This infographic enables students to explore multiple points related to gold discovery in the western United States in the latter half of the nineteenth century and discover what resulted.

Welcome to a fascinating course on cowboys and Conestogas, migration and miners, expansion and ethnicity. This course will teach students how to critically analyze and evaluate competing perspectives on western American history, with an emphasis on the century spanning from 1830, at the time of the Indian Removal Act, to 1930 and the beginnings of the Great Depression. Students will use primary sources, class readings, discussions, and assignments to explore the cultural and historical underpinnings of the American West.  The final project for this course will be a research project where they will showcase their ability to analyze and prioritize information and reflect on a historical event.  The course is aligned with the state of Utah's Core Standards for Social Studies, U.S. 1 Strand 6: Expansion Standards 6.1 and 6.2

The film's third program looks at the period from 1800 through the start of the Civil War, during which slavery saw an enormous expansion and entered its final decades. As the nation expanded west, the question of slavery became the overriding political issue of the time. These years saw an increasingly militant abolitionist movement and a widening rift between the North - which had largely outlawed slavery but continued to reap the vast economic benefits of the system - and the South, now home to millions of enslaved black men, women and children. This is the period of slavery most commonly depicted in history books and captured by dramas. Leading Southerners such as George Washington and Thomas Jefferson had been convinced slavery was nearing its end. But the Louisiana Purchase and the Mexican War brought vast new territories into the United States, and the battle between those for and against slavery intensified. By 1860, every attempt at striking an agreement - the Missouri Compromise, the Compromise of 1850, a draconian federal fugitive slave law - had failed, splitting apart the Union.

In this student-facing resource, students will learn about events that motivated the territorial expansion of the United States. The resource is organized as a learning menu, allowing students to choose the resources they would like to explore to learn the concepts. The options include links to Nearpod presentations and interactives.

This lesson plan is designed to help middle school teachers teach their students create an Adobe Spark Page Western Expansion Timeline. The activites in the lesson can be completed in two class periods (45 min each). The lesson plan is created by the author (Jill Anderson) using resources from Adobe Spark and Creative Commons.