Expansão dos EUA para OESTE. Como aconteceu a expansão dos EUA? - CONTINENTAL - Geografia humana (Pode 2024)
Oeste, região, oeste dos EUA, principalmente a oeste das Grandes Planícies e incluindo, por definição do governo federal, Alasca, Arizona, Califórnia, Havaí, Idaho, Montana, Nevada, Novo México, Oregon, Utah, Washington e Wyoming. Praticamente todas as partes dos Estados Unidos, exceto a costa leste, foram o "Ocidente" em algum momento da história americana, ligadas na imaginação popular à última fronteira do assentamento americano. Mas, especialmente, é o vasto trecho de planície, montanha e deserto a oeste do Mississippi que apareceu tão grande no folclore americano, uma região de caubóis, índios, carroças cobertas, foras-da-lei, garimpeiros e uma sociedade inteira operando fora da lei.
Estados Unidos: O problema do Ocidente
As áreas de cultura precedentes representam aproximadamente a metade oriental dos Estados Unidos contíguos. Existe um dilema na classificação das
Como em outras seções dos Estados Unidos, as fronteiras regionais são um tanto imprecisas. O oeste do caubói e a movimentação de gado cobriam muitos estados não ocidentais, incluindo Kansas e Nebraska. Grande parte dos combates indianos mais ferozes do Ocidente ocorreu em Dakotas, os quais agora são considerados parte do Centro-Oeste. O Alasca e o Havaí, geograficamente o mais ocidental de todos os estados, não fazem parte do Ocidente, concebido popularmente.
Furthermore, though the West was the last region of the United States to be settled and developed, its modern history predates that of the British colonies of the Eastern Seaboard. The Spaniards reached the Grand Canyon in 1540, what is presently Kansas in 1541, and San Francisco in 1542. Santa Fe was founded in 1610, only three years after the British founding of Jamestown. Extensive settlement, however, was still hundreds of years away.
Much of the West became part of the United States through the Louisiana Purchase of 1803; the Southwest, however, was a Mexican possession until 1848. The Lewis and Clark Expedition of 1804–06 established much of what would become the Oregon Trail and thereby facilitated settlement of the Pacific Northwest, an area soon known for its richness in furs, timber, and salmon. The Mormons, fleeing from harassment in Midwestern states, reached Utah in 1847, built Salt Lake City, and began a vigorous colonization of all parts of the Rocky Mountain West. The discovery of gold in California in 1848 brought a burst of migration to the West Coast and led to California’s admission to the union in 1850, barely two years after it had been ceded from Mexico.
The rest of the West, however, remained sparsely populated. For many decades, most Americans knew of the Great Plains simply as the Great American Desert, an inhospitable area of poor soil, little water, hostile Indians, and general inaccessibility. But the years following the American Civil War changed that conception. In 1862 the Homestead Act was passed by Congress; in 1869 the first transcontinental railroad was completed; and in 1873 barbed-wire fencing was introduced. Coupled with improvements in dry farming and irrigation and the confinement of American Indians (after much brutal and costly warfare) to reservations, the Great American Desert grew steadily in population.
In the 20th century the rapid growth of the West continued. In every census decade but one from 1850 to 1960, the West’s population growth rate was more than twice the national average, although the rate diminished thereafter. While the several Mountain states account for only a small percentage of the nation’s manufacturing, the preponderance of the industrial strength in the West lies in the few Pacific states, which have shown a dramatic increase in the number of manufacturing establishments (1940 to the late 1970s) and nearly doubled the West’s percentage of the national value added by manufacture. No longer merely a land of “wide, open spaces,” cattle, mines, and mountains, the West has become famous for other things: for example, the motion-picture industry in southern California, gambling in Nevada, aerospace production in Washington and California, environmental protection in Oregon, and retirement communities in Arizona.
