Great Plains

File:Great Plains map.gif

The Great Plains covers much of the central United States and a portion of Canada.

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 3,000 miles (4,800 km) north to south. Much of the region was home to Native American tribes and gigantic bison herds until their decimation during the mid/late 1800s.

Many areas of the Great Plains have become productive crop-growing areas because of extensive irrigation.

Geography

The traditional line for marking the eastern boundary of the Great Plains was the 100th west meridian, but others say it should be drawn farther to the east and based on the amount of rainfall. Some current thinking regarding the geographic location of the Great Plains is shown by a map 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. To the north, the line dividing the Great Plains from the Canadian Shield crosses Lake Winnipeg and continues to the northwest, across Lake Athabasca, Great Slave Lake, and Great Bear Lake; it reaches the Arctic Ocean west of the Mackenzie delta.

Geology

Great Plains near Kearney, Nebraska.

The Missouri River carved the breaks into the central Montana landscape.

The Great Plains are the westernmost portion of the vast North American Interior Plains, which extend east to the Appalachian Plateau.

The Great Plains

A broad stretch of country underlaid by nearly horizontal strata extends westward from the 97th meridian to the base of the Rocky Mountains, a distance of from 300 to 500 miles (500 to 800 km). It extends northward from the Mexican boundary far into Canada. This is the province of the Great Plains. Although the altitude of the plains increases gradually from 6oo or 1,200 ft (370 m) on the east to 4,000-5,000 or 6,000 feet (1,800 m) near the mountains, the local relief is generally small. The sub-arid climate excludes tree growth and opens far-reaching views. The plains are by no means a simple unit. They are of diverse structure and of various stages of erosional development. They are occasionally interrupted by buttes and escarpments. They are frequently broken by valleys. Yet on the whole, a broadly extended surface of moderate relief so often prevails that the name, Great Plains, for the region as a whole is well deserved. The western boundary of the plains is usually well defined by the abrupt ascent of the mountains. The eastern boundary of the plains is more climatic than topographic. The line of 20 in. of annual rainfall trends a little east of northward near the 97th meridian. If a boundary must be drawn where nature presents only a gradual transition, this rainfall line may be taken to divide the drier plains from the moister prairies. The plains may be described in northern, intermediate, central and southern sections, in relation to certain peculiar features.

Northern Great Plains

The northern section of the Great Plains, north of latitude 44°, including eastern Montana, north-eastern Wyoming and most of the Dakotas, is a moderately dissected peneplain.

File:Missouri River Valley North Dakota 11.jpg

Missouri River Valley in Central North Dakota, near Stanton, ND

This is one of the best examples of its kind. The strata here are Cretaceous or early Tertiary, lying nearly horizontal. The surface is shown to be a plain of degradation by a gradual ascent here and there to the crest of a ragged escarpment, the escarpment-remnant of a resistant stratum. There are also the occasional lava-capped mesas and dike formed ridges, surmounting the general level by 500 ft (150 m) or more and manifestly demonstrating the widespread erosion of the surrounding plains. All these reliefs are more plentiful towards the mountains in central Montana. The peneplain is no longer in the cycle of erosion that witnessed its production. It appears to have suffered a regional uplift or increase in elevation, for the upper Missouri River and its branches no longer flow on the surface of the plain, but in well graded, maturely opened valleys, several hundred feet below the general level. A significant exception to the rule of mature valleys occurs, however, in the case of the Missouri, the largest river, which is broken by several falls on hard sandstones about 50 miles (80 km) east of the mountains. This peculiar feature is explained as the result of displacement of the river from a better graded preglacial valley by the Pleistocene ice sheet. Here, the ice sheet overspread the plains from the moderately elevated Canadian highlands far on the north-east, instead of from the much higher mountains near by on the west. The present altitude of the plains near the mountain base is 4,000 ft (1,200 m)

The northern plains are interrupted by several small mountain areas. The Black Hills, chiefly in western South Dakota, are the largest group. They rise like a large island from the sea, occupying an oval area of about 100 miles (160 km) north-south by 50 miles (80 km) east-west. At Harney Peak, they reach an altitude of 7,216 feet (2,199 m) and have an effective relief over the plains of 2000 or 3,000 ft (910 m) This mountain mass is of flat-arched, dome-like structure, now well dissected by radiating consequent streams. The weaker uppermost strata have been eroded down to the level of the plains where their upturned edges are evenly truncated. The next following harder strata have been sufficiently eroded to disclose the core of underlying igneous and metamorphic crystalline rocks in about half of the domed area.

Intermediate Great Plains

Miocene epoch layers under late Pleistocene and Holocene layers(Agate Fossil Beds National Monument, Nebraska

In the intermediate section of the plains, between latitudes 44° and 42°, including southern South Dakota and northern Nebraska, the erosion of certain large districts is peculiarly elaborate. Known as the Badlands, it is a minutely dissected form with a relief of a few hundred feet. This is due to several causes:

• the dry climate, which prevents the growth of a grassy turf
• the fine texture of the Tertiary strata in the badland districts
• every little rill, at times of rain, carves its own little valley.

Central Great Plains

The High Plains of Kansas, aka Smokey Hills near Nicodemus, Kansas

The central section of the Great Plains, between latitudes 42° and 36°, occupying eastern Colorado and western Kansas, is, briefly stated, for the most part a dissected fluviatile plain. That is, this section was once smoothly covered with a gently sloping plain of gravel and sand that had been spread far forward on a broad denuded area as a piedmont deposit by the rivers which issued from the mountains. Since then, it has been more or less dissected by the erosion of valleys. The central section of the plains thus presents a marked contrast to the northern section. For while the northern section owes its smoothness to the removal of local gravels and sands from a formerly uneven surface by the action of degrading rivers and their inflowing tributaries, the southern section owes its smoothness to the deposition of imported gravels and sands upon a previously uneven surface by the action of aggrading rivers and their outgoing distributaries. The two sections are also like in that residual eminences still here and there surmount the peneplain of the northern section, while the fluviatile plain of the central section completely buried the pre-existent relief. Exception to this statement must be made in the south-west, close to the mountains in southern Colorado, where some lava-capped mesas (Mesa de Maya, Raton Mesa) stand several thousand feet above the general plain level, and thus testify to the widespread erosion of this region before it was aggraded.

Southern Great Plains

The southern section of the Great Plains, between latitudes 35.5° and 25.5° lies in western Texas and eastern New Mexico. Like the central section, it is for the most part a dissected fluviatile plain. However, the lower lands which surround it on all sides place it in so strong relief that it stands up as a table-land, known from the time of Mexican occupation as the Llano Estacado. It measures roughly 150 miles (250 km) east-west and 400 miles (600 km) north-south. It is of very irregulal outline, narrowing to the south. Its altitude is 5500 feet at the highest western point, nearest the mountains whence its gravels were supplied. From there, it slopes southeastward at a decreasing rate, first about 12 ft., then about 7 ft per mile (1.3 m/km), to its eastern and southern borders, where it is 2000 ft. in altitude. Like the High Plains farther north, it is extraordinarily smooth.

It is very dry, except for occasional shallow and temporary water sheets after rains. The Llano is separated from the plains on the north by the mature consequent valley of the Canadian River, and from the mountains on the west by the broad and probably mature valley of the Pecos River. On the east, it is strongly undercut by the retrogressive erosion of the headwaters of the Red, Brazos and Colorado rivers of Texas and presents a ragged escarpment approximately 500 to 800 ft (240 m) high, overlooking the central denuded area of that state. There, between the Brazos and Colorado rivers, occurs a series of isolated outliers capped by a limestone which underlies both the Llano Uplift on the west and the Grand Prairies escarpment on the east. The southern and narrow part of the table-land, called the Edwards Plateau, is more dissected than the rest, and falls off to the south in a frayed-out fault scarp. As already mentioned, this scarp overlooks the coastal plain of the Rio Grande embayment. The central denuded area, east of the Llano, resembles the east-central section of the plains in exposing older rocks. Between these two similar areas, in the space limited by the Canadian and Red rivers, rise the subdued forms of the Wichita Mountains in Oklahoma, the westernmost member of the Ouachita system.

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.

Prairies ecozone

The Prairies Ecozone is a Canadian terrestrial ecozone which spans the southern areas of the Prairie provinces of Alberta, Saskatchewan, and Manitoba. It is a productive agricultural area, and is commonly referred to as "Canada's breadbasket". Farmland covers about 94% of the land, and is the dominant domestic economic activity of the zone, as well as an important factor in Canadian foreign trade. Natural gas and oil are abundant in the area.

Despite the predominance of farming, less than 10% of the population is involved in agriculture. It is a highly urbanized area, with all major population centres of these provinces located in this ecozone. These include Edmonton, Calgary, Regina, Saskatoon and Winnipeg, as well as Brandon, Moose Jaw, Red Deer and Lethbridge. Nearly 80% of the region's four million inhabitants live in these and other urban areas.

Geography

Following Alberta's border with British Columbia, this ecozone is adjacent to the Montane Cordillera on the west. The two zones are bifurcated by the Boreal Plains about 70 kilometres southwest of Calgary, which also wraps around the remaining extent of the zone north of the United States border toward the Red River Valley. It is part of the Interior Plains, the Canadian extension of the Great Plains, and covers approximately 520,000 square kilometres of land and water.

Establishment of the agricultural industry has had a significant effect on the land, which now retains "little of the natural vegetation" it had before the area was settled. Fewer than half of the original wetlands in the region remain, though during years of high precipitation, numerous ephemeral wetlands may form, typically for very short periods of time. Characterised by vast tracts of flat and rolling plains, it nonetheless exhibits a variety of relief, including hummocky lands and deep river valleys.

The ecozone transformed into a relatively treeless grassland following the last glacial retreat from 11,000 to 8,000 years ago. The strata of sedimentary rock are from the Cretaceous and Tertiary periods, and contain "isolated pockets and cracks [with] rich reservoirs of oil and gas".

Protected areas

Within this ecozone are a number of protected areas. These include:

• Elk Island National Park—located east of Edmonton, Alberta, the park is representative of the northern prairies plateau ecosystem and the landscape is a mix of native fescue grassland, aspen parkland, and boreal forest.
• Grasslands National Park—one of Canada's newer national parks, located in southern Saskatchewan along the Montana border.

Climate

Because of its location east of the Rocky Mountains, the Prairies ecozone receives little precipitation, and can be semi-arid in some areas. Humidity increases eastward through this zone. Winters are very cold, though chinook winds may bring brief spring-like conditions in the western regions.

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

The first recorded history of Europeans in the Great Plains happened in Texas, Kansas, and Nebraska from 1540-1542 with the arrival of Francisco Vásquez de Coronado, a Spanish conquistador. In that same period, Hernando de Soto crossed in 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 attracted thousands of Europeans to the Great Plains, as fur trappers from France, Spain, Britain, Russia, and the young United States made their way across much of the region. After 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

The move of pioneer onto the plains eventually led to the near-extinction of the buffalo and the removal of the Native Americans to reservations in the mid-nineteenth century. 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.

Homesteaders in central Nebraska in 1866.

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.

Demographics

The population of the Plains is growing, says John Wunder, professor of history at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln. According to the most recent United States census, all the states in the Plains region experienced growth from 1990 to 2000; four of the five states' population increased at a rate ranging from 8 to 9 percent. In all five states, the white population showed the slowest average rate of growth, with the growth in population in large part due to an increase in other races. The regional average shows growth rates of 18.7 percent for African Americans, 17.1 percent for Native Americans, 48.0 percent for Asians, 50.0 percent for Pacific Islanders, and 107.8 percent for Hispanics.

Once thought to be largely rural and agrarian, those who live on the Plains are more and more occupying municipalities. The Plains is the most urbanized of all the regions of the United States; the majority of people in each of the five states is distributed in the 15 most populated cities.

Economy

With the movement of people from rural areas, commerce has shifted from its traditional foundation in agriculture. From 1989 to 1999, earnings by persons employed in various industries became concentrated in areas such as services, tourism, light manufacturing, construction, finance, insurance, and technology. In South Dakota, the slowest growing industry during this period was agriculture, which decreased by 1.7 percent. The national average wage and salary disbursement is $32,702, whereas in Plains states, these figures range from $23,178 to $27, 411, in some cases nearly $10,000 less than the rest of the country. Seven of the ten poorest counties in the United States are in the Great Plains.

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 an investment of $1 trillion to build an additional 200,000 MW of wind power capacity in the Plains. 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." By 2006, Texas surpassed California as the U.S. state with the most installed wind energy capacity. South Dakota has the potential to be the nation's largest wind energy provider. In 2008, it produced enough energy to supply 15,000 homes with power. With the inclusion of a pending 306-megawatt wind farm, said Dusty Johnson, chairman of the Public Utilities Commission, the number of residents supplied would double. But transmission lines are also needed.

References

ISBN links support NWE through referral fees

• Bonnifield, Paul. 1978. The Dust Bowl: Men, Dirt, and Depression. Albuquerque, NM: University of New Mexico Press. ISBN 0826304850.
• Fairchild, D.H. and J.E. Klete. 1993. Woody Landscape Plants for the High Plains. Colorado State University, Technical Bulletin LTB93-1
• Gilfillan, Merrill. Chokecherry Places, Essays from the High Plains. Boulder, CO: Johnson Press. ISBN 1555662277
• Grant, Michael Johnston. 2002. Down and Out on the Family Farm: Rural Rehabilitation in the Great Plains, 1929-1945. University of Nebraska Press. ISBN 0803271050
• Hamil, Harold. 1976. Colorado Without Mountains, A High Plains Memoir. Kansas City, MO: Lowell Press. ISBN 0913504335
• Haruf, Kent. 2000. The Tie That Binds. Vintage Books. ISBN 0375724389
• Stegner, Wallace. 1966. Wolf Willow. A history, a story, and a memory of the last plains frontier. New York: Viking Compass Book. ISBN 067000197X
• Wishart, David J. 2004. Encyclopedia of the Great Plains. University of Nebraska Press. ISBN 0803247877.

External links

All Links Retrieved January 29, 2009.

• 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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