Plains of Nebraska

"The Great American Desert." This was an erroneous title -- but it was one that stuck for nearly 30 years. Major Stephen Long coined the phrase during his expedition to the Great Plains in 1819-20. His journey was only the third major exploration of the Louisiana Purchase since the U.S. bought it from France in 1803. Long's findings were followed avidly by the public.

Long thought the plains region was a desert because it didn't support the kind of trees and plants that were familiar to him. So, he concluded that the region was "almost totally unfit for cultivation."To read the actual description from Long's Account of an Expedition, click here. Long was both wrong and right. Over the next 150 years, farmers in some locations would prove him dead wrong by producing abundant crops. But, in other parts of the Plains and in other years, people would find Long's assessment deadly accurate.

[Detail from] "Nebraska Gothic," the John Curry sod house near West Union, Nebraska. Note: An article by Wanda Corn entitled "The Painting that Became a Symbol of a Nation's Spirit" notes the influence of this photograph and others on Grant Woods' "American Gothic" painting. Photo by Solomon D. Butcher.

The Plains were hard to live on. Many of the newcomers were used to living in centralized villages and then walking or riding out to their fields to farm. But the Homestead Act required those claiming the land to live on it, and the act forced settlers to develop the land in 160-acre plots. So, each settler was at least 1/4-mile away from his or her nearest neighbor. In some parts of the West, you might find yourself tens of miles away. A horse, if you were fortunate enough to have one, was your transportation, so it took time and effort to visit your neighbors.

Loneliness was a fact of life, and we may see evidence of that fact in photographs from the time. Look at the photograph of the John Curry sod house in 1886. Do you see the birdcage? Both the birds and their cages are fragile objects. Why would families go to all the trouble to transport them across hundreds of miles of bumpy trails in rough wagons? Well, the birds may have helped cope with the loneliness. Canaries offered a bright spot of color in a landscape that the settlers saw as relentlessly green and brown. And their songs were welcome, because native birds could be few and far between on the treeless prairies.

Later, beginning in the 1870s, promotional brochures and publications lauded the abundant rainfall and fertility of the land. Professor Samuel Aughey, from the University of Nebraska, declared the state's rainfall was adequate to grow robust crops and, in fact, was increasing. "Rainfall follows the plow," he declared in an 1880 book, Sketches of the Physical Geography and Geology of Nebraska. The problem, he said, was that rain would hit the hard sod and run off and into the rivers. If farmers broke up the sod, the rain would soak in and then return to the air as it evaporated. With more moisture in the air, more rain would fall, continuing the cycle. Professor Aughey and others wrote and spoke far and wide. The railroads used their trains to distribute Aughey's book and others to prospective settlers. And for a few relatively wet years, the theory seemed to be true. Rainfall was increasing. But when the next cycle of dry years hit, many new settlers learned the truth in hard ways -- Nebraska could support agriculture but not using the same techniques they had learned in more humid climates. .