Railroads, Law, and the American West ebook

What drove a continent to be claimed in a single generation, and what did it cost to call it progress? The American West was not discovered but built—by land grants, rail corridors, and legal frameworks that turned open spaces into private property. This history traces the machinery of expansion: how the Homestead Act moved families into territories, how the transcontinental railroad carved lines through sovereign lands, and how federal policy created a logic of ownership that erased older claims.