TIMELINE

1854

  • United States “opens” Japan to trade

1859

  • Comstock silver lode discovered in Nevada

1862

  • Homestead Act

  • Dakota Sioux uprising in Minnesota

  • Morrill Act funds public state universities

1864

  • Sand Creek massacre of Cheyennes in Colorado

  • Yosemite Valley reserved as public park

1865

  • Long Drive of Texas longhorns begins

1866

  • Fetterman massacre

1868

  • Burlingame Treaty with China

1869

  • Transcontinental railroad completed

  • Wyoming women’s suffrage

1870

  • Utah women’s suffrage

1872

  • General Mining Act

  • Yellowstone National Park created

1873

  • United States begins move to gold standard

1876

  • Battle of Little Big Horn

1877

  • Nez Perces forcibly removed from ancestral homelands in Northwest

  • Munn v. Illinois Supreme Court decision

1879

  • Exoduster migration to Kansas

  • John Wesley Powell presents Report on the Lands of the Arid Region of the United States

1880s

  • Rise of the Ghost Dance movement

1885

  • Sitting Bull tours with Buffalo Bill’s Wild West

1886

  • Dry cycle begins on the plains

  • Chiricahua Apache leader Geronimo surrenders

1887

  • Dawes Severalty Act

1890

  • Massacre of Sioux Ghost Dancers at Wounded Knee, South Dakota