Westward Expansion Word Search
This Westward Expansion word search follows the country as it spread to the Pacific: Manifest Destiny, the covered wagon and the Oregon Trail, pioneers on the prairie, the Homestead Act, Sacagawea, the Donner Party and the Golden Spike that joined the railroads.
A newspaper editor, John O'Sullivan, coined the phrase Manifest Destiny in 1845, the year the United States annexed Texas. The war with Mexico ended in 1848 with the Mexican Cession, which added California and most of the Southwest. Wagon trains left Independence, Missouri, each spring for a trip of about 2,000 miles to Oregon that took four to six months, and most emigrants walked beside the oxen rather than ride.
On the Great Plains, where trees were scarce, settlers cut blocks of sod and built houses from the ground itself. The Donner Party was trapped by snow in the Sierra Nevada in the winter of 1846, and nearly half of its 87 members died. The transcontinental railroad was finished on May 10, 1869, when a golden spike was driven at Promontory Summit, Utah, and a trip across the country fell from months to about a week.
Free Westward Expansion Word Search Online Game
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Westward Expansion Word Search Printable Puzzles
Three sheets to choose from, free to print or download as a PDF. Pick a difficulty below, or open the printable Westward Expansion word search page to see all three together, generate a fresh grid, and check the full word list.
Hard
15x15 grid, up to 23 hidden words
Print or Download pdfMedium
12x12 grid, up to 15 hidden words
Print or Download pdfEasy
10x10 grid, 5 words across and down
Print or Download pdf
Puzzle Vocabulary Words
Below you can see all possible words that the topic Westward Expansion has.
Depends on difficulty level you select in the game amount of words hidden in the puzzle will be different.
In Easy game you have to find up to 5 words, medium game can have up to 15 words and hard puzzle can have up to 23 words.
Every time you start a new game - our word search generator will pick random words to build the puzzle.
- Acres
- Annexation
- Axle
- Buffalo
- Cession
- Cherokee
- Claim
- Covered Wagon
- Donner Party
- Expedition
- Frontier
- Golden Spike
- Great Plains
- Homestead
- Independence
- Laramie
- Louisiana
- Manifest Destiny
- Mississippi
- Missouri
- Mormon
- Oregon Trail
- Oxen
- Pacific
- Pioneers
- Prairie
- Raft
- Rations
- Removal
- Reservation
- Rocky Mountains
- Sacagawea
- Scout
- Settlers
- Soddy
- Stagecoach
- Surveyor
- Texas
- Wagon Train
- Yoke