ch.1 sct.1 C.T.#3

Government efforts to promote settlement of the Great Plains was very successful, even if they weren't quite as successful as the government had hoped they would be. The population of the Great Plains grew as hundreds of thousands of families migrated west, lured by huge pieces of cheap, fertile land. An example of this was Esther Clark Hill's family, who lived on the prairie, farming, hunting, and raising animals (p. 420). The government encouraged railroad building, giving out land grants for laying track, and these competing railroads helped the economy by providing transportation for people and their goods (cattle, crops), drawing many, many people to the west (p. 420-421). When Congress passed the Homestead Act, offering lots of free, fertile land in the west, there was a huge land rush of people trying to stake out and claim their land. Almost 600,000 families took advantage of the offer and settled into the land from 1862 to1900 (p. 421). So, the government successfully made efforts to promote westward settlement by encouraging railroads and giving out free land in the Homestead Act, drawing thousands and thousands of people out to the westand greatly increasing the population of the Great Plains.