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, pulled by dreams of California gold, Nevada silver, or by new farms in the Pacific Northwest. Unregulated banking and gold and silver from western mines poured money into the economy and fueled the boom with easy credit.ย
Americans tried to make a quick profit on everything from stocks and guano to slaves, and speculation became almost a national pastime. Towns sprang up across the West as settlers from both North and South moved in, lured by hopes for easy riches.
The hopes of Palisadeโs boosters, businessmen, and speculators rested upon operating as a transit point for settlers heading to Salt Lake City. Early settlers had made quick profits as land prices doubled in a year or two. In Iowa, land speculators earned more than 20 percent annually for most of the decade; in some years they earned more than 60 percent.ย Land speculating migrants expected to earn equally large profits, and increasing migration before the Civil War fueled this expectation. Many territories were filled with migrants pulled by dreams of instant riches and by a desire to secure the territories for Northern free labor.ย In one month, it was not unheard of for one-thousand settlers to enter a boom town every day.
Adding to the frenzy of land speculation, town promotion, and dreams of easy profits that gripped the territory. Palisade’s promoters hoped to cash in on this boom. If the founders of Palisade could convince a railroad to pass by their town it would assure the success of their venture, since cheap transportation brought settlers and drove up land prices.
Dozens of new towns sprang up in Nevada Territory during the 1860s.ย Both profits and ideology played key roles in motivating the promotion and settlement of these towns.
