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Americans always wanted to expand westward, even before the Revolutionary War. The only problem was that the Proclamation of 1763 prevented them from doing so. After the Revolution, however, things changed. Jefferson bought the Louisiana purchase from Napoleon Bonaparte, and sent Meriwether Lewis and William Clark, and they returned with stories of wide open spaces and plains that streched on forever. People then began moving west for multiple reasons, the most common being:

  • Overcrowding in the east
  • Cheap, fertile land
  • Logging
  • Trapping/fur trading
  • Freedom for runaway slaves

But the big surge of movement westward was in 1949, the California gold rush.

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14y ago

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