| A | B |
|---|
| mountain man | fur trapper or explorer who opened up the West by finding the best trails through the Rocky Mountains |
| land speculator | a person who buys huge areas of land for a low price and then sells off small sections of it at high prices. |
| Santa Fe Trail | trail that began in Missouri and ended in Santa Fe, New Mexico |
| Oregon Trail | trail that ran westward from Independence, Missouri, to the Oregon Territory |
| Lone Star Republic | nickname of the republic of Texas, given in 1836 |
| James K. Polk | president of US during the War with Mexico |
| manifest destiny | belief that the US was destined to stretch across the continent from the Atlantic Ocean to the Pacific Ocean |
| Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo | 1848 treaty ending the US war with Mexico; Mexico ceded nearly one-half of its land to the US |
| Mexican Cession | a vast region given up by Mexico after the War with Mexico; it included the present-day states of California,Nevada,Utah, most of Arizona, and parts of New Mexico, Colorado, and Wyoming |
| forty-niner | a person who went to California to find gold, starting in 1849 |
| California gold rush | in 1849,large numbers of people moved to California because gold had been discovered there. |
| 53 / 40 or Fight | motto of Americans wanting to fight the British for the Oregon Territory |
| Oregon Territory | Territory in the northeast corner of the United States controlled by both Great Britain and the United States until 1848. |
| Gadsden Purchase | A piece of land in what is now Arizona and New Mexico that was purchased by the United States for 10 million dollars in 1853. The United States needed the land for a railroad. |
