Many of the farmers lived in a two-room house because they were poor. Horses were used for transportation and for working on the field. Most farmers did not own a horse because they were expensive to own. Farmers did not work on Sunday, and this was the day that the families went to church.

There were tremendous economic difficulties associated with Western farm life. First and foremost was overproduction. New machinery and fertilizer was needed to farm on a large scale. Often farmers borrowed money to purchase this equipment, leaving themselves hopelessly in debt when the harvest came.

Agricultural prices, which had sparked the boom, dropped off sharply, bringing the value of land down. Farmers could not afford to pay their debts, and since speculators could not collect payment for lands they had sold, the value of land plummeted even further.

Much of the West had a drier climate than that of the East, and western terrain often proved much harsher. As a result, immigrants to the West had to adapt and find new ways of doing things to survive. Their efforts were aided by improvements in transportation, communication, farm equipment, and other areas.

It was land, ultimately, that drew the most migrants to the West. Family farms were the backbone of the agricultural economy that expanded in the West after the Civil War. The treeless plains that had been considered unfit for settlement became the new agricultural mecca for land-hungry Americans.

The many offshoots of the trail and the main trail itself were used by an estimated 350,000 settlers from the 1830s through 1869.

20,000 deaths

Don Rawitsch