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Daniel Boone
(born November 2, 1734, died September 26, 1820) Boone led an expedition and discovered a trail to the far west though the Cumberland Gap. In 1775, he settled an area he called Boonesborough in Kentucky -
Eli Whitney
born (December 8, 1765 died January 8, 1825) an American inventor best known for inventing the cotton gin. This was one of the key inventions of the Industrial Revolution and shaped the economy of the Antebellum South. -
Marcus and Narcissa Whitman
(born September 4, 1802 November 29, 1847 was an American physician and missionary in the Oregon Country. Along with his wife, Narcissa, he started a mission to the Cayuse in what is now southeastern Washington state in 1836. The area later developed as a trading post and stop along the Oregon Trail, and the city of Walla Walla, Washington developed near there. -
Louisiana Purchase
(1803) was a land deal between the United States and France, in which the U.S. acquired approximately 827,000 square miles of land west of the Mississippi River for $15 million. -
Lewis and Clark Expedition
(May 1804 to September 1806) was the first American expedition to cross what is now the western portion of the United States. It began near St. Louis, made its way westward, and passed through the continental divide to reach the Pacific coast -
War of 1812
(June 18, 1812–Feb. 17, 1815) conflict fought between the United States and Great Britain over British violations of U.S. maritime rights. It ended with the exchange of ratifications of the Treaty of Ghent. -
John Fremont
(born January 21, 1813 died July 13, 1890) John Charles Frémont or Fremont was an American military officer, explorer, and politician who became the first candidate of the anti-slavery Republican Party for the office of President of the United States. -
Texas Revolution
(October 2, 1835 – April 21, 1836) The Texas Revolution began when colonists in the Mexican province of Texas rebelled against the increasingly centralist Mexican government. -
Oregon Trail
(1830s) a 2,170-mile historic east–west, large-wheeled wagon route and emigrant trail that connected the Missouri River to valleys in Oregon. The eastern part of the Oregon Trail spanned part of the future state of Kansas, and nearly all of what are now the states of Nebraska and Wyoming. The western half of the trial spanned most of the future states of Idaho and Oregon. -
Indian Removal/Trail of Tears
(1830s) The Cherokee Trail of Tears resulted from the enforcement of the Treaty of New Echota, an agreement signed under the provisions of the Indian Removal Act of 1830, which exchanged Indian land in the East for lands west of the Mississippi River, but which was never accepted by the elected tribal leadership or a majority -
Manifest Destiny
the 19th-century doctrine or belief that the expansion of the US throughout the American continents was both justified and inevitable. -
The Mexican War
(1846 to 1848) The Mexican–American War, also known as the Mexican War, the U.S.–Mexican War or the Invasion of Mexico, was an armed conflict between the United States of America and the United Mexican States from 1846 to 1848. -
The Donner Party
(1846–47) The Donner Party (sometimes called the Donner-Reed Party) was a group of American pioneers led by George Donner and James F. Reed who set out for California in a wagon train in May 1846. They were delayed by a series of mishaps and mistakes, and spent the winter of 1846–47 snowbound in the Sierra Nevada. -
The California Gold Rush
(1848–1855) began on January 24, 1848, when gold was found by James W. Marshall at Sutter's Mill in Coloma, California. The first to hear confirmed information of the gold rush were the people in Oregon, the Sandwich Islands (Hawaii), and Latin America, and they were the first to start flocking to the state in late 1848. All in all, the news of gold brought some 300,000 people to California from the rest of the United States and abroad. -
The Battle of Little Bighorn (Custer’s Last Stand)
The Battle of the Little Bighorn, known to the Lakota and other Plains Indians as the Battle of the Greasy Grass and commonly referred to as Custer's Last Stand, was an armed engagement between combined forces of the Lakota, Northern Cheyenne, and Arapaho tribes and the 7th Cavalry Regiment of the United States Army. The battle, which occurred June 25–26, 1876, near the Little Bighorn River in eastern Montana Territory, was the most prominent action of the Great Sioux War of 1876. -
The Massacre at Wounded Knee
(December 29, 1890) The Wounded Knee Massacre occurred on December 29, 1890, near Wounded Knee Creek on the Lakota Pine Ridge Indian Reservation in the U.S. state of South Dakota.