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Show Chapter XXII Reclamation of the Arid Lands Early notions of the Great American Desert, vaguely thought of as the area well west of the Missouri River, were not altogether wrong. Long before the Indian reserves in eastern Kansas and Nebraska were opened to settlers it was known that for a distance of 100 to 150 miles west of the Missouri there was sufficient rainfall to support a corn-belt type of agriculture similar to that successful east of the river. Beyond the 150-mile limit average rainfall diminished; corn and wheat were less certain. Settlers moving into that area during a cycle of wet years were soon forced out when the cycle changed and moisture was insufficient to produce the kind of crops the people had been accustomed to raise elsewhere. The semi-aridity of the High Plains east of the Rocky Mountains, and the desert and near-desert conditions of much of the Interior Basin were only to be conquered by new methods such as dry farming, experiments with exotic plants that took less moisture than corn, artesian wells and deep drilled wells, storage ponds to hold the spring runoff of melted snow, small reservoirs and later high dams, and the construction of expensive canals, pumping stations, and many miles of ditches. To experiment, adapt, and change their methods was something all settlers found nec-cessary when they moved west to subjugate new frontiers, regardless of their region of origin. Westward-moving Americans had gained much valuable experience in farming the treeless prairies of Illinois and Iowa that prepared the next generation of pio- The Arid Lands Bureau of Reclamation U.S. Department of the Interior neers to some extent for the new problems they had to face on the Great Plains.1 As settlers were driven by the inexorable pressure for land into the region beyond the 100th meridian, they naturally selected 1 Walter Prescott Webb, The Great Plains (Boston, 1931), is a classic account of the efforts of settlers to adapt themselves to the semi-arid regions; W. Eugene Hollon, The Great American Desert Then and Now (New York, 1966), examines the application of "desert" to various regions but is naturally most concerned with the Interior Basin. 635 |
