Ch. 13, sec. 2 critical thinking #3

How successful were government effort to promote settlement of the Great Plains?

The government was only mildly successful. It opened The Transcontinental Railroad and passed the Homestead Act.
The Transcontinental Railroad made for easier, quicker, but more expensive traveling from coast to coast. They used 170 million acres of land and spent half a billion dollars. The Central Pacific and Union Pacific railroad companies raced to lay tracks East and West to connect the United States.(p.420-421)
The Homestead Act was passed in an effort to lure citizens into getting more land. The law offered 160 acres of free land to anyone who was the head of a family. This sparked 600,000 families to leave their homes. But there were railroad and state government agents and farmers who claimed mines and built fences. Overall only 10% of the land was actually settled by families for whom it was intended.