Through the Ages – The Prodigal
The Wild Wild West
Yeehar! Gunslingers and dancing girls, horses and covered wagons, Cowboys and Indians.
What a busy time it was, the 1800’s in America. The Gold Rush, the Fur Trade, Pioneers making their way across country to start a new life in the land of opportunity.
DID YOU KNOW…
The Gold Rush
1. Butter Yellow Colour
2. First gold was found on the roots of wild onions in California.
3. An Avalanche on April 3rd 1898 claimed the lives of 65 gold diggers in the Klondike area.
4. More than 3,000 animals died on the White Pass Trail in the Klondike area during the Gold Rush.
5. In Dyea, a town in the Klondike area, there were 48 Hotels, 47 Restaurants and 39 Taverns at the height of The Gold Rush.
6. In 1849 the average wage of a factory worker was $1 for a 12 hour day. A gold digger could make up top $300 a day – Yeehar!
7. A pound of coffee would set you back $4, a cooked meal $25 and a weeks worth of washing $50! Get digging!
8. A year’s supplies would include 150lbs of bacon, 400lbs of flour, 25lbs of dried onions and 125lbs of beans.
9. It took between 3-7 months to complete the Oregon-California trail.
10. If you could survive the disease, malnutrition, mountain madness, hypothermia, sunstroke and dodgy gold digging types, AND find gold into the bargain, you might just end up a rich man
Pioneer Food
1. More antelope were killed for food than buffalo.
2. Barley was made into coffee when pioneers ran out of the real thing.
3. Bacon was often eaten twice a day.
4. Main meals were breakfast and supper with lunch just being a few leftovers.
5. Milk would be put into a churn on the wagon and all the movement would turn the cream into butter by nightfall.
6. Bread dipped in bacon fat was called hot flour bread.
7. A lot of soup was made as well as a thick gloopy kind of jelly from boiled down bones.
8. Bread was part of the staple diet and was baked daily at the camp sites.
9. Hard tack – thick unsalted biscuits that could keep for 2 years!
10. In the bad weather when bread could not be made or animals hunted, hard tack dipped in coffee was the only food on offer.
Top Ten Cowboys
1. Annie Oakley
2. Black Bart
3. Billy the Kid
4. Calamity Jane
5. Doc Holliday
6. Pat Garrett
7. Butch Cassidy
8. Wyatt Earp
9. Buffalo Bill Cody
10. Jesse James
Top Ten Indians
1. Chief Kicking Bird
2. Red Cloud
3. Sitting Bull
4. Crazy Horse
5. Geronimo
6. Roman Nose
7. Chief Bigfoot
8. Satanta
9. Apache Kid
10. Rain in the Face
Hope you enjoyed this here look into the Wild West, whip crack away, whip crack away, see ya’ll later, yeeeehah!