Great Plains

File:Map of Great Plains.svg

The Great Plains covers much of the central United States, portions of Canada and Mexico. The 100th meridian west is denoted with the red line.

The Great Plains are the broad expanse of prairie and steppe that lie east of the Rocky Mountains in the United States and Canada. This area covers parts of the U.S. states of Colorado, Kansas, Montana, Nebraska, New Mexico, North Dakota, Oklahoma, South Dakota, Texas and Wyoming, and the Canadian provinces of Alberta, Manitoba, and Saskatchewan. In Canada the term prairie is more common, and the region is known as the Prairie Provinces or simply "the Prairies".

The region is about 500 miles (800 km) east to west and 2,000 miles (3,200 km) north to south. Much of the region was home to gigantic bison) herds until their decimation during the mid/late 1800s.

Geography

Some current thinking regarding the geographic location of the Great Plains is shown by a map [1] at the Center for Great Plains Studies at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln. It extends the eastern boundary of the Great Plains down the Assiniboine River to Winnipeg, Canada, southward down the Red River of the North to South Dakota’s and Nebraska’s eastern border then down the Missouri River to Kansas City, down the eastern border of Kansas to Oklahoma where it breaks southwest toward Oklahoma City before continuing south through Ft. Worth and central Texas then west toward the Big Bend of the Rio Grande River.

Geology

Great Plains near Kearney, Nebraska

The Great Plains are the westernmost portion of the vast North American Interior Plains, which extend east to the Appalachian Plateau. The United States Geological Survey divides the Great Plains in the United States into 10 subdivisions:

• Missouri Plateau, glaciated – east-central South Dakota, northern and eastern North Dakota and northeastern Montana
• Missouri Plateau, unglaciated – western South Dakota, northeastern Wyoming, southwestern South Dakota and southeastern Montana
• Black Hills – western South Dakota
• High Plains – eastern New Mexico, northwestern Texas, western Oklahoma, eastern Colorado, western Kansas, most of Nebraska (including the Sand Hills) and southeastern Wyoming
• Plains Border – central Kansas and northern Oklahoma (including the Flint, Red and Smoky Hills)
• Colorado Piedmont – eastern Colorado
• Raton section – northeastern New Mexico
• Pecos Valley – eastern New Mexico
• Edwards Plateau – south-central Texas
• Central Texas section – central Texas

The High Plains is used in a more general context to describe the elevated regions of the Great Plains, which are primarily west of the 100th meridian. The 100th meridian roughly corresponds with the line that divides the Great Plains into an area that receives 20 inches (500 mm) or more of rainfall per year and an area that receives less than 20 inches (500 mm). In this context, the High Plains is semi-arid steppe land and is generally characterized by rangeland or marginal farmland. The region is periodically subjected to extended periods of drought; high winds in the region may then generate devastating dust storms.

During the Cretaceous Period (145-65 million years ago), the Great Plains was covered by a shallow inland sea called Western Interior Seaway. By the Late Cretaceous to the Paleocene (65-55 million years ago), the seaway had begun to recede, leaving behind thick marine deposits and a relatively flat terrain.

Flora and fauna

The Great Plains are part of the floristic North American Prairies Province, which extends from the Rocky Mountains to the Appalachian Mountains.

The North American Prairies Province is a large grassland bounded by the Canadian coniferous forests on the north and the arid semi-deserts to the southwest. The province itself is occupied by temperate grasslands, savannas, and shrub lands (including such eco-regions as the Flint Hills tall grasslands, Sand Hills, and High Plains). Endemism is rather limited in this province, and its boundaries are vague. During the Pleistocene much of the province was glaciated.

The American bison is the most famous animal of the Great Plains. Other mammals are ground squirrels, prairie dogs, and rabbits. The swift fox was once very common, but humans have almost caused them to become extinct. Poisoning and hunting meant to kill wolves and coyotes often inadvertently harms the swift fox, and its habitat is rapidly being destroyed by humans.

History

Pre-European contact

Historically, the Great Plains were the range of the bison and of the Great Plains culture of the Native American tribes of the Blackfeet, Crow, Sioux, Cheyenne, Arapaho, Comanche and others. Eastern portions of the Great Plains were inhabited by tribes that lived in semipermanent villages of earth lodges, such as the Arikara, Mandan, Pawnee, and Wichita.

European contact

With the arrival of Francisco Vásquez de Coronado, a Spanish conquistador, the first recorded history of Europeans in the Great Plains happened in Texas, Kansas, and Nebraska from 1540-1542. In that same period, Hernando de Soto crossed a west-northwest direction in what is now Oklahoma and Texas. The Spanish thought the Great Plains were the location of the mythological Quivira and Cíbola, a place rich in gold.

In the next one hundred years the fur trade injected thousands of Europeans onto the Great Plains, as fur trappers from France, Spain, Britain, Russia, and the young United States made their way across much of the region. With the Louisiana Purchase in 1803 and subsequent Lewis and Clark Expedition in 1804, the Great Plains became more accessible. A major fur trading site was located at Fort Lisa on the Missouri River in Nebraska. This type of early settlement opened the door to vast westward expansion, with settlements rising across the Great Plains.

Bison were once very numerous, but overhunting resulted in their near extinction. Herds were reduced from about 30 million in the 1500s to about 1,000 individuals, though the species has made a recovery. Bison are often called buffalo in North America, but this is incorrect since true buffalo are native only to Asia and Africa.

Early settlements on the Great Plains

• Fort Lisa (1812-1823) was established in 1812 by famed fur trader Manuel Lisa and the Missouri Fur Company in the present-day neighborhood of North Omaha in Nebraska. It was associated with several firsts in Nebraska history, including Lisa as the first European farmer in Nebraska,; the first American settlement set up in the then-recent Louisiana Purchase; the first woman resident of European descent in Nebraska (Lisa's third wife); and the first steamboat to navigate Nebraska waters, the Western Engineer, which arrived at Fort Lisa on September 19, 1819.

• Fontenelle's Post, first known as Pilcher's Post and also the basis of the community of Bellevue, was built in 1822 in the Nebraska Territory by trader Joshua Pilcher, as president of the Missouri Fur Company. Located on the Missouri River, it was among the first settlements by United States citizens in Nebraska. The post served as a central trading point with local Omaha, Otoe, Missouri, and Pawnee tribes. In 1828 Lucien Fontenelle, a French-American fur trader representing the American Fur Company, bought the post and became the lead agent. In 1832 he sold the post to the U.S. government, which used it for the Missouri River Indian Agency (or Bellevue Agency) until about 1842. The post also served as the first home of Moses and Eliza Merrill, Baptist missionaries who arrived in 1833. The Indian agent offered them the trading post building as a temporary home. The Merrills founded the first Christian mission in Nebraska Territory in 1835.
• Cabanne's Trading Post was established in 1822 by the American Fur Company as Fort Robidoux near present-day Dodge Park in North Omaha, Nebraska. It was named for influential fur trapper Joseph Robidoux. Soon after it was opened, the post was called the French Company for the supposed nationality of its operator, who was actually born and raised in St. Louis, Missouri. It was also called Cabanné's Post, named after its operator, Jean Pierre Cabanné. Located 10 miles north of Omaha, Nebraska, six miles south of Fort Atkinson, and 2 miles south of Fort Lisa, Cabanné's Post was an important link in relations between the United States and Native American tribes in the Louisiana Purchase. The Cabanné Archaeological Site was listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1972.

Pioneer settlement

This settlement led to the near-extinction of the buffalo and the removal of the Native Americans to reservations in the 1870s. Much of the Great Plains became open range, hosting ranching operations where anyone was theoretically free to run cattle. In the spring and fall, roundups were held and the new calves were branded and the cattle sorted out for sale. Ranching began in Texas and gradually moved northward. Texas cattle were driven north to railroad lines in cities such as Dodge City, Kansas, and Ogallala, Nebraska; from there, cattle were shipped eastward. Many foreign, especially British, investors financed the great ranches of the era. Overstocking of the range and the terrible winter of 1886 eventually resulted in a disaster, with many cattle starved and frozen. From then onward, ranchers generally turned to raising feed in order to winter their cattle over.

Pioneer towns on the Great Plains included:

• Sioux City, Iowa
• Sioux Falls, South Dakota
• Fargo, North Dakota
• Pierre, South Dakota
• Omaha, Nebraska
• St. Joseph, Missouri
• Las Vegas, New Mexico
• Florence, Nebraska
• Cutler's Park, Nebraska Territory

The Homestead Act of 1862 provided that a settler could claim up to 160 acres (65 hectares) of land, provided that he lived on it for a period of five years and cultivated it. This was later expanded under the Kinkaid Act to include a homestead of an entire section. Hundreds of thousands of people claimed these homesteads, sometimes building sod houses out of the very turf of their land. Many of them were not skilled dryland farmers and failures were frequent. Germans from Russia who had previously farmed in similar circumstances in what is now Ukraine were marginally more successful than the average homesteader.

After 1900

The region roughly centered on the Oklahoma Panhandle, including southeastern Colorado, southwestern Kansas, the Texas Panhandle, and extreme northeastern New Mexico was known as the Dust Bowl during the late 1920s and early 1930s. The effect of the drought combined with the effects of the Great Depression, forced many farmers off the land throughout the Great Plains.

From the 1950s, on, many areas of the Great Plains have become productive crop-growing areas because of extensive irrigation. The southern portion of the Great Plains lies over the Ogallala Aquifer, a vast underground layer of water-bearing strata dating from the last ice age. Center pivot irrigation is used extensively in drier sections of the Great Plains, resulting in aquifer depletion at a rate that is greater than the ground's ability to recharge.

Looking to the future

Abandoned gas station west of North Platte, Nebraska

The rural Plains have lost a third of their population since 1920. Several hundred thousand square miles of the Great Plains have fewer than six persons per square mile—the density standard Frederick Jackson Turner used to declare the American frontier "closed" in 1893. Many have fewer than two persons per square mile. There are more than 6,000 ghost towns in Kansas alone, according to Kansas historian Daniel Fitzgerald. This problem is often exacerbated by the consolidation of farms and the difficulty of attracting modern industry to the region. In addition, the smaller school-age population has forced the consolidation of school districts and the closure of high schools in some communities. This continuing population loss has led some to suggest that the current use of the drier parts of the Great Plains is not sustainable, and propose that large parts be restored to native grassland grazed by bison.

Wind power

The Great Plains contribute substantially to wind power in the United States. In July 2008, oilman turned wind-farm developer, T. Boone Pickens, called for the U.S. to invest $1 trillion to build an additional 200,000 MW of wind power nameplate capacity in the Plains, as part of his Pickens Plan. Pickens cited Sweetwater, Texas as an example of economic revitalization driven by wind power development. Sweetwater was a struggling town typical of the Plains, steadily losing businesses and population, until wind turbines came to the surrounding Nolan County. Wind power brought jobs to local residents, along with royalty payments to landowners who leased sites for turbines, reversing the town's population decline. Pickens claims the same economic benefits are possible throughout the Plains, which he refers to as North America's "wind corridor."

References

ISBN links support NWE through referral fees

• Chokecherry Places, Essays from the High Plains, Merrill Gilfillan, Johnson Press, Boulder, Colorado, trade paperback, ISBN 1-55566-227-7.
• Colorado Without Mountains, A High Plains Memoir, Harold Hamil, The Lowell Press, Kansas City, Missouri, 1976, Hardback, 284 pages, ISBN 0-913504-33-5.
• Down and Out on the Family Farm: Rural Rehabilitation in the Great Plains, 1929-1945, Michael Johnston Grant, University of Nebraska Press, 2002, ISBN 0-8032-7105-0
• The Dust Bowl: Men, Dirt, and Depression, Paul Bonnifield, University of New Mexico Press, Albuquerque, New Mexico, 1978, hardcover, ISBN 0-8263-0485-0.
• Encyclopedia of the Great Plains, David J. Wishart, University of Nebraska Press, 2004, ISBN 0-8032-4787-7.
• Woody Landscape Plants for the High Plains, D. H. Fairchild and J. E. Klete, Colorado State University, 1993, Technical Bulletin LTB93-1 (Contact CSU to buy this).
• Wolf Willow, A history, a story, and a memory of the last plains frontier, Wallace Stegner, Viking Compass Book, New York, 1966, trade paperback, ISBN 0-670-00197-X
• The Tie That Binds (1984), a novel about farming by Kent Haruf, Vintage Books 2000, paperback, ISBN 0-375-72438-9.

External links

• North Dakota State University: The Geologic Story of The Great Plains
• Kansas Heritage Group: Native Prairie, Preseve, Flowers, and Research
• Library of Congress: Great Plains
• University of Nebraska-Lincoln: The Great Plains Study

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