Great Plains

“ West of this singular strip of forest the country assumes the appearance of the "Great Plains,"—that long incline which stretches eastward from the base of the Rocky Mountains. The surface is a monotonous, rolling, treeless expanse. ”

“ Down in the valley proper, the field of vision is limited by the side bluffs, and you see but comparatively little of the country generally. But ascend the bluffs on either side, and the vast ocean of the Plains stretches boundlessly before you—not flat, but billowy with swells and ridges, an illimitable plateau, with only here and there a solitary "butte," sharply defined against the clear sky. In spring this whole vast extent is a wilderness of verdure and flowers ”

“ On the west rolled the blue Pacific; on the east rose the noble Coast Range; and over all, like a celestial benediction, hung the California sky—a superb sapphire we never see East. The setting sun lit up the distant hills, as we gazed, and now clothed with crimson and gold—an ineffable glory of splendors—the snow-clad peaks, that towered to the north and east. Up there was the frozen zone, most of the year round; but down on the Plains, the balmy zephyrs of the tropics, and nature literally one wild scene of beauty and of glory. ”

“ Forests again along the Ohio Valley, and beyond, to the west, lay the levels of the Great Plains. Within the earth were unexploited treasures of coal and lead, copper and iron in such form and quantity as were to revolutionize the industrial processes of the world. But nature's revelations are progressive, and it was rather the marvelous adaptation of the soil to the raising of corn and wheat that drew the pioneers to this land of promise, and made a new era of colonization. In the unity with variety of this pioneer empire and in its broad levels we have a promise of its society. ”

“ This is the region of the Great Plains, mostly too arid to carry anything but herds of cattle, and mostly forming natural pasture, being thus analogous to the steppes of Asia.
Eastward the rainfall increases, and we pass from the area of unreclaimed pasture to the prairies, now largely laid down to wheat and other food plants. ”

“ The relation of the Provinces of the Lake and Prairie Plains to the rest of the United States is an important element in the significance of the Middle West. On the north lies the similar region of Canada: the Great Lakes are in the center of the whole eastern and more thickly settled half of North America, and they bind the Canadian and Middle Western people together. On the south, the provinces meet the apex of that of the Gulf Plains, and the Mississippi unites them. To the west, they merge gradually into the Great Plains ”

“ Though fair to the sight are the Plains of Fál
They are a desert to him who has known the Great Plain.
[Pg 72] Warm, sweet streams across the country,
Choice of mead and wine,
Distinguished beings who know no stain,
Conception without sin, without lust.
We behold everyone on every side,
And none beholds us ”

“ A mineral-bearing mountain invites to mining, and miles of forest land summon the lumberman. Broad and well-watered plains seem designed for agriculture, and on them acres of grain slowly mature through the summer months to turn into golden harvests in the fall. The Mississippi valley and the Western plain into which it blends have become the granary of the American nation. The railroad-train that rushes day and night from the Great Lakes toward the setting sun moves hour after hour through the extensive rural districts that characterize the great West. ”

“ On these plains grasses and other herbaceous vegetation abound, and throughout this fertile belt agriculture is largely followed, the grain and hay crops being especially important. Northward in Canada the plains become wooded, the western mountains and the eastern highlands being thus connected by a narrow strip of forest. South-westward and westward the fertile prairie gives way to a vast arid region beginning on the Great Plains and extending as far as south-eastern California, and thence southward into Mexico. ”

“ On the extreme east is the Great Plains region of the Mississippi Valley which is a comparatively uniform country of rolling hills, but no mountains. At a point about one third of the whole distance westward the whole land is lifted skyward by the Rocky Mountains, which cross the country from south to northwest. Here are innumerable peaks, canons, high table-lands, roaring torrents, and quiet mountain valleys. West of the Rockies is the great depression known as the Great Basin, which has no outlet to the ocean. ”

“ It is doubtful if in any ten years of American history more significant factors in our growth have revealed themselves. The struggle of the pioneer farmers to subdue the arid lands of the Great Plains in the eighties was followed by the official announcement of the extinction of the frontier line in 1890. ”

“ The outstanding historical interpreter of the Southwest is Walter Prescott Webb, of the University of Texas. The Great Plains utilizes chronology to explain the presence of man on the plains; it is primarily a study in cause and effect, of water and drought, of adaptations and lack of adaptations, of the land's growth into human imagination as well as economic institutions. Webb uses facts to get at meanings. He fulfils Emerson's definition of Scholar: "Man Thinking." ”

“ The land between the Missouri and the Rockies, along the Great Plains and the high foothills, was crossed over and forgotten by the men who were forging on into farther countries in search of lands where fortune was swift and easy. California, Oregon, all the early farming and timbering lands of the distant Northwest—these lay far beyond the Plains ”

“ Those actually displaced by the grass infected others, through whose homes they passed in their flight, with their own panic. Land values west of the Rockies dropped to practically nothing and the rich farms of the Great Plains were worth no more than they had been a hundred years before. People had seen directly, heard over the radio, or read in newspapers of the countless methods vainly used to stop the grass and there was little confidence in the saltband's succeeding where other devices had failed. ”

“ The Western half of our domain, which with the exception of the upper coast of the Pacific is known as the arid region, possesses no superabundance of surface waters to improve, but, upon the contrary, the scarcity of water for ordinary domestic and agricultural uses prevents the settlement and utilization of the remaining portion of the public lands. Even the semi-humid or Great Plains region, east of the Rocky Mountain front, has been retarded in development by this scarcity of surface water ”

“ Our road, next morning, from The Cass, where we had spent the night, lay through the eastern foot-hills and down to Canterbury Plains by way of Porter‘s Pass—a narrow track on the top of a tremendous precipice, but soon to be changed for a road cut along its face. The plains are one great sheep-run, open, almost flat, and upon which you lose all sense of size. At the mountain-foot they are covered with tall, coarse, native grass, and are dry, like the Kansas prairie; about Christchurch, the English clover and English grasses have usurped the soil, and all is fresh and green. ”

“ How the coming of the white man has changed the region about the falls! The game has disappeared; an important city, supported by the enormous water-power, is growing up; while the smoke rising from extensive plants for reducing the gold, silver, and copper ores mined in the Rocky Mountains floats out over the country.
Proceeding up the river, the party reached the Gate of the Mountains—a picturesque spot where the stream leaves the mountains through a narrow defile between high and jagged cliffs and enters upon its long course across the Great Plains (Fig. 68) . ”

“ With the air masses rising ever higher, more and more of the moisture that had watered the extensive inland Cretaceous forests and swamplands was prevented from reaching what we know today as the Great Plains. ”

“ It will now readily be inferred that the Great Prairies from Red River to the western sources of the Missouri, are, as has before been intimated, chiefly uninhabitable—not so much for want of wood (though the plains are altogether naked) , as of soil and of water; for though some of the plains appear of sufficiently fertile soil, they are mostly of a sterile character, and all too dry to be cultivated. {192} These great steppes seem only fitted for the haunts of the mustang, the buffalo, the antelope, and their migratory lord, the prairie Indian. ”

“ The town seemed steadily increasing in wealth and population, as more and more of the surrounding Plains were brought under cultivation, and already had a substantial basis for prosperity in its vineyards and fruit-orchards, aside from its flocks and herds. It was also doing a considerable business with Utah, Arizona, and Southern California, for all which regions it was then largely a mart and entrepot. Its climate was mild and equable, reminding one more of Italy and the Levant, than America, and already it was quite a resort for invalids from all parts of the Coast. ”

“ The Platte Valley itself is a great furrow or groove in the heart of the Plains proper, extending substantially due west from the Missouri to the Rocky Mountains. On the line of our tier of northern cities, and so in the track of northern ideas across the continent, it is as if nature intended it for a great natural highway, and already it had come to its fulfilment. Its early selection by our army of emigrants to Colorado, Utah, California, etc., was because of its supplying the three great desiderata of wood, water and grass, better than any other route ”

“ The boys of the prairie help their fathers, not only in the wheat and corn fields, but also in raising herds of cattle, flocks of sheep, and great numbers of hogs.
Beyond the prairies, yet east of the Rocky Mountains, are wide stretches of land called the Western Plains. Grass grows on these plains, but the soil is not so rich as on the prairies and is therefore not so good for farming. ”

“ A traveler passing along the line of the Long Island railroad will be deceived as to the character of the soil. The under stratum of coarse gravel has necessarily been cast up in the construction of the road, and this the casual observer will naturally suppose to be the soil of the country. I examined, with much care, various localities on the plains, and found everywhere a remarkable identity in the structure and qualities of the earth and a great similarity to that which occurs at Flatbush and Brooklyn. ”

“ Off on the Plains, where they were feeding on the young and succulent grass, they whitened the ground sometimes for acres, and were so careless of danger, you might knock them over with a club. Gen. Banning said, they were even more numerous in former years, but even as they were, we had never seen anything to equal them. As we drove along, they rose up by the roadside in flocks of thousands, and fairly deafened the air with their multitudinous konkings. ”

“ Riding in advance, as we passed over one of these great plains; we looked back and saw the line of scattered horsemen stretching for a mile or more; and far in the rear against the horizon, the white wagons creeping slowly along. ”

“ Shelterless we should be in the midst of the wide, open plains, where the winds blow with greater force, and owing to our proximity to the Indians even fires would be too costly an aid to our comfort to be allowed. Yet these thoughts scarcely found a place in the minds of any members of the command. All felt that a great opportunity was before us, and to improve it only required determination and firmness on our part. How thoroughly and manfully every demand of this kind was responded to by my command, I will endeavor to relate in the next chapter. ”

“ We had to leave our homes and possessions on the fertile lands of Illinois to make our dwelling places in these desert wilds, on barren, sterile plains, amid lofty, rugged mountains. None dare come here to live until we came here, and we now find it to be one of the best countries in the world for us. ”

“ Weather very cold and windy—no grass nor hay. We have traveled 200 miles without grass or hay, but have cut dry prairie grass where we could find it. Camped in a ravine half a mile north of St. Joseph. St. Joseph is quite a village, and doing a great deal of business at this time. But the way they fleece California emigrants is worth noticing. I should advise all going the overland route to take every thing along with them that they can of small weight, as every little thing costs three or four times as much here as at home. ”

“ I find that it is impossible to make the life clear to citizens, even when they ask me to describe personally something of frontier days, unless they may have been over the Plains in their journeys to and from the Pacific coast. Even then, they look from the windows of the Pullman car on to the desert, white with alkali, over which the heat rises in waves, and upon earth that struggles to give even life to the hardy cactus or sage-brush. ”

“ Quite strictly they kept to the course; none of them, beech, hickory, live-oak, nor pecan, encroached beyond the right of way nor seemed ever to have been forgetful that these were the Plains. It was very much as if they recognized that trees ought not to grow here. As, indeed, they ought not. The prairie is itself as much as is the ocean or forest, and it has no room to spare. Space, like wood and water, must have its own exclusive regions wherein to exercise its larger and deeper spell. ”