Go West: U.S. Westward Expansion

Many towns, still known today, had inauspicious beginnings as westward migration continued:

• Santa Fe, New Mexico (1866).

• Virginia City, Nevada (1867-68).

• Cheyenne, Wyoming, on the Oregon Trail (1876).

• Deadwood, a South Dakota Territory gold rush town, in 1876.

• Oklahoma City (Indian Territory), by 1889, had U.S. government buildings, a railroad station, a water tank, and soldiers from the 13th Infantry guarding lumber and an uncompleted cemetery.

• Midland, Texas experienced severe sandstorms like the one which obscured windmills and houses on February 20, 1894.

• In 1895, children studied in a sod schoolhouse in Woods County (Oklahoma Territory).

• Lamon's Log Cabin was the first one built in Yosemite Valley (California Territory) in 1895.

• The University of Oklahoma got its start, in Norman, as a territorial university (1897-98).

• Flagstaff (Arizona Territory) had a post office as well as other buildings by 1899.

• Children gathered fruit from Oklahoma family farms in 1900.

• Oil was discovered in Cleveland (Oklahoma Territory) in 1904. A year later, the town had been transformed into a city of oil derricks.

• The mountain valleys of Idaho sprouted tent towns as westward movement continued in 1909.