APUSH timeline: All 9 periods from 1491 to present in one map

APUSH covers more than 500 years in a single school year, which is a lot to hold in your head. The College Board splits the course into 9 periods, and every exam question is anchored to one of them. If you can sketch the timeline from memory, you already have the scaffolding you need for the DBQ, the LEQ and the short-answer questions.

This is that timeline. Nine periods, the dates, the exam weight for each, and a short list of the events and turning points you'll see over and over. Use it as a revision map: If a period feels blank, that's where to dig in next.

The Americas before Columbus were home to diverse societies, from Puebloan agriculturalists in the Southwest to Iroquois confederacies in the Northeast. European contact after 1492 triggered the Columbian Exchange, a two-way transfer of crops, animals, people and diseases that reshaped both hemispheres. Spanish colonization brought the encomienda system and mass demographic collapse among Indigenous populations.

Exam angle: Contextualization for the colonial period, and comparison of Spanish, French and English approaches to the Americas.

Jamestown (1607) and Plymouth (1620) mark the start of sustained English colonization. Regional differences hardened: A plantation and slave-based economy in the Chesapeake and Southern colonies, mixed-farming and shipping in the Middle Colonies, and religiously-driven town settlements in New England. The Atlantic slave trade expanded rapidly after Bacon's Rebellion (1676), which pushed planters toward racialized chattel slavery. Salutary neglect gave the colonies decades of practical self-government before Britain tightened its grip.

Key exam threads: Origins of American identity, labor systems, and the roots of self-governance.

The French and Indian War (1754-1763) ends salutary neglect. New taxes (Stamp Act, Townshend, Tea Act) provoke escalating protest, and by 1776 the colonies declare independence. The Revolution runs to 1783; the Articles of Confederation fail; the Constitution is drafted in 1787 and ratified with the Bill of Rights. Washington sets precedents, Hamilton builds a financial system, and the election of 1800 brings the first peaceful transfer of power between rival parties (Adams to Jefferson), closing the founding era.

High-yield events: Declaration, Constitutional Convention, Federalist Papers, Whiskey Rebellion, Adams' Alien and Sedition Acts.

Jefferson's Louisiana Purchase (1803) doubles the nation. The War of 1812, the Missouri Compromise (1820), the market revolution and the transportation revolution reshape the economy. Jacksonian democracy expands white male suffrage while forcibly removing Native nations (Indian Removal Act, Trail of Tears). Second Great Awakening fuels reform movements: Abolition, women's rights (Seneca Falls, 1848), temperance, prisons, education.

Key exam thread: How economic and religious change fed political reform, and how expansion sharpened the slavery question.

Manifest destiny drives the Mexican-American War and the Compromise of 1850. Kansas-Nebraska (1854), Dred Scott (1857) and John Brown's raid (1859) accelerate the split. Lincoln's 1860 election triggers secession. The Civil War (1861-1865) ends slavery via the Emancipation Proclamation and 13th Amendment. Reconstruction rewrites the Constitution (14th, 15th Amendments) but collapses with the Compromise of 1877, leaving Jim Crow to take hold in the following decades.

This period alone often supplies the DBQ or LEQ prompt. Know the causes of the war, the turning points (Antietam, Emancipation, Gettysburg, Vicksburg) and the phases of Reconstruction (Presidential, Radical, Redemption).

Railroads and steel drive industrialization; Carnegie, Rockefeller, Morgan build corporate empires. Immigration from Southern and Eastern Europe reshapes cities. Labor conflict flares (Great Railroad Strike 1877, Haymarket 1886, Homestead 1892, Pullman 1894). The West is settled by homesteaders, miners and railroads, at the cost of Native sovereignty (Dawes Act, Wounded Knee 1890). Populism rises in response to falling farm prices and monopoly power.

Exam angle: Continuity and change across the transition from agrarian to industrial society.

Progressive reformers push antitrust, income tax (16th), direct election of senators (17th), women's suffrage (19th) and Prohibition (18th, later repealed). The Spanish-American War (1898) starts US overseas empire. WWI (1917-1918), the Roaring Twenties, the 1929 Crash and the Great Depression follow in tight sequence. FDR's New Deal (1933-1938) redefines federal government. WWII (1941-1945) ends the Depression, reshapes the economy, and leaves the US as one of two superpowers.

Containment shapes foreign policy: Marshall Plan, NATO, Korean War, Vietnam. Domestically: Postwar prosperity, suburbanization, the baby boom. The civil rights movement runs from Brown v. Board (1954) through the Civil Rights Act (1964) and Voting Rights Act (1965). LBJ's Great Society expands the welfare state. Vietnam and Watergate corrode trust in government by the mid-1970s.

Key exam thread: How Cold War priorities interacted with domestic civil rights and social movements.

Reagan's election marks a rightward turn: Tax cuts, deregulation, defense buildup. The Cold War ends with the collapse of the Soviet Union (1991). Globalization, NAFTA, the rise of the internet and financial deregulation define the 1990s. Post-9/11 policy reshapes national security. 2008 financial crisis, Obama's election, and the polarization of the 2010s round out the period.

Lightweight on the exam (4-6%), but often shows up in contextualization or long-arc continuity questions.