A List of Some Economic Factors by Jill Martin

1825 - Erie Canal completion (followed by other canals opening up                in Indiana and Illinois to settlement)
1828- Gold Rush, Georgia 1828, and opening to
            settlement of the Cherokee lands in GA, Al, TN and Carolinas               in 1838.

1848 - Gold discovered in California

1857 - Gold discovered at Pike's Peak, Colorado (Illinois men go)

1857 - Panic of 1857 - economic disaster, recall of mortgages, low                pay for crops

1860-65 - Civil War

1863-65 - Steep incline in prices; low crop prices; high rail costs to
                   transport crops (good for manufacturers, hard on                      farmers)

1866 - Depression following the Civil War

1868 - Ads begun in newspapers to attract emigrants west

1873 - Railroad Panic - another economic downfall

1874 - Gold discovered in Black Hills of the Dakotas (a means to   get the public interested in a topic other than the   depression and corruption of the Railroad Panic)

1874 - World wide depression

1875 - Grasshoppers on the plains of Dakota Territory and Kansas

1875-79 - Poor crop years on the prairies

1879 - Economic Hard Times - another depression

1881 - Peak of emigrant trains to that time

1887 - Dawes Act (breaking up communal Indian lands; opened      land to white settlement)

1889-1901 - subsequent Land Runs in Oklahoma

1896 - Gold discovered in the Alaskan Klondike

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Originally published in WGGS Quarterly, September 1997