ABSTRACT
Thinking of the West in the second half of the nineteenth century as an industrial empire contradicts some of Americans' most cherished notions about the region during that period. Railroads helped to shift the center of the American timber industry from the Upper Midwest to the Pacific Northwest. Seizing these resources provoked violent conflicts between Indians and the US Army. In short, the West between 1850 and 1900 was a federally-sponsored industrial empire. The industrial West had multiple origins. One starting point was in 1850, in Watertown, New York, where Horace Greeley witnessed a portable steam engine in operation. These technologies – hydraulic mining cannons, steam-power threshers, and railroads – shared important similarities. They facilitated the shift away from independent producers, with their scythes, drays, and shovels, and toward an economy dominated by capital and characterized by industrial technology and wage-workers.
