Timeline

1830–1899 ∼ Moving across America

Steamboat era (1830–1930s) / Steam-powered railroad era (1840–1950s) / Orphan trains transport homeless or impoverished children from urban to rural areas (1853–1929) / Transcontinental railroad lines completed (1869) / Electric rail transport and gasoline-powered automobiles introduced (1880s) / Subway systems introduced (1890) / Modern submarines developed (1890s)

MILESTONES: Thousands of Native Americans die during forced relocation on the “trail of tears” (1831–1838) • Fugitive Slave Law requires people to return runaway slaves (1850) • First petroleum well discovered in Pennsylvania by Edwin Drake (1859) • The great cattle drives (1865–1870) • Thomas Edison invents the motion picture (1889)

1900–1919 ∼ Airplanes and Automobiles

New York introduces first law governing speed (1901) / Wright brothers’ gasoline-engine aircraft successfully flies at Kitty Hawk (1903) / President Theodore Roosevelt is first president to dive in a submarine (1905) / Alice Ramsey becomes the first woman to drive a car across the U.S., capturing Americans’ imagination...