Laura Ingalls Wilder - Frontier Girl

http://webpages.marshall.edu/~irby1/laura.htmlx

Rating: 1, Awesome!

Description: This site is a rich set of resources about Laura Ingalls Wilder with pages on her life, homes, family and friends. There are links to other sites about the American West and material on the Wilder books. Standards 1.4.1, 1.4.2, 2.4.1 and 5.8.4

Comments: There are activities and opportunities for students to interact with the site leaders.

Resource Type: Mix of Text and Graphics.

Graphics content: High.

Resource ID: 1935

Legacies of the Gold Rush: Of Dreams and Dirt

http://www.museumca.org/goldrush/fever20.html

Rating: 1, Awesome!

Description: This virtual museum traces the history of California's Gold Rush through online exhibits related to the people who lived in California before discovery, mining methods, other ways of earning a living, the roads to California, the new people who migrated to the West, and early statehood. Users may access events by date and through primary resource exhibits on individual people or events. Standards 4.3 all, 5.8.6, 8.8.3 and 8.8.5

Comments: This resource by the Golden State Museum is the real treasure.

Resource Type: Other.

Graphics content: High.

Resource ID: 1945

Lewis and Clark Bicentennial

http://www.time.com/time/2002/lewis_clark/

Rating: 1, Awesome!

Description: You will be captivated by the Time Magazine site Lewis and Clark Bicentennial. There is a photo essay of what life would have been like along the trail with original pages from the Lewis and Clark Journals. There are biographical sketches of the explorer team and maps retracing the entire adventure. Standards 5.8.3 and 8.8.2

Comments: The photography is breathtaking.

Resource Type: Mix of Text and Graphics.

Graphics content: High.

Resource ID: 1964

Lewis and Clark: The Journey of the Corps of Discovery

http://www.pbs.org/lewisandclark/

Rating: 1, Awesome!

Description: Designed to compliment the PBS production by the same name, this site includes many invaluable resources including information about the people in the Lewis and Clark Expedition, articles about their equipment, excerpts from the journals they kept, information about the various Indian tribes they encountered, material about the animals and plants that they found, and a timeline of the journey. There is also an interactive story for students and classroom resources for teachers. Standards 5.8.3 and 8.8.2

Resource Type: Mix of Text and Graphics.

Graphics content: High.

Resource ID: 1966

Louisiana Purchase Treaty (1803)

http://www.ourdocuments.gov/doc.php?doc=18

Rating: 1, Awesome!

Description: By the Louisiana Purchase Treaty with France, signed on April 30, 1803, the United States purchased 828,000 square miles of land west of the Mississippi River for $15 million. For roughly 4 cents an acre, the United States doubled its size, expanding the nation westward. This action forever changed the future of American settlement and the sovereignty of Native American lands. Standards 5.8.3 and 8.4.1

Comments: This Our Documents site has a facsimile of the original document, a transcription and background information to help the reader put it in context.

Resource Type: Primary Source Text.

Graphics content: High.

Resource ID: 2022

McGuffey Eclectic Fifth Reader

http://digital.library.pitt.edu/cgi-bin/t/text/text-idx?c=nietz

Rating: 1, Awesome!

Description: Written by William Holmes McGuffey 1800-1873, McGuffey's Readers were used by children all across the United States, including the West in the middle and late 1800s. This electronic version allows us all to touch the past. Standard 5.8.0

Comments: Compare the content of the literature selections and grammar exercises to a modern textbook.

Resource Type: Primary Source Text.

Graphics content: High.

Resource ID: 2133

Mountain Men and the Fur Trade

http://www.xmission.com/~drudy/amm.html

Rating: 1, Awesome!

Description: This web site provides a virtual research center for Western Fur Trade History. The main focus is the Mountain Men in the United States Rocky Mountain region in the period from 1800-50. Wonderful photos of explorers and artifacts make it a useful resource for students of all ages. Standards 5.8.3, 5.8.4, and 8.8.2

Comments: These documents have been transcribed from printed or manuscript form. The resulting text files have been manually checked and edited to conform to the original source. In most cases, any spelling or grammatical errors from the original have been retained. The site is operated by a vounteer historical association, the American Mountain Men.

Resource Type: Mix of Text and Graphics.

Graphics content: High.

Resource ID: 2209

New Perspectives on the West

http://www.pbs.org/weta/thewest/program/

Rating: 1, Awesome!

Description: This rich PBS site accompanies the television series by Ken Burns and Stephen Ives. Tour the television series, explore events through an interactive timeline, read primary documents and journals recording events of the West, or explore places through an interactive map. Standards 5.6.6, 5.8.4, and 8.8.2

Comments: The search feature and the e-mail option make this site extremely valuable.

Resource Type: Mix of Text and Graphics.

Graphics content: High.

Resource ID: 2308

Oregon Trail

http://www.endoftheoregontrail.org/histhome.html

Rating: 1, Awesome!

Description: View a diagram of a "prarie schooner," learn about specific pioneers, and read primary accounts about life on the trail. The section on Claiming the Farm and Surveying the Land have important information about how land was claimed and registered, a system that affected California as well as Oregon. It favored the agressive land development entrepreneur rather than the Mexican Land Grant holders. Standards 4.4.4, 5.8.4 and 5.8.6

Comments: Easy to naivigate and lots of student friendly information.

Resource Type: Mix of Text and Graphics.

Graphics content: High.

Resource ID: 2375

Oregon Trail - The Trail West

http://www.americanwest.com/trails/pages/oretrail.htm

Rating: 1, Awesome!

Description: This site by the National Park Service describes the Oregon Trail, the guidebooks used by the pioneers and how they loaded their wagons. Standard 4.3.2 , 4.4.3. 5.8.4, and 8.8.2

Resource Type: Secondary Text.

Graphics content: Low.

Resource ID: 2374