorses, but the establishment of permanent settlements at once created a demand for a regular freight service to bring in food and other needed supplies and to carry the output of the mines to market. Soon, men began to engage in the business of hauling goods from points on the Missouri River, in western Missouri or eastern Kansas, to the new mining camps in the Rocky Mountains. Long caravans of covered wagons, each drawn by several yoke of oxen, continued to be the freight trains of the plains until the first transcontinental railroad was completed in 1869.

pony express

Ever since the first rush of settlers to California the need of a quicker mail and passenger service to the Pacific Coast The overland than that by way of Panama or the longer sea route around stage and the Cape Horn had been keenly felt. When mining towns began to spring up in the mountain country this need became greater than ever, and by 1860 overland stagecoaches were carrying passengers and the news of the East from Missouri River points to California in less than twenty-five days. But California wanted a faster mail service than this, and early in 1860 the pony express was established to carry letters across the continent. With the mail in light saddlebags, riders on relays of fleet horses rode day and night, through rain and snow, across the plains and over the dangerous mountain trails. The horses were changed every few miles and the riders at longer intervals. On one occasion a boy named William F. Cody, who was later known' to the whole country as Buffalo Bill, rode three hundred and twenty miles without resting. The best time made by the pony express from St. Joseph, Missouri, to Sacramento, California, was a few hours less than eight days. When the first overland telegraph line was ready for business in 1861, the pony express service was given up, but the overland stage continued to carry the mail across the plains until the coming of the