US History Links

Student Site

Chapter 16: America on the Move: The West and the City, 1870-1900

Links

    Archives of the West, http://www3.pbs.org/weta/thewest/
"A collection of visual and textual primary-source materials on the American West. The archive is part of the companion Web site to Ken Burns' PBS documentary, The West, and is organized chronologically. Highlights from 1887 to 1914 include eyewitness accounts of the Ghost Dance movement, the Ghost Dance prophet Woyoka's "Messiah Letter," and a U.S. Army account of the "Sioux Outbreak of 1890," which culminated in the massacre at Wounded Knee."*

    Chicago World's Fair, http://xroads.virginia.edu/~ma96/wce/title.html
"Tour of the 1893 World's Columbian Exhibition, held in Chicago. The tour guides the student through the exhibition halls with images and textual explanation of the different buildings and areas of the enormous exhibition. The Reactions and Legacy areas of the site provide historical background for the exhibition and explain the impact of the event on contemporary viewers and for the future course of the nation. The Exhibition addressed many important issues of modern life, including race, wealth, class, and industrialization. In its portrayal of America and the world, the fair attempted to create a unified vision of the present state and future course of the country, but, especially in retrospect, it also revealed the many tensions lying under the surface of American society."*

    Images of the West, http://gowest.coalliance.org/
"A collection of 50,000 photographs pertaining to the nineteenth- and early twentieth-century American West. Drawn from the holdings of the Denver Public Library, the images can be searched by subject. The site includes special collection galleries of photos on Native American society, pioneering and ranching activities, the development of railroads, assorted Wild West shows, and a number of other topics."*

    On the Lower East Side, http://acad.smumn.edu/history/contents.html
"A collection of documents about life at the turn of the century in the Lower East Side of Manhattan, an area known for its large immigrant population and high concentration of tenement houses. The page was created by William L. Crozier to accompany a class at St. Mary's University of Minnesota. The site includes articles from Jacob Riis, Mary Van Kleek, the Mayor's Pushcart Commission, and the Tenement Exhibit of 1900."*

    The American West, http://www.AmericanWest.com/
"A vast collection of sources on the American West. Created by American West, the site covers the entire period of westward expansion. It contains primary documents, photographs, illustrations, and secondary sources on topics such as westward expansion, Native Americans, the Wild West, cowboys, and European immigration."*

    The Great Chicago Fire, http://www.chicagohs.org/fire/intro/gcf-index.html
"A collection of essays, documents, photographs, and illustrations about the Great Chicago Fire and its transformation of the city of Chicago. The site was created by the Chicago Historical Society in cooperation with Northwestern University. The site is divided into five chronological periods, beginning with a section about Chicago before the fire and ending with one on the reconstructed city. Each section contains a narrative essay, image gallery, and library of online documents."*