New technologies such as the telegraph and the railroad improved communications and transportation and helped tie the disparate sections of the country together into an increasingly unified capitalistic market. Territory gained from the Texas annexation, the Mexican War, and Oregon settlement added vast tracts of land and resources to the United States.ย Americans moved west, […]
industry
Lumber Industry
Early Lumber Industry Wood was essential to development in the nineteenth-century Great Basin. Unfortunately, forests were scarce, particularly when construction needed straight grained pines. Mines required wood for building, to fuel furnaces, and to assemble support systems underground. Beginning in the 1860s, booming communities such as Virginia City inspired lumbering in the Sierra Nevada. W.S. […]
Hospitals
1862 – Drs. Thomas H. Pinkerton and J.C. Tucker received a contract for $2,000 per month to provide care – food, medicine, personnel, and housing – for county patients.ย Storey County Hospital consisted of two buildings: one to house up to 60 male patients and a second for 14 female patients. The insane were hospitalized […]