[A] In 1849 gold was discovered in California in the mountains near San Francisco. So started the famous Gold Rush of the 49ers across the vast, unexplored wilderness that lay west of the Mississippi. Whole families perished. One small group of 49ers, looking for a short cut across the Sierra Nevada Mountains, happened to enter the infamous Death Valley. It was lucky for them it was winter, for in summer Death Valley is about the hottest and most desolate place on earth. As it was, one of the group died of thirst, and it was the 49ers who gave the valley its grim name.
[B] The completion of the railroad not only joined the cities of the east with California, it also brought prosperity to the isolated farmers of the plains, and to the ranchers who were now able to send their cattle to the slaughterhouses in freight ears. In fact, the new railroad became an essential life-line for a nation which now stretched 3 000 miles from the Atlantic to the Pacific Oceans.
[C] As late as the 1880s a man in the Far west could be hanged for stealing a horse, yet get no more than five years in jail for robbing a bank. Ever since the pioneers went west into the unknown, they depended absolutely on their horses and their guns. If a man lost his horse or his gun in the deserts, mountains or forests of Nevada, Arizona and eastern California, he stood no chance. Hunger, thirst, a grizzly bear, a mountain lion, or hostile Indians would finish him off sooner or later. A frontiers man had to be tough, brave and resourceful in those days.
[D] The colonization of the West was given a tremendous impetus by the building of the Transcontinental railroad, one of the great engineering feats of all time. Congress decided that the laying of the tracks should begin from the East and the West at the same time. So the building of this railroad lined with poles for the first east-west telegraph system, developed into a race. The Easterners, moving across the plains, progressed faster, for they did not have to tunnel through giant mountains or bridge gaping canyons. The two railroads linked up in Utah on July 10th, 1867. There was great excitement, and a special ceremony to mark the occasion.
[E] Deserts, mountains and forests are still the frontier between teeming Californian cities and the sparsely populated wilderness of Nevada and eastern California. Even today, Nevada has hardly more than 500 thousand inhabitants, most of whom live in the cities of Las Vegas and Reno.
[F] Later, in 1865, after the Civil War, disillusioned soldiers, unable to frnd work, followed in the footsteps of the 49ers. They did not find much gold, but they found rich pastures for cattle. It was they who founded the USA's great food industry, and they worked with the vigor and courage of the early pioneers and with a faith fortified by the Bible.
[G] Some Americans feel that the frontier spirit no longer exists in the USA. But it expressed itself in a number of ways. Americans do not like being without work, and they will travel hundreds of miles in search of a job, showing a courage and an enterprise which is unusual in most of the older European countries. Then there is the exploration of outer space. President John Kennedy in a speech to the nation, spoke of this "New Frontier." The frontier spirit certainly played a part in putting the first men on the noon, the most recent of all frontiers to be crossed.