18 NEBRASKA CATTLEMAN March 2025 further complicated by Russian colonization of the Pacific coastline that, by this time, had reached Mexican-controlled Sonoma County, just north of San Francisco, where they built a fort. Negotiations in 1846 set the border at the 49th parallel, extending the existing border previously established for the Great Plains. Both the United States and the United Kingdom agreed to expel the Russians from the territories they laid claim to, and after the Civil War, President Andrew Johnson’s administration (1865-1869) purchased Alaska from the Russians for $7.2 million. Interestingly, a small number of Russian cattle still run feral on some Aleutian Islands. Polk next set his sights on what would become the Southwest United States. When Mexico declined to sell the land Polk coveted, the United States declared war on Mexico in 1846 based on some rather thin justifications, including Mexico not recognizing Texas as a U.S. state as well as some minor incursions over the border. By 1848, the United States had defeated Mexico, and Polk had achieved his goal of the Mexicans ceding the land to the United States that would become Utah, Nevada, New Mexico, Arizona and California. The last land acquisition was in 1853 with the $10 million Gadsen Purchase from Mexico, which consisted of 30,000 square miles south of the Gila River in the territory of what would become Arizona. This gave the United States a more favorable route to build a southern transcontinental railway. By 1840, people started moving in droves to Oregon and its fertile Willamette Valley as well as to California with the 1849 Gold Rush. There was also the migration of the Mormons traversing to Salt Lake. Much of the route they took was the Oregon Trail, which started in Missouri and was initially laid out by trappers. This involved crossing the “Great American Desert” that was Nebraska, where the tracks of the covered wagons can still be seen. After crossing the future state of Wyoming, the trail split either going to Oregon or California, and included a spur that guided the Mormons to Salt Lake City. Unlike reenactments or the movies, early on the covered wagons were almost exclusively pulled by oxen. An example of this was quantified by an Indian agent along the Oregon Trail and Columbia River in the early 1850s. Passing his station that year were 6,449 people, 9,077 oxen and 6,158 cows. He provided no numbers on horses, apparently not finding them significant enough to tally. Oxen were guided by a person walking alongside them with a wood switch, called a goad, and they controlled the oxen directionally with voice commands or use of the goad. This meant they made the 2,170mile trip from Independence, Mo., to the Oregon’s Willamette Vally at a walking pace of about two-miles per-hour. Despite being known as the “Great American Desert” prior to the Civil War, after the war, Nebraska would start to be appreciated for its natural resources and would soon be fully stocked with cattle. This will be explored in future articles. ~NC~ Emigrants crossing the Great Plains, 1869, by Henry Bryan Hall, active 1850-1900. Credit: Yale University Library. From R.L. Hough Collection. WESTERN EXPANSION CONTINUED FROM PAGE 17
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