Manifold Destiny: Get your motor runnin', head out on the high grass.

An Integrated, Interdisciplinary, Thematic, Standards-based Unit on the expansion of the United States into the western regions of North America during the 1800s The expansion of the United States westward, and the attitudes/skills that led to it, made a huge impact on the way the country operates and functions today. The expansion not only increased the land area of the U.S. but it increased knowledge of geography, trading, and sparked technological advances. Students should know the history behind their state and region. Essential geography, history, and civics concepts include: the reasons that settlers and other groups headed west; the geographical obstacles to travel such as mountains, large rivers, deserts, canyons; the resources that were discovered; the interactions between different cultural groups as a result of moving into new territory; the impact of expansion on Native American culture; an understanding of the reasons behind unequal population and economic growth in different areas of the West