A look at the various occupations held by people on the open range, from farming to mining to ranching.

7. • The homesteaders, those
people who farmed land they
received from the Homestead
Act, had a difficult time
farming the open range and
often struggled through years
with falling crop prices and
rising farm debt.

10. • Wheat, which required very
little water in order to
grow, became one of the
staple crops of the Great
Plains, and helped the region
earn the
nickname, “breadbasket of

11. • As people moved west to seek
their fortune, some stopped
along the way to try their hand
at raising cattle on the
, an area of land with
thick grass that belonged to
the government.

13. • After raising the cattle on the
open range, ranchers would
send their cattle on the long
drive, a two-month journey
to the railroad where they
could be sent anywhere they
needed to go.

18. • By 1890, the U.S. Census
Bureau declared the end of the
frontier in the United
States, because “unsettled area
has been so broken into by
isolated bodies of settlement.”

19. • Historian Frederick Jackson
Turner credited the frontier
and the ability of the
Americans to expand into it
and develop it into something
worthwhile as an example of
what the United States was all
about.