Essential Questions Specialty Area 2
All students completing SA 2 are required to read the pages in the text related to their topic; and have a clear understanding of the broader issues related to Exploring the West. 

Part I: The West & The World From Sea to Shining Sea
1:Analyze the Louisiana Purchase
  • a. How and why did the Louisiana Purchase take place?
  • b. Why was Napoleon willing to sell the Louisiana area?
  • c. What territories were included in the Louisiana Purchase?
  • d. Why was the Louisiana Purchase Important to the future of the United States?
  • e.When was the territory purchased?  What were the details of the purchase?

2:Analyze the Lewis and Clark expedition
  • a. What experiences prior to the expedition had prepared Lewis and Clark for the expedition?
  • b. What kind of information did Jefferson want Lewis and Clark to Collect on their journey?
  • c. Other than Lewis and Clark, who else traveled with the expedition? What were their roles?  (i.e. John Colter, York, Charbonneau, Sacagawea)  
  • d. What regions did the Lewis and Clark expedition explore?
  • e. Why was the Lewis and Clark expedition important?
  • ​f.  When did it occur?
  • g.  What was the fate of the members of the expedition?
    • ​Be specific and share the fate of not simply Lewis and Clark but other members of the expedition as well.  Tell stories that link their stories to the history of the American West.
Your Thesis:
SO WHAT?  While completing your research what conclusions did you draw? Why does this topic matter, how do the events you studied change history?  Write a one paragraph thesis that addresses what is important about this subject & what should people remember.​
Part II:  Exploration of the West
3: Analyze the Pike expedition
  • a. What experiences prior to the expedition had prepared Zebulon Pike for the expedition?
  • b.What kind of information was Zebulon Pike supposed to collect on his journey?
  • c. Other than Zebulon Pike, who else traveled with the expedition? What were their roles?
  • d. What regions did Pike explore?
  • e. Why was the Pike expedition important?
  • f.  When did it occur?
  • g.  Why did the Spanish jail him?

4: Analyze the Fremont expedition
  • a. What experiences prior the the expedition had prepared John C Fremont for the expedition?
  • b. What kind of information did Fremont collect on his journey?
  • c. Other than Fremont who else traveled with the expedition? What were their roles?  (Carson & the cartographers) 
  • e. What regions did Fremont explore?
  • f.  When did it occur?
  • g.  How did Fremont's expedition lead to the exploration of the West?
  • h.  What was Fremont's fate?
​​Your Thesis:
SO WHAT?  While completing your research what conclusions did you draw? Why does this topic matter, how do the events you studied change history?  Write a one paragraph thesis that addresses what is important about this subject & what should people remember.​

Web links to Research, Project Helps and Online Presentation Assistance

The "Project Assistance" button above will give you access to numerous websites that can assist you in creating web based projects.  Regardless of your chosen project take a few minutes to review the available web sites, you might find something you were not previously aware of that will be of interest to you!
The "Willowcreek Library Texts and Tools" button above will link you to the Alexandria Library.  Within the Alexandria library any books with the call number starting with "REF" or a number are informational texts, conversely any call number starting with "FIC", "PB", or "SC" are fictional texts.  To access books tagged for the Revolutionary war, go to the search page, type in  "ness rev war", and hit search. on the top right hand corner click on the "find more" box. To assist in your search, go to the top drop down menu "unsorted" and sort by "Call Number", this will categorize the fiction and informational texts,posting the informational texts (excluding reference texts) on the top; in addition it will indicate the order of the texts on the stacks.  Identify the call number to find the text on the stacks.

Page number Specialty Area 2 Exploring the West

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Call to Freedom
Pages: 302-307

American History 
Pages:361-367

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Discovering Our Past
Chapter 10: pages,265-277

Instructor Created Materials

CTF Readings to complete pg 58 in student workbook

Below is a fabulous student presentation by Austin.  It addresses the questions in SA 19

Student Created Materials

Kaitlyn & Manifest Destiny

Suggested Websites for Specialty Area 

Suggested Novels for Specialty Area 2

Title:  The Journal of Augustus Pelletier: the Lewis and Clark Expedition
Author: Kathryn Laskyst
Synopsis: A fictional journal kept by 12-year old Augustus Pelletier, the youngest member of Lewis and Clark's corps of Discovery.
Title:New found land
Author: Allan Wolf
Synopsis: The letter and though  of Thomas Jefferson, members of the Corps of Discovery, their guide Sacagawea, and Captain Lewis's Newfoundland dog, all tell of the historic exploratory expedition to seek a water route to the Pacific Ocean.
Title: The second bend in the river
Author: Ann Rinaldi
Synopsis: In 1798 Rebecca, a young settler in the Ohio territory, meets the Shawnee called Tecumseh and later develops a deep friendship with him.
Title: The captain's dog: My journey with the Lewis and Clark tribe
Author: Roland Smith
Synopsis: Captain Meriwether Lewis's dog Seaman describes his experience and he accompanies his master on the Lewis and Clark expedition to explore the uncharted western wildness.
Title Lewis and Clark and me: a dog's tale
Author:Laurie Myers ; illustrations by Michael Dooling
Synopsis: As war breaks out between Mexico and the United States over the territory of Texas in 1846, twelve-year old Bonita, a patriotic Mexican, is at odds with her best friend Carmen, a Spanish-American.
Title: Beyond the great snow mountains
Author: Louis L'Amour
Synopsis: By the water of San Tadeo -- Meeting at Falmouth -- Roundup in Texas -- Sideshow champion -- Crash landing Under the hanging wall -- Coast patrol -- The gravel pit -- The money punch -- Beyond the great snow mountains -- A note on dedication -- Afterword. A collection of ten short stories by louis L'Amour.
Title: I have heard of a land
Author: Joyce Carol Thomas ; illustrated by Floyd Cooper
Describes the experiences of an African American pioneer woman who stakes a claim for free land in the Oklahoma Territory.
Title: Jenny of the Tetons
Author: Kristiana Gregory
Orphaned by an Indian raid while traveling West with a wagon train, fifteen year old Carrie Hill is befriended by the English trapper Beaver Dick and taken to live with his Indian wife Jenny and there six kids.
Title: The last rider: the final days of the pony express GRAPHIC NOVEL
Author: J. Gunderson ; illustrated
Title: By the Great Horn Spoon!
Author: Sid Fleischman ; illustrated by Eric von Schidt
Jack and his aunt's butler, Praiseworthy , stow away on a ship bound for California during the Gold Rush of "49"
Title: The Collected short stories of Louis L'Amour
Author: Louis L'Amour
A collection of frontier stories by the acclaimed author.
Title: The devil's paintbox
Author: Victoria McKernan
Orphans Aidan and his sister Maddy leave drought-stricken kansas on a wagon train hoping for a better life in Seattle.
Title: Doe Sia:Bannock girl and the handcart pioneers
Author: Kenneth Thomasma ; Agnes Vincen Talbot, illustrator
After meeting Emma, who is part of a band of a band of Mormons making their way to Salt Lake City in 1856, Doe Sia, a young Bannock girl, proves her friendship when the two are caught in a brutal snow storm.
Title: The journal of Brian Doyle: a greenhorn on a Alaskan whaling ship
Author: Jim Murphy
A fictional diary in which young Brian Doyle records how he ran from his home in San Francisco in 1784, joined the crew of a whaling ship, and endured storms, hostile shipmates, and being stranded in the Arctic.
Title: The game of silence
Author: Louise Erdrich
Sequel to: The birchbark house. nine year old Omakayas, of the Ojibwa tribe, moves west with her family in 1849.
Title: The journal of Douglas Allen Deeds: the Donner Party expedition
Author: Rodman Philbrick
Douglas Deeds, a fifteen year old orphan, keeps a journal of his travels by wagon as a member of the ill fated Donner Party, which became stranded in the Sierra Nevada mountains in the winter of 1846-47
Title: High trail to danger
Author: Joan Lowery Nixon
In 1879 seventeen year old Sarah travels from Chicago to the violent town of Leadtown, Colorado, to locate her missing father, but she finds that the mention of his name brings her strange looks and an attempt on her life.
Title: Boston Jane : An adventure
Author: Jennifer L. Holm.
Sequel: Boston Jane: wilderness days. Schooled in the lessons of etiquette for young ladies of 1854, Miss Jane Peck of Philadelphia finds little use for manners during her long sea voyage to the Pacific Northwest and while living among the American traders and Chinook Indians of Washington Territory.
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See Below For Available Films and Podcasts Related to Specialty Area 

1804-06 Lewis and Clark Expedition Documentary

National Geographic doc. on the 1804-06 Corps of Discovery

Heart of the Heartland by Peter Ostroushko

A video montage of the Lewis and Clark Journey featuring Heart of the Heartland by Peter Ostroushko played on a Sobell mandolin, Santa Cruz OM, Wheatstone Aeola and a double bass.

PBS Ken Burns Lewis & Clark  (1 of 6)

A PBS documentary written and directed by Ken Burns, in 2008.  Lewis & Clark: The Journey of the Corps of Discovery is a production of Florentine Films and WETA, Washington, D.C.

PBS Ken Burns Lewis & Clark  (2 of 6)

PBS Ken Burns Lewis & Clark  (3 of 6)

PBS Ken Burns Lewis & Clark  (4 of 6)

PBS Ken Burns Lewis & Clark  (5 of 6)

PBS Ken Burns Lewis & Clark  (6 of 6)

Frontier Fighters - Zebulon Pike

One of the most popular radio programs of 1935 was Frontier Fighters, a program that presented dramatizations of the settlement of the American West. There is a constant theme that runs through each episode--the sacrifice men and women made to advance the frontier and to settle the West is what made America a strong independent nation. The message for radio audiences was that all Americans in the 1930s had the strength of their ancestors; the nation would endure. Episodes included dramatizations centering on Lewis and Clark, Marcus Whitman, The Fall of the Alamo, Grenville Dodge and Leland Stanford, Oklahoma Land Run, Alaska, Dakota Territory and the Bozeman Trail, just to name a few. 
Tonight's Story: Zebulon Point
Original Air Date: 1935
Episode Number: 

Key Individuals in the Exploration and Colonization of the American West