Timeline of the American Old West

1864 Dower hand-colored map depicting the western half of the United States including most of the lands west of the Mississippi River.

This timeline of the American Old West is a chronologically ordered list of events significant to the development of the American West as a region of the United States prior to 1912. The area, generally defined as lands west of the Mississippi River, was inhabited for millennia by various groups of Native Americans. While the West was a homeland to many, it served as a frontier to European powers. The Spanish began colonization in the 16th century in the southern parts of what is now the American West. The British, French, and Russians attempted colonization at varying levels for extended periods of time. From the 18th century forward, the newly independent United States began securing its own frontier from the Appalachian Mountains westward for settlement and economic investment by American citizens. The long history of American expansion into these lands has played a central role in shaping American culture, iconography, and the modern national identity, and remains a popular topic for study by scholars and historians.

The events in this timeline occurred in the contiguous portion of the modern United States west of the Mississippi River, focused on the period roughly between the Louisiana Purchase in 1803 and the admission of the last mainland states into the Union in 1912. A small section summarizing early exploration and settlement prior to 1803 is included to provide a foundation for later developments. Rarely, events occurring outside the American West, such as in Canada or Mexico, are included due to a significant relation to events in the West. Events listed below are notable developments for the region as a whole, not just for a particular state or smaller subdivision of the region. They represent or illustrate the development of the American West as a frontier, as historians Hine and Faragher put it, "tell[ing] the story of the creation and defense of communities, the use of the lands, the development of markets, and the formation of states.... It is a tale of conquest, but also one of survival, persistence, and the merging of peoples and cultures."

Early exploration and settlement

Coronado Sets Out to the North, by American artist Frederic Remington

Statue of Popé, or Po'Pay, leader of the Pueblo Revolt in 1680, as it stands in the National Statuary Hall in the US Capitol Building.

Natives utilize a primitive plow to prepare a field for planting near Mission San Diego de Alcalá. Drawing by A.B. Dodge, 1920.

For almost three centuries after Columbus' voyages to the New World, much of western North America remained unsettled by European colonists, despite various territorial claims made by imperialist nations. Initial interest in the vast unexplored territory was motivated by the search for precious metals, especially gold, and later the fur trade, with miners, trappers, and hunters among the first people of European descent to permanently settle in the West. The early years were largely a period of scientific exploration and survey, such that by 1830 the rough outline of the western half of the continent had been mapped to the Pacific Ocean.

Year	Date	Event
1540	Feb 23	Spanish conquistador Francisco Vázquez de Coronado embarks on an expedition into the unexplored territory north of colonized Mexico to search for the fabled Seven Cities of Gold. The voyage lasts more than two years, during which Coronado travels through much of the American Southwest and as far north as present-day Kansas. His party is the first to document the geography and indigenous peoples of significant portions of the West.
1598	Apr	Spanish explorer Juan de Oñate establishes Nuevo México in the region around the upper Rio Grande as the northernmost province of New Spain, serving as its first colonial governor.
1607		Spanish colonists establish the city of Santa Fe in the province of Santa Fe de Nuevo México.
1610		The Palace of the Governors is built in Santa Fe, the new capital of Nuevo México. Today it is the oldest continuously occupied public building in the United States.
1680	Aug 10	An alliance of Puebloan peoples coordinated by Popé initiates a mass revolt against Spanish colonists occupying what is now northern New Mexico in an effort to abolish European influence in the area. More than 400 people are killed and the Spanish are unable to reconquer Santa Fe for another 12 years.
1692		Santa Fe is formally repossessed by the Spanish after Diego de Vargas negotiates a peace with the Pueblo Indians. The following six years witness a difficult reinstatement of Spanish and Franciscan rule over the Pueblos, including another revolt in 1696, which is successfully countered by De Vargas and his forces.
1718	May 1	The Presidio San Antonio de Bexar, eventually the city of San Antonio, is founded in Spanish Texas to undermine French claims in the area.
1743	Mar 30	François and Louis-Joseph Gaultier de La Vérendrye, on expedition west from Quebec, bury an inscribed lead plate near present-day Fort Pierre, South Dakota, claiming the area for France.
1762	Nov 13	France transfers all of its territory west of the Appalachian Mountains to Spain in a secret treaty just months prior to the negotiations that end the French and Indian War.
1769	Jul 16	Spanish Franciscans, led by friar Junípero Serra, establish Mission San Diego de Alcalá in Las Californias. By 1823, the missionaries successfully plant a series of 20 more missions along the coast of what becomes the Spanish province of Alta California. These missions bring European culture to the indigenous peoples of California, but also enable a serious decline of from one-third to one-half of the indigenous population there during the Mission period.
1779	Sep 3	Comanche Indian leader Cuerno Verde is killed in combat with Spanish forces led by Juan Bautista de Anza in what is now Pueblo County, Colorado.
1792	May 19	Captain George Vancouver's expedition drops anchor in the heart of Puget Sound off the coast of present-day Seattle and begins naming all the prominent points visible from his location, including the Sound itself, Mount Rainier, Vashon Island, and Restoration Point. Vancouver and his expedition are the first Europeans to explore the Sound and they claim it for the British along with much of the Pacific Northwest coast, including Vancouver Island and the Columbia River.

1800s

From Frank Bond, "Louisiana" and the Louisiana Purchase.
Government Printing Office, 1912 Map No. 4.

Meriwether Lewis and William Clark

Year	Date	Event
1800	Oct 1	Under pressure from Napoléon Bonaparte, the Kingdom of Spain transfers the colony of Louisiana back to the French Republic with the secret Third Treaty of San Ildefonso.
1803	Apr 1	The United States agrees to buy the colony of La Louisiane from the French Republic for the price of $15 million.
	Dec 20	The United States officially takes control of Louisiana, an enormous area of imprecise boundaries extending from the Mississippi River west to the Rocky Mountains, more than doubling the land area of the new nation.
1804	May 14	The Lewis and Clark expedition sets out to explore and chart the territory acquired in the Louisiana Purchase. Officially titled the Corps of Discovery, the party canoes up the Missouri River from Saint Charles, spending the winter at Fort Mandan on Indian territory in what is now North Dakota.
1805	Nov 7	Lewis and Clark sight the Pacific Ocean for the first time, near the mouth of the Columbia River. The expedition winters at Fort Clatsop on the south side of the river, near present-day Astoria, Oregon.
1806	Jul 15	A U.S. Army reconnaissance expedition under the command of Captain Zebulon Pike departs Fort Bellefontaine near Saint Louis in the Louisiana Territory.
	Sep 23	Lewis and Clark return to Saint Louis after a journey of nearly 6,000 total miles; in the past two and a half years, the party has made contact with over 70 Indian tribes and produced 140 maps, as well as documented more than 200 new plant and animal species.
1807	Feb 26	Spanish cavalrymen arrest the Pike expedition in the province of Santa Fe de Nuevo México (now southern Colorado).

1810s

A view of Fort Ross in 1828 by A. B. Duhaut-Cilly. From the archives of the Fort Ross Historical Society

Year	Date	Event
1810	Sep 16	Mexican priest Miguel Hidalgo y Costilla proclaims the independence of Mexico from the Kingdom of Spain.
1812	Mar	Fort Ross is established by Russian traders on the California coast as the hub of the southernmost colony in Russian America.
1818	Oct 20	The Treaty of 1818 establishes the 49th parallel from Lake of the Woods west to the Rocky Mountains as the boundary between the United States and British North America.

1820s

Prairie dog by Titian Ramsay Peale, c. 1819-1821

Jim Beckwourth

Year	Date	Event
1820	Mar 5	Congress passes the Missouri Compromise, prohibiting slavery in the unorganized territory north of 36.5° latitude and west of the Mississippi River, except within the boundaries of the proposed state of Missouri, while permitting the admission of Maine as a free state. Largely devised by Henry Clay, it is a landmark agreement in the debate over slavery in the West.
	May	Major Stephen H. Long leads a scientific expedition up the Platte River in present-day Nebraska, along the Front Range of the Rocky Mountains, south to the Arkansas and Canadian rivers, and finally east to present-day Fort Smith, Arkansas. Among the first expeditions to bring American artists and scientists into the West, the party includes painter Samuel Seymour, artist-naturalist Titian Peale, and physician Edwin James, who leads the first recorded ascent of Pikes Peak during the journey. Long's report, published in 1823, promotes the idea of the Great Plains as the "Great American Desert".
1821	Feb 22	The Adams–Onís Treaty takes effect exactly two years after its initial signing, defining a new border between the territory of New Spain and the United States and further securing American claims to the Louisiana Purchase and the Oregon Country.
	Aug 10	Missouri is admitted as the 24th U.S. state.
	Aug 24	The Kingdom of Spain finally recognizes the independence of Mexico with the signing of the Treaty of Córdoba.
	Sep 1	William Becknell and a party of frontier traders leave New Franklin, Missouri bound for Santa Fe. The Becknell route will become the Santa Fe Trail.
1822	Mar 6	William Henry Ashley and Andrew Henry place an advertisement in the Missouri Republican for one hundred "enterprising young men" to join a trapping expedition to the upper Missouri River. The respondents comprise "Ashley's Hundred", many of whom earn reputations as famous explorers and mountain men in the following years, including Jim Bridger, Jim Beckwourth, Hugh Glass, and Jedediah Smith.
1827	Mar 29	The town of Independence, Missouri is founded. In later years it becomes a common point of departure for pioneers journeying west on the emigrant trails.
1828	Jul 14	Trapper, explorer, and mountain man Jedediah Smith and his party are attacked by Umpqua Indians in Oregon Country. Smith and three others are the only survivors.

1830s

Benjamin Louis Eulalie de Bonneville

Sam Houston

Year	Date	Event
1830	May 28	The Indian Removal Act is signed into law by President Andrew Jackson, authorizing the U.S. government to negotiate the removal of Native American tribes of the southeastern United States to federal territory in what is now Oklahoma.
1831		Mexico ratifies the boundaries with the United States originally established by the Adams–Onís Treaty.
1832	May	The Bonneville Expedition departs Missouri with 110 men. Over the next two years, the party explores several major river systems in present-day Wyoming, Idaho, Oregon, and Washington, and establishes an overland route to California that will later become the California Trail.
1833	Spring	Frontier trader William Bent establishes Bent's Fort on the north bank of the Arkansas River, along the Santa Fe Trail.
1834		Fort Laramie is founded by William Sublette in what is now eastern Wyoming as a private fur-trading post named Fort William.
	Jul 31	Fort Hall is established on the Snake River in present-day Idaho.
1835	Spring	Frontier traders Louis Vasquez and Andrew Sublette establish Fort Vasquez on the South Platte River, 35 miles northeast of present-day Denver, Colorado.
	Oct 2	The Texas Revolution begins with the Battle of Gonzales.
1836	Mar 6	Following a 13-day siege, Mexican troops under General Antonio López de Santa Anna assault the Alamo Mission in San Antonio, killing all but a handful of its more than 200 Texian defenders, including Jim Bowie and Davy Crockett.
	Mar 27	More than 450 captured Texian soldiers are executed by the Mexican army at the Goliad massacre.
	Apr 21	Texians defeat the Mexican army at the Battle of San Jacinto, ending the Texas Revolution.
	May 2	Texians declare the independence of the Republic of Texas from Mexico. Later, they force captured General Antonio López de Santa Anna to sign the Treaties of Velasco recognizing their independence, though Mexico never ratifies these treaties.
	Jun 15	Arkansas is admitted as the 25th U.S. state.
1838	Aug-Nov	Rural landowners clash with immigrant Mormons near Kansas City, Missouri in a series of violent episodes later called the Mormon War, eventually forcing their complete expulsion from the state.
1839	Jul 15-16	Militia forces of the Republic of Texas win a decisive victory over Cherokee and Delaware Indians at the Battle of the Neches, the main engagement of the Cherokee War of 1838-1839.

1840s

John C. Frémont

Stephen W. Kearny

Year	Date	Event
1842	Mar 5	Mexican troops led by Ráfael Vásquez invade Texas and occupy San Antonio, but are chased back across the Rio Grande two days later.
	Dec 25-26	The Battle of Mier results when a Texan militia ignores orders to disband and proceeds to invade the Mexican border town of Ciudad Mier, Tamaulipas. The heavily outnumbered Texans are forced to surrender and more than 200 men are taken prisoner.
1843	Mar 25	Seventeen Texan prisoners of war are executed by the Mexican army after drawing beans in a random lottery, as punishment for their participation in a raid on the town of Ciudad Mier several months earlier.
		Missionary Marcus Whitman leads the first major wagon train west along the final leg of the Oregon Trail, establishing the viability of the route for later immigrants.
1844		Oregon City, the western terminus of the Oregon Trail, becomes the first incorporated U.S. city west of the Rocky Mountains.
1845	Jun 1	John C. Frémont's third expedition with 55 men and Kit Carson as guide leaves St. Louis to "map the source of the Arkansas River" but continues to the Sacramento Valley.
	Dec 19	The "Lash Law" bans blacks from living in the Oregon Territory.
	Dec 29	The United States admits the Republic of Texas to the Union as the slave State of Texas. The boundaries of the state remain undefined.
1846	Apr 25	The first skirmish of the Mexican–American War takes place on the Rio Grande near present-day Brownsville, Texas.
	May 13	The United States under President James K. Polk declares war on Mexico, formally commencing the Mexican–American War.
	Jun 15	The Oregon Treaty resolves a decades-long dispute over possession of the Oregon Country by extending the original boundary between the United States and British North America further west to the Pacific Ocean, with the entirety of Vancouver Island retained by the British.
	Aug 18	Troops under the command of Brigadier General Stephen W. Kearny seize the territorial capital of Santa Fe for the United States with little resistance.
	Dec 28	Iowa is admitted as the 29th U.S. state.
1847	Jan 19	Governor Charles Bent of the New Mexico Territory is assassinated and scalped during the Taos Revolt.
	Feb	The first of three relief missions arrives to rescue survivors of the Donner Party, who have been snowbound in California's Sierra Nevada mountains for more than three months.
	Jul 24	Brigham Young and his vanguard company of Mormons first arrive in the Salt Lake Valley in present-day Utah.
1848	Jan 24	James W. Marshall discovers gold at Sutter's Mill near Coloma, California, precipitating the California Gold Rush.
	Feb 2	The United States and Mexico sign the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo, ending the Mexican–American War. The agreement results in the cession of nearly all of the present-day Southwest, including California, to the U.S., as well as the designation of the Rio Grande as the boundary between Texas and Mexico.
1849	Feb 28	Regular steamboat service between the east and west coasts of the United States begins with the arrival of the SS California in San Francisco.

1850s

Brigham Young

Jim Bridger

Kit Carson

Washakie

Year	Date	Event
1850	Jan 29	Responding to questions of how to accommodate slavery in the western territories, Henry Clay proposes a series of measures to preserve the Union that come to be called the Compromise of 1850.
	Feb	The Pinkerton Detective Agency is founded.
	Apr 4	The city of Los Angeles, California is incorporated.
	Apr 15	The city of San Francisco, California is incorporated.
	Apr 16	The California territorial government sends a military expedition to attack hostile Yuma Indians along the Colorado River in retaliation for the Glanton Massacre earlier in the year, sparking the Yuma War.
	Jun 3	Five Cayuse tribesmen are hanged in Oregon City for their participation in the Whitman massacre.
	Sep 9	California is admitted as the 31st U.S. state.
	Sep 9	The New Mexico Territory and Utah Territory are organized by order of the U.S. Congress.
	Sep 27	The Donation Land Claim Act takes effect to promote homestead settlement in the Oregon Territory.
	Sep 29	President Millard Fillmore appoints Brigham Young the first governor of the Utah Territory.
1851		Horace Greeley, editor of the New-York Tribune, popularizes the saying "Go West, young man", though the phrase was originally written by Indiana newspaper writer John Soule in the Terre Haute Express.
		Western Union is founded as The New York and Mississippi Valley Printing Telegraph Company.
	Jan 23	The flip of a coin determines whether a new city in Oregon is named after Boston, Massachusetts, or Portland, Maine, with Portland winning.
	Mar 27	Mariposa Battalion, led by James D. Savage, are the first reported non-natives to enter California's Yosemite Valley.
	Sep 17	The Treaty of Fort Laramie (1851) is signed with Sioux Indians.
	Nov 13	The Denny Party lands at Alki Point, the first settlers of what will become Seattle, Washington.
1852	Mar 18	The Wells Fargo company is founded to provide express and banking services to California.
1853	Feb 8	The Washington Territory is organized from a portion of the Oregon Territory.
	Mar	Levi Strauss arrives in San Francisco and opens a store supplying goods and clothing to Gold Rush miners.
	Oct 26	Paiute Indians attack U.S. Army Captain John W. Gunnison and his party of 37 soldiers and railroad surveyors near Sevier Lake, Utah.
	Nov 28	Olympia, Washington is designated capital of the Washington Territory.
	Dec 30	The United States and Mexico agree to the Gadsden Purchase, transferring portions of southern Arizona and New Mexico to the U.S.
1854	Feb 13	The Mexican army forces would-be conqueror William Walker and his mercenary troops to retreat to Sonora.
	Feb 14	Texas is linked by telegraph with the rest of the United States when a connection between New Orleans and Marshall, Texas is completed.
	May 30	The Kansas-Nebraska Act becomes law, rescinding the Missouri Compromise of 1820 and creating the Kansas Territory and Nebraska Territory. A provision that settlers will vote on the legality of slavery in the new territories leads to violence beginning the next year.
	Jul 4	Omaha City is founded in the Nebraska Territory.
	Aug 19	An argument over a stray cow precipitates the Grattan massacre, in which 30 U.S. Army soldiers and an interpreter are killed in retaliation for the shooting of Chief Conquering Bear of the Lakota Sioux. The incident marks the opening engagement of the First Sioux War.
	Dec 19	Jonathan R. Davis, a veteran of the Mexican-American War and a gold rush prospector, single-handedly kills eleven armed immigrant outlaws near Sacramento, California using two revolvers and a Bowie knife.
1856	Feb 2	The city of Dallas is incorporated in Texas.
1857	Sep 11	Nearly 120 emigrants passing through the Utah Territory are massacred by a combined force of Mormon militiamen and Paiute Indians during the hysteria of the Utah War.
1858	May 11	Minnesota is admitted as the 32nd U.S. state.
1859	Spring	The Comstock Lode, the first major discovery of silver ore in the country, provokes a silver rush in present-day Nevada that funds boomtowns including Virginia City and Gold Hill. Over the next 30 years, hundreds of mines extract more than $320 million in gold and silver from the region, making millionaires of investors such as George Hearst and the Bonanza Kings.
	Feb 14	Oregon is admitted as the 33rd U.S. state.
	Sep 28-30	Mexican folk hero Juan Cortina and a posse of 40 to 80 men seize control of Brownsville, Texas in one of the major actions of the First Cortina War. His motivation is the cessation of legal abuses perpetrated by Texan authorities against ethnic Mexicans. The occupation only lasts two days, but the Cortina Troubles continue for another two years.

1860s

Henry Hopkins Sibley

John Bozeman

Leland Stanford

The Golden Spike ceremony joining the Union Pacific Railroad with the Central Pacific Railroad

John Wesley Powell

Year	Date	Event
1860	Apr 14	The Pony Express completes its first westbound and eastbound deliveries between St. Joseph, Missouri and San Francisco, California.
1861	Jan 29	Kansas is admitted to the Union as the 34th U.S. state, and a free state.
	Feb	A series of hostilities involving U.S. Army Lt. George Nicholas Bascom and Chiricahua Apache chief Cochise triggers the Apache Wars, which remain a central conflict in Arizona and New Mexico for the next 25 years.
	Feb 28	Colorado is organized as a U.S. territory.
	Mar	The New Mexico Territory nominally joins the Confederate States of America.
	Mar 2	The Nevada Territory and Dakota Territory are organized.
	Jul 25	250 Confederate troops with the 2nd Texas Mounted Rifles, led by Lieutenant Colonel John R. Baylor, engage Union forces under Major Isaac Lynde at Mesilla, New Mexico, resulting in Lynde's troops retreating into the Organ Mountains, toward Fort Stanton. Lynde is relieved of duty after abandoning his post.
1862	Winter	Months of record precipitation in the far west culminate in the Great Flood of 1862, which turns California's Central Valley into an inland sea and causes millions of dollars in property damage.
	Feb-Apr	Confederate forces under Brigadier General Henry Hopkins Sibley and Colonel Thomas Green undertake what is widely regarded as one of the most ambitious military operations of the American Civil War when they begin the New Mexico Campaign. Their goals include seizing the Colorado gold fields and securing roads by which to invade California and Mexico.
	Feb 20-21	The Battle of Valverde is fought at a ford of Valverde Creek in present-day New Mexico, resulting in a Confederate victory.
	Mar 26-28	The Battle of Glorieta Pass is fought in the Sangre de Cristo Mountains between Confederate cavalry forces and Union volunteers from Colorado and New Mexico. It marks a turning point in the New Mexico Campaign in favor of the Union.
	Mar 30	The Battle of Stanwix Station is fought at a Butterfield Overland Mail stagecoach stop 80 miles east of Yuma, Arizona, between Capt. William P. Calloway of the California Column and Confederate 2nd Lt. John Swilling.
	Apr 15	The Battle of Picacho Pass is fought between the 1st California Cavalry under Union Lt. James Barrett and a detachment of Arizona Confederates led by Sgt. Henry Holmes. It is often cited as the westernmost battle of the American Civil War, occurring 50 miles northwest of Tucson.
	May 5	Confederate Sgt. Sam Ford and his men are ambushed by Apache warriors led by Cochise in the Dragoon Mountains near the present-day towns of Benson and Dragoon, Arizona at the Battle of Dragoon Springs.
	May 9	The Second Battle of Dragoon Springs is fought in retaliation for the deaths of the four Confederates killed at the Apache ambush four days earlier. Rebels under Capt. Sherod Hunter take back the cattle stolen by Cochise and his warriors and kill five Apaches.
	Jul 15-16	140 Union troops from the California Column are ambushed by about 500 Apaches under Mangas Coloradas and Cochise at the Battle of Apache Pass in Arizona. It was one of the first battles in which the United States Army was able to use artillery against Indians.
	Aug 17	The Dakota War of 1862 begins when a Sioux hunting party slaughters five white settlers, and the tribal council decides to attack white settlements throughout the Minnesota River valley.
	Nov 5	More than 300 Santee Sioux in Minnesota are sentenced to hang for the rape and murder of white settlers.
1863	Jan 1	Daniel Freeman submits the first claim under the Homestead Act for land near Beatrice, Nebraska.
	Jan 18	Chiricahua Apache leader Mangas Coloradas is captured, tortured, and killed by U.S. Army sentries after meeting with Brigadier General Joseph Rodman West to call for peace.
	Jan 29	Col. Patrick Edward Connor leads his troops to fight the Shoshone Indians in present-day Idaho, resulting in the Bear River Massacre.
	Feb 24	The Arizona Territory is organized from a portion of the New Mexico Territory.
	Mar 3	Idaho is organized as a U.S. territory.
	Aug 21	Confederate guerrilla fighters led by Captain William Quantrill attack the pro-Union town of Lawrence, Kansas, resulting in the Lawrence Massacre. Quantrill claimed his motive was revenge for the Sacking of Osceola.
1864		John Bozeman leads a group of about 2,000 settlers across the Bozeman Trail, which he and John Jacobs had scouted the previous year.
	Jan	Col. Kit Carson accepts the surrender of most of the Navajo nation after the final two years of the bloody Navajo Wars.
	May 26	Montana is organized as a U.S. territory.
	Jul	Outlaw Jim Reynolds and his gang plunders and robs settlements in the South Park Basin in the Colorado Territory. He claimed their mission was to loot the gold mines of the region to support the fledgling Confederacy.
	Sep 27	Pro-Confederate guerrillas led by William "Bloody Bill" Anderson capture and execute 24 unarmed Union soldiers at a rail depot in Centralia, Missouri.
	Oct 25	In consecutive engagements only hours apart, Union cavalry under Alfred Pleasonton pursue and defeat Confederate forces under Sterling Price at Marais des Cygnes, Mine Creek, and Marmiton River as they retreat through Kansas and Missouri.
	Oct 31	Nevada is admitted as the 36th U.S. state.
	Nov 29	Col. John Chivington and his volunteer militia massacre a peaceful Cheyenne village near Sand Creek in the Colorado Territory, in what is later called the Sand Creek massacre.
1865	May 12–13	The Battle of Palmito Ranch is fought in Texas. It is the final armed engagement of the American Civil War.
	Jul 21	"Wild Bill" Hickok kills gambler Davis Tutt in a shootout in Springfield, Missouri. The confrontation is sensationalized in Harper's Magazine, making Hickok a household name, and is often considered the archetypal one-on-one quick-draw duel, which later becomes a popular image of the Old West.
1866	Feb 13	Notorious outlaws Frank and Jesse James rob their first bank in Liberty, Missouri.
	Spring	The period of the great cattle drives begins when Texas cattle ranchers drive more than 260,000 head of cattle to assorted markets. Some travel eastward to Louisiana, where the animals are shipped to Cairo, Illinois and St. Louis, Missouri. Others travel westward through Indian territory to Fort Sumner, New Mexico and Denver, Colorado, inaugurating the Goodnight-Loving Trail. But the vast majority follow the Shawnee Trail north to Kansas City or Sedalia, Missouri.
	Dec 21	Capt. William J. Fetterman and 80 soldiers of the U.S. 2nd Cavalry and 18th Infantry regiments are ambushed and wiped out by Lakota, Cheyenne, and Arapaho warriors near Fort Phil Kearny, Wyoming. A fort built the next year, Fort Fetterman, is named in his honor.
1867	Mar 1	Nebraska is admitted as the 37th U.S. state.
	Jun 25	Lucien B. Smith of Kent, Ohio is issued the first patent for barbed wire fencing, an invention which revolutionizes cattle ranching on the open prairies of the West.
1868	Apr 29	The Treaty of Fort Laramie (1868) is signed between the United States and several bands of Lakota, Dakota, and Arapaho Indians. It results in the abandonment of U.S. military outposts along the Bozeman Trail, the indefinite closure of the Powder River Country and much of western South Dakota to white settlement, and the end of Red Cloud's War.
	Jul 25	Wyoming is organized as a U.S. territory.
	Nov 27	Battle of Washita River.
1869	May 10	Leland Stanford drives the Golden Spike to join the rails of the Central Pacific and Union Pacific railroads at a special ceremony in Promontory Summit, Utah Territory, completing the First Transcontinental Railroad.
	May 24	John Wesley Powell and nine others embark on a scientific expedition that charts more than 930 miles of the Green River and Colorado River through the canyon country of Wyoming, Colorado, Utah, and Arizona. Powell and his crew become the first recorded white men to travel through the Grand Canyon. They reach the mouth of the Virgin River in present-day Nevada on August 30.
	Dec 10	Wyoming becomes the first U.S. territory to grant women the right to vote.

1870s

Ouray and Chipeta

Jesse and Frank James

"Wild Bill" Hickok

"Buffalo Bill" Cody

Tȟatȟáŋka Íyotak (Sitting Bull)

George Armstrong Custer

"Calamity Jane"

Lew Wallace

Year	Date	Event
1870		Bret Harte's The Luck of Roaring Camp and Other Sketches, a collection of stories based on his years as a San Francisco journalist, is published.
		William "Hurricane Bill" Martin, a notorious Kansas outlaw, begins rustling cattle southeast of Abilene before he and his gang are driven off by a posse from Marion.
		Settling in the New Mexico Territory, gunfighter Robert Clay Allison purchases a ranch in Colfax County. According to local newspapers, Allison is reported to have killed as many as fifteen men in gunfights during this time.
		With the growing railroad industry and cattle boom, buffalo hunters begin moving onto the Great Plains. In less than ten years, the buffalo population is dramatically reduced, and the animal remains an endangered species for much of the next century.
		The Utah Territorial Assembly, supported by Brigham Young, grants women the right to vote. Over the next several decades, this provides Mormons with an added margin of political power.
	Jan	Shortly after leaving the post of sheriff of Ellis County, Kansas, James "Wild Bill" Hickok travels to Missouri and eventually resumes his duties as a U.S. Marshal.
	Spring	With the emergence of Abilene, Kansas as a major stopover for cattle ranchers, the town trustees attempt to curb the violence brought by the beginning of the cattle season by banning guns within the town limits. This proves extremely unpopular and unenforceable, as Texas cowboys make a habit of shooting up ordinance posters and also tear down the city's first jailhouse; violence continues in the city until the appointment of Tom "Bear River" Smith as City Marshal on June 4.
	Jul 17-18	"Wild Bill" Hickok is involved in a shootout with several members of the U.S. 7th Cavalry Regiment in Hays City after killing one trooper and wounding another.
	Nov 2	Abilene City Marshal Tom "Bear River" Smith is killed while serving an arrest warrant near the town.
1871		John K. "King" Fisher is hired by settlers of the Pendencia River country in Dimmit County, Texas as a hired gun to protect their livestock and other property. It is during this time that Fisher becomes known as a skilled gunfighter.
	Jan 1	After a long illness, U.S. Army Captain John Barry is forced into retirement. While stationed at Fort Ord, Barry attempts to improve relations between the United States and the Apaches, as well as encourages the enlistment of scouts to combat renegade Apaches.
	Feb 16	John Younger kills Captain S.W. Nichols in a gunfight in Dallas, Texas.
	Feb 23	While heading an Apache-hunting force near present-day Clifton, Arizona, John M. Bullard is shot and killed when he approaches a wounded Apache warrior.
	Feb 28	"Handsome Jack" John Ledford, an outlaw-turned-hotel-owner involved in counterfeiting and horse theft in Kansas and the Indian Territory, is killed in a shootout with a group of U.S. Army soldiers led by scout Lee Stewart and U.S. Marshal Jack Bridges, who claimed to have a warrant for his arrest. Although he had recently come under suspicion for his involvement in the robbery of a government wagon train in which several teamsters had been killed, later newspaper accounts claimed that Ledford had been murdered by Bridges due to a previous argument in which Bridges had threatened his life.
	Mar 16	Death of Navajo chieftain Barboncito (Hastin Daagii).
	Apr 15	"Wild Bill" Hickok succeeds "Bear River" Tom Smith as City Marshal for Abilene, Kansas and remains in the position until December 13.
	Apr 28	In what becomes known as the Camp Grant Massacre, over 100 Apache women and children are killed by a mob of Mexicans and Papago Indians led by several Tucson businessmen, including D.A. Bennett and Sam Hughes. Bennett and several others are indicted in December, though all are acquitted.
	Jun 14	Thomas Carson, reportedly a nephew of mountain man Kit Carson, is appointed to the Abilene police force under City Marshal "Wild Bill" Hickok. After an incident with gunfighter John Wesley Hardin over Hardin's insistence on wearing his gun in public, he was briefly hired as Deputy in Newton, Kansas before returning to Abilene in November. Carson and Deputy John W. "Brocky Jack" Norton are fired from the police force on November 27 after assaulting a local bartender.
	Jun 30	Shortly after robbing a nearby bank, Jesse James addresses a crowd at a political rally in Corydon, Iowa.
	Oct 5	Professional gambler Phil Coe is involved in a shootout with Abilene City Marshal "Wild Bill" Hickok after Hickok attempts to censor a painting of a bull with abnormally large genitals in Coe's saloon. Deputy Mike Williams is killed when Hickok accidentally shoots him, and Coe dies from his wounds four days later.
	Dec 5	Birth of rodeo star Bill Pickett near Austin, Texas.
1872		William F. "Buffalo Bill" Cody, a scout for the U.S. 5th Cavalry Regiment, is awarded the Medal of Honor. Later that year, he appears on stage for the first time, portraying himself in "Scouts of the Prairie".
		Ellsworth, Kansas succeeds Abilene as the northern stopping point on the Old Texas cattle trail.
		Following the completion of the Santa Fe Railroad across the border of the Colorado Territory, the use of the Santa Fe Trail begins to decline, although Dodge City remains a major cattle shipping town for the next decade. The Santa Fe Railroad would also complete a rail line at Wichita, Kansas causing a major population boom over the next several years.
		"Home on the Range", later adopted as the state song of Kansas, first appears in a poem, "My Western Home", written by Dr. Brewster M. Higley. Following its publication, it is set to music by Daniel Kelley.
	Jan 31	Author Zane Grey is born in Zanesville, Ohio.
	Mar 1	Yellowstone National Park is designated America's first national park by President Ulysses S. Grant.
	Nov 29	The Battle of Lost River results when the U.S. 1st Cavalry Regiment tries to force a band of Modoc Indians under Captain Jack to return to the Klamath Reservation in southern Oregon. In the subsequent Modoc War, a party of 53 Modoc warriors entrenched in the Lava Beds of northern California manages to hold off hundreds of U.S. soldiers for more than five months.
	Dec 28	U.S. Army cavalry under George Crook begin a campaign into Arizona's Tonto Basin by defeating the occupants of a Yavapai stronghold at the Battle of Salt River Canyon, part of the Yavapai War.
1873		The Colt Single Action Army revolver is first manufactured. It later becomes known as "The Gun That Won the West".
	Mar 27	A combined force of U.S. Army soldiers and Apache Scouts wins another major victory over Yavapai and Tonto Apache warriors at the Battle of Turret Peak in central Arizona.
1874		Ham Anderson, a cousin of gunfighter Wes Hardin, is killed in a gunfight in Dodge City, Kansas.
		Outlaws Ceberiano and Reymundo Aguilar are killed during the Harrold War of Lincoln County, New Mexico.
	May 25	John Alexander, an outlaw and horse thief, is shot and killed by a mob in Belton, Texas while attempting to steal horses.
	Jun 27	While occupying an old trading post in the Texas panhandle, 28 bison hunters including 21-year-old Bat Masterson are besieged by 700 Comanche warriors at the Second Battle of Adobe Walls.
	Nov 24	Joseph Glidden patents a type of barbed wire he calls "The Winner", which becomes one of the most popular types in the country. His design was modified from a version patented by Henry B. Rose and displayed at a county fair in Glidden's hometown of DeKalb, Illinois.
1875	Aug 8	Jermin Aguirre is killed near the San Augin Ranch in the New Mexico Territory.
1876		After being wounded in the hip during a gunfight in Sweetwater, Texas, Bat Masterson agrees to become assistant city marshal of Dodge City, Kansas.
	Mar 17	After Sioux chieftains Sitting Bull and Crazy Horse refuse to comply with the United States government's order to leave the Black Hills of the Dakota Territory, General George Crook attacks and defeats their forces at the Battle of Powder River, thereby beginning the Great Sioux War.
	Jun 17	General George Crook's forces are forced to withdraw following his defeat by Crazy Horse at the Battle of Rosebud.
	Jun 25	While leading an attack into a Sioux village in the Montana Territory, the U.S. 7th Cavalry Regiment under Brigadier General George Armstrong Custer is ambushed and massacred by over 2,000 Sioux and Comanche warriors led by Sitting Bull and Crazy Horse at the Battle of the Little Bighorn.
	Aug 1	Colorado is admitted as the 38th U.S. state.
	Aug 2	James "Wild Bill" Hickok is shot and killed by Jack McCall during a poker game in Deadwood, Dakota Territory.
	Sep 7	Several members of the James-Younger Gang, including Cole Younger, are captured after the failed robbery of the First National Bank leads to a gunfight with bank employees and local residents in Northfield, Minnesota.
1877		Gunfights involving John Morco in Kansas.
		Gunfights involving John Higgins in New Mexico.
		Gunfights involving the Horrell Brothers in Texas.
	Jun 17	Anticipating retaliation for recent crimes against white settlers and reluctant to move to a reservation, about 600 Nez Perce Indians led by Chief Joseph, Ollokot, and White Bird begin a long retreat from western Idaho with the U.S. Army in pursuit. They defeat their pursuers at the Battle of White Bird Canyon, and the Nez Perce War begins.
	Aug 17	At 17 years old, Billy the Kid shoots his first man, Frank "Windy" Cahill, in self-defense, after Cahill wrestled him to the ground at a saloon in Fort Grant, Arizona. Cahill dies the following day.
1878	Feb 18	Rancher John Tunstall is killed by a posse whose members include gunman Charles Wolz, beginning the Lincoln County War.
	Mar	John Younger, a member of the Younger Gang, is killed by Pinkerton detectives Louis Lull and Jim Duckworth in St. Clair County, Missouri.
	Jun 18	Nick Worthington, a well-known outlaw throughout New Mexico and Colorado, is killed by residents of Cimarron, New Mexico after killing several men and stealing horses.
	Jul 15-19	The Battle of Lincoln takes place over five days in Lincoln, New Mexico. Alexander McSween, a major character in the Lincoln County War and former partner of John Tunstall, is shot and killed on July 19, along with gunman Francisco Zamora.
1879		Ike and Billy Clanton enlist William "Curly Bill" Brocius and Johnny Ringo as they begin cattle rustling in the New Mexico and southern Arizona Territories.
	Jan	Captain Marcus Reno, the highest-ranking officer to have survived the Battle of the Little Bighorn, is brought before a general court-martial but is acquitted of cowardice.
	Nov 4	Birth of Will Rogers, actor and cowboy, on a ranch in Cherokee Indian territory in what is now Oklahoma (d. 1935).

1880s

"Billy the Kid"

"Doc" Holliday

"Belle" Starr

Goyaałé (Geronimo)

Year	Date	Event
1880		George Alford is sentenced to five years imprisonment for murdering a sheriff in Fort Worth, Texas.
	Mar 2	James Allen kills James Moorehead after ordering eggs in a tavern in Las Vegas, New Mexico and, after escaping from prison for Mooreland's murder, is killed by a posse soon after.
	May 11	A dispute over land titles between settlers of California's San Joaquin Valley and the Southern Pacific Railroad leaves seven people dead in what is later called the Mussel Slough Tragedy.
	Dec 19	Tom O'Folliard, best friend of Billy the Kid, is shot and killed by members of Pat Garrett's posse in Fort Sumner, New Mexico.
	Dec 23	Charlie Bowdre, a member of Billy the Kid's gang, is shot and killed by members of Pat Garrett's posse at Stinking Springs, New Mexico.
	Dec 24	Abran Baca kills A.M. Conklin in Socorro, New Mexico with several other outlaws, though he is acquitted the following year.
1881	Feb 5	The city of Phoenix is incorporated in the Arizona Territory.
	Apr 14	A gunfight involving El Paso, Texas Marshal Dallas Stoudenmire results in what witnesses recall as "four dead in five seconds".
	Jul 14	Billy the Kid is shot and killed by Sheriff Pat Garrett in Fort Sumner, New Mexico. He is buried the next day between his friends Tom O'Folliard and Charlie Bowdre in Fort Sumner's old military cemetery.
	Oct 26	The Gunfight at the O.K. Corral takes place in the street behind a saloon in Tombstone, Arizona, pitting the Earps and Doc Holliday against the Clantons, the McLaurys, and Billy Claiborne. Frank and Tom McLaury and Billy Clanton are killed, and Virgil and Morgan Earp, along with Holliday, are wounded.
1882	Mar 18	Morgan Earp is shot and killed while playing billiards in Tombstone, Arizona. His assassination is linked to his involvement in the Gunfight at the O.K. Corral.
	Mar 24	Outlaw William "Curly Bill" Brocius is shot and killed by Wyatt Earp at Iron Springs in Arizona.
	Apr 3	Jesse James murdered by Bob Ford.
1884	Dec 1	A 36-hour standoff begins in the town of Reserve, New Mexico when a posse of Texan cowboys confronts lawman Elfego Baca for having arrested an intoxicated cowboy.
1886		Jack Langrishe, a popular western entertainer, is elected justice in Coeur d’Alene, Idaho.
	Feb 18	Dave Rudabaugh, a former member of Billy the Kid's Dodge City Gang, is reportedly captured and decapitated by townspeople after terrorizing the village of Parral, Mexico.
	Mar 21	The "Big Fight" takes place in Tascosa, Texas, where three ranch hands, ex-members of Pat Garrett's "Home Rangers," are killed by rival ranch hands and assorted gunmen.
	Aug 7	Fort Fred Steele, used to protect railroads from local Native American tribes in the Wyoming Territory, is closed.
	Aug 20	Fort Duchesne is officially opened by Major Frederick William Benteen in the Utah Territory.
	Sep 4	Apache renegade Geronimo surrenders to forces under General Nelson Miles and is taken into custody at Fort Grant, Arizona. His surrender is often considered the end of the Apache Wars.
	Nov 8	Doc Holliday dies of tuberculosis in Glenwood Springs, Colorado.
	Winter	The extremely harsh winter of 1886–87 devastates the American cattle industry, leading to the end of the open range era. As a result, cattle ranching is completely reorganized and the period of the great cattle drives is over.
	Dec 1	Brothers Jim and Rube Burrow rob their first train in Bellevue, Texas.
1887	Feb 8	Luke Short kills former Fort Worth, Texas Marshal Jim Courtright in a gunfight on the streets of Fort Worth. The shooting is ruled self-defense, since Courtright drew his pistol first.
1888	Dec 18	Richard Wetherill and his brother-in-law discover the Cliff Palace of Mesa Verde in southwestern Colorado.
1889	Feb 3	Belle Starr is murdered in Oklahoma.
	May 11	Major Joseph W. Wham, a U.S. Army paymaster, and his escort of eleven Buffalo Soldiers are ambushed and robbed of more than $28,000 in gold and silver coins by a posse of bandits on the road to Fort Thomas, Arizona Territory. The bandits are never captured.
	Jun 24	Outlaw Butch Cassidy robs his first bank in Telluride, Colorado before fleeing to the remote hideout of Robbers Roost.
	Nov 2	North Dakota and South Dakota are admitted as the 39th and 40th U.S. states.
	Nov 8	Montana is admitted as the 41st U.S. state.
	Nov 11	Washington is admitted as the 42nd U.S. state.

1890s

Theodore Roosevelt

Year	Date	Event
1890	Jun	Data collected for the Eleventh United States Census indicate that the spread of the population into unsettled areas has resulted in the disappearance of the American frontier. The U.S. Census Bureau declares that it will no longer monitor westward migration in the country.
	Jul 3	Idaho is admitted as the 43rd U.S. state.
	Jul 10	Wyoming is admitted as the 44th U.S. state.
	Dec 29	The U.S. Cavalry kills 146 Sioux at Wounded Knee on the Pine Ridge reservation in South Dakota.
1892	Apr 8-13	In the most violent episode of the Johnson County War, wealthy cattle barons of the Wyoming Stock Growers Association and their hired mercenaries invade Wyoming's Powder River Country to persecute local ranchers on allegations of cattle rustling. When the homesteaders retaliate with their own army, a series of deadly stand-offs ensues before President Benjamin Harrison orders the U.S. 6th Cavalry Regiment to intervene. The conflict forces a reorganization of the cattle industry in Wyoming, signifying the end of the open range, and becomes one of the most well-known range wars in the history of the West.
	Oct 5	Four members of the Dalton Gang are killed in a shootout with townspeople while trying to rob two banks at the same time in Coffeyville, Kansas.
1893	Sep 8	Luke Short dies of dropsy in Geuda Springs, Kansas.
1896	Jan 4	Utah is admitted as the 45th U.S. state.

1900s

William Jennings Bryan

Year	Date	Event
1903	Nov 20	Legendary gunman Tom Horn, who had previously served as a U.S. Cavalry scout, Pinkerton detective, lawman and outlaw is hung in Cheyenne, Wyoming for the disputed 1901 killing of 14-year-old sheepherder Willie Nickell.
1905	Dec 30	Former Idaho Governor Frank Steunenberg is wounded by a bomb in his home in Caldwell, Idaho and dies a short time later. An investigation suggests the assassination was motivated by prior labor unrest in Idaho's mining communities.
1906	Apr 18	An earthquake and resulting fires devastate the city of San Francisco and neighboring communities, killing at least 3,000 people and leaving nearly three-fourths of the Bay Area's population homeless.
1907	Nov 16	Oklahoma is admitted as the 46th U.S. state.
1908	Feb 29	Death of Pat Garrett, former New Mexico sheriff and killer of Billy the Kid.
1909	Apr 19	Joseph Allen is hanged in Ada, Oklahoma for his involvement in a local feud.
	Nov 24	Outlaw Donaciano Aguilar is captured and sentenced to life imprisonment in New Mexico.

1910s

Charles Marion Russell

Year	Date	Event
1912	Jan 6	New Mexico is admitted as the 47th U.S. state.
	Feb 14	Arizona is admitted as the 48th U.S. state. It is the last state to be admitted in the contiguous United States, marking the complete political incorporation of U.S. territorial acquisitions west of the Mississippi River.
1916	Dec 5	The last stagecoach robbery in American history occurs at Jarbidge Canyon, Nevada, in which robbers Ben Kuhl, Ed Beck and William McGraw hold up a U.S. Postal Service stagecoach, shoot the driver, Fred Searcy, and steal $4,000 in cash. The three criminals are captured without incident at their cabin soon after.

See also

• Historic regions of the United States
• Western United States
  • Mountain States
  • Northwestern United States
  • Southwestern United States
  • Pacific States
  • Great Plains
  • Rocky Mountains
  • Great Basin
  • Sierra Nevada (United States)
  • Cascade Range

External links

• "New Perspectives On The West". The West Film Project, WETA-TV, 2001.