westward movement
Toward setting sun
Westward movement refers to the migration of settlers across North America toward the Pacific coast, particularly the 19th-century expansion of the United States.
The term encompasses wagon trains, the Oregon Trail, the California Gold Rush, and government policies like the Homestead Act that encouraged settlement: The westward movement displaced indigenous peoples across the continent.
Also called westward expansion.
- Rocky MountainsWestern North American cordillera
- wagon trainsGrouped pioneer vehicles westward
- fur tradeCommercial exchange of animal skins
- Manifest DestinyBelief in justified American expansion
- Louisiana Purchase1803 territorial acquisition
settler colonialism · Mississippi River · Great Plains · prairie schooners · pioneer spirit · Homestead Act · land grant · Oregon Trail · Appalachian Mountains · Sierra Nevada · Gold Rush · frontier life · frontier justice · Pacific Coast · rugged individualism · expansionism · sundown towns · Pony Express
westward movementstaying put
Remaining in place
stasis · rootedness · immobility · settlement · sedentariness
westward movementheading east
west, westward, westwards, western, westerly, westerner, westernize, westernization, move