The beginning of the Long Depression in 1873 is typically marked by the crash of the Vienna stock market, which sent ripples across Europe and eventually the United States with the fall of Jay Cooke & Company. Read More
Also around that time
1872
- "Buffalo Bill" Cody is awarded the Congressional Medal of Honor for his service as a scout against the Cheyenne. The same year Cody begins his theatrical career, appearing as "Buffalo Bill" in Ned Buntline's The Scouts of the Plains.
1873
- Cable cars are introduced in San Francisco.
- Although federal authorities estimate that hunters are killing buffalo at a rate of three million per year, President Grant vetoes a law protecting the herd from extermination.
1874
- Mennonite immigrants from Russia arrive in Kansas with drought-resistant "Turkey Red" wheat, which will help turn the one-time "Great American Desert" into the nation's breadbasket.
- Joseph Glidden receives a patent for barbed wire which, with the destruction of the buffalo, will open the plains to more efficient agriculture and ranching.
- George Armstrong Custer announces the discovery of gold in the Black Hills of Dakota. Although the 1868 Fort Laramie Treaty requires the government to protect Lakota lands from white intruders, federal authorities work instead to protect the miners already crowding along the path they call "Freedom's Trail" and the Lakota call "Thieve's Road."
1875
- Pinkerton agents fire-bomb the James family farm in Missouri in an unsuccessful attempt to kill the notorious outlaws. The incident stirs widespread sympathy for the James Gang, who are seen as populist enemies of the banks and railroads who "rob" the common man.
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