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"Great American Desert," mapped by Stephen H. Long in 1820 Historic photo of the High Plains in Haskell County, Kansas, showing a treeless semi-arid grassland and a buffalo wallow or circular depression in the level surface. (Photo by W.D. Johnson, 1897) [1] The term Great American Desert was used in the 19th century to describe the part of North America east of the Rocky Mountains to about the 100th meridian.[2] It can be traced to Stephen H. Long's 1820 scientific expedition which put the Great American Desert on the map.[3][4] The area is now usually referred to as the High Plains, and the original term is now sometimes used to describe the arid region of North America, which includes parts of northwestern Mexico and the American southwest. The concept of "desert"[edit]In the past, the term "desert" had two somewhat incompatible meanings. It was sometimes used to describe any uninhabited or treeless land whether it was arid or not, and sometimes to specifically refer to hot and arid lands, evoking images of sandy wastelands. It was long thought that treeless lands were not good for agriculture, thus the term "desert" also had the connotation of "unfit for farming". By the 19th century, the term had begun to take on its modern meaning.[5][6] While the High Plains are not a desert in the modern sense, in the older sense of the word they were. The region is mostly semi-arid grassland and steppe. Today much of the region supports agriculture through the use of aquifer water irrigation, but in the 19th century, the area's relative lack of water and wood made it seem unfit for farming and uninhabitable by an agriculturally-based people.[5] Description[edit]When the region was obtained by the United States as part of the Louisiana Purchase in 1803, President Jefferson wrote of the "immense and trackless deserts" of the region. Zebulon Pike wrote "these vast plains of the western hemisphere, may become in time equally celebrated as the sandy deserts of Africa". His map included a comment in the region, "not a stick of timber".[7] In 1823, Major Stephen Long, a government surveyor and leader of the next official exploration expedition, produced a map labeling the area as the "Great American Desert."[8] In the report that accompanied the map, the party's geographer Edwin James wrote of the region:
These perceptions were echoed by Washington Irving, who wrote in 1836 "The region, which resembles one of the ancient steppes of Asia, has not inaptly been termed The Great American Desert. It spreads forth into undulating and treeless plains and desolate sandy wastes, wearisome to the eye in their extent and monotony."[9] Descriptions such as Irving's led some geography textbooks of the time to show sand dunes and camels in the area of what is now Kansas and Nebraska.[6] While many other travelers reported similar conditions and conclusions, there were problems in the interpretation and the use of the word "desert", as descriptions of the American High Plains almost always included comments about "Innumerable Herds of Buffaloes", which was written on Pike's map just above "not a stick of timber". The giant herds and teeming wildlife of the Great Plains were well known by the time the term Great American Desert came into common use, undermining the idea of a wasteland; however, the relevant concept inherent in the reports of the region was that it could not be farmed, something the reports generally agreed on. By the middle of the 19th century, as settlers migrated across the plains to Oregon and California, the wasteland connotation of "desert" was seen to be false, but the sense of the region as uninhabitable remained until irrigation and railroad transportation made up for the lack of surface water and wood.[citation needed] Settlement and development[edit]The region's relative lack of water and wood affected the development of the United States. Settlers heading westward often attempted to pass through the region as quickly as possible, on the way to what was considered to be better land farther west. These early settlers gave telling names to the various streams of the region, such as "Sweetwater Creek" or "Poison Creek". Because it was not considered desirable, the area became one of the last strongholds of independent American Indians. Railroad interests seeking rights-of-way through the region also benefited from the popular belief that the land was commercially valueless.[citation needed] By the mid-19th century, people had begun settling in the region despite its poor reputation. The local inhabitants came to realize the area was at the time well suited for farming, due in part to the fact that large portions of the region sit atop one of the world's largest groundwater reservoirs, the Ogallala Aquifer. Experts of the era proposed theories that maintained the earlier reports had been accurate and the climate had changed. Some even credited the settlers themselves as having caused the change by planting crops and trees. The slogan "rain follows the plow" described this belief, which today is discredited.[citation needed] Whether the agricultural productivity of the region in modern times can continue for much longer is in doubt. It has been demonstrated that while there is an abundant amount of fossil water in the Ogallala Aquifer, it is slow to replenish itself, with most of the water in the aquifer having been there since the last ice age. Some current estimates predict the usefulness of the aquifer for agriculture to lessen and become useless, perhaps as soon as the early parts of the mid-21st century, leading some farmers to turn away from aquifer-irrigated agriculture.[10] In popular culture[edit]
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Coordinates: 30°0′N 107°0′W / 30.000°N 107.000°W Where is the American West Desert?The Sonoran Desert is a desert located in the Southwestern United States and northwest Mexico. It is the second largest hot desert in North America. Its total area is 120,000 sq mi (310,000 km2). The Mojave Desert is the hottest desert in North America, located primarily in southeastern California and Southern Nevada.
Where is the great American desert?The Great American Desert
This region consists of the area east of the Rockies and just west of the 100th meridian: the Dakotas, Nebraska, Kansas, Oklahoma, a significant part of Texas, and New Mexico, Colorado, Wyoming and Montana.
What motivated white settlers to cross the Great Plains in the 1840s?Working on behalf of white settlers who wanted to grow cotton on the Indians' land, the federal government forced them to leave their homelands and walk hundreds of miles to a specially designated “Indian Territory” across the Mississippi River.
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