4. Examine the successive phases of economic activity in the Great West: mining, cattle raising, and agriculture. Show how in each case the coming of big business and recent technology ended an early "little person" era, and how the entry of corporate and investment capital shaped later western development.

Mining in the American West began with the California Gold Rush of 1848 and spread to Nevada, Arizona, Idaho, and Montana. Machinery was the only way to get gold - because the easily attainable gold was all mined - and this made big companies step in the mining field.

The cattle raising was not the main activity in the west exploration, but with the first transcontinental railroad and subsequent railroad lines changed the scenery, and made possible to transport the cattle to the East. Rangers and businessmen began to speculate in the cattle industry. The Cattle drive began and created the "cowtowns" that were developed to accommodate cowboys and the cattle industry.

The farmers were responsible for carrying out the final phase of settlement, railroads, free homesteads and irrigation were responsible for luring them. Later, in the 1870s farmers started to push into the prairies and used techniques of dry farming.