Colonial Williamsburg

VOLUME 8, ISSUE 5

Top Stories

"After Lewis and Clark"

During the first decade of the nineteenth century, the geographic image of western North America began to change dramatically. Based on the observations of Lewis and Clark, information gathered from native people, and Clark's own cartographic imagination, this image evolved from an almost empty interior with a hypothetical single mountain range serving as a western continental divide, to an intricate one showing a tangle of mountains and rivers. A continent that had once seemed empty and simple was now becoming full and complex.

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Primary Source of the Month:
Map of the West

This map, created by Lieutenant G. K. Warren for the Office of Pacific Railroad Surveys, United States Department of War, was produced to determine the best placement for the United States' first transcontinental railroad. The original "general map," as it was called by the Department of War, took more than one year to complete.

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Teaching Strategy: Westward Expansion

Thomas Jefferson's negotiated purchase of the Louisiana Territory from France in 1803 doubled the size of the United States. Interest in expanding the nation's boundaries from the Atlantic to the Pacific gained momentum. What followed was a series of explorations, negotiated settlements, wars, and cultural integration that continued well into the nineteenth century. In this lesson, students will examine the difficulties of moving west and map the routes and regions explored during this expansion.

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Colonial Williamsburg Teaching Resources for Your Classroom

Colonial Williamsburg offers a variety of quality instructional materials dealing with 18th-century life, including:

• Mapping Colonial America (interactive
  CD-ROM)
• Virginians at Home: Family Life in the Eighteenth Century (book)
• Eye of the Beholder: Looking at Primary Sources (Lesson unit)

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Teaching News

National History Day
Are you familiar with the National History Day program? It is a history competition for students in grades six through twelve that engages students in the process of discovery and interpretation of historical topics. Students produce dramatic performances, imaginative exhibits, multimedia documentaries, Web sites, and research papers based on research related to an annual theme. All projects are evaluated at local, state, and national competitions held each spring and early summer.

The 2010 theme is "Innovation in History: Impact and Change."

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2010 Colonial Williamsburg Teacher Institute Scholarship Application Deadline
The Colonial Williamsburg Teacher Institute in Early American History is accepting scholarship applications for the 2010 Summer Program. The deadline is January 22, 2010. Visit our Web site for more information, or contact the Institute Registrar at (757) 565-8417 or ekrapf@cwf.org. We hope to see your application soon!

Quotation of the Month

". . . the fulfillment of our manifest destiny [is] to overspread the continent allotted by Providence for the free development of our yearly multiplying millions."

—John O'Sullivan, "Annexation," The United States Democratic Review, July 1845

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