The Last Days of the Rainbelt
- ISBN-10
- 1496209427
- ISBN-13
- 9781496209429
- Category
- History
- Pages
- 224
- Language
- English
- Published
- 2020-04-01
- Publisher
- U of Nebraska Press
- Author
- David J. Wishart
Description
Looking over the vast open plains of eastern Colorado, western Kansas, and southwestern Nebraska, where one can travel miles without seeing a town or even a house, it is hard to imagine the crowded landscape of the last decades of the nineteenth century. In those days farmers, speculators, and town builders flooded the region, believing that rain would follow the plow and that the "Rainbelt" would become their agricultural Eden. It took a mere decade for drought and economic turmoil to drive these dreaming thousands from the land, turning farmland back to rangeland and reducing settlements to ghost towns. David J. Wishart's The Last Days of the Rainbelt is the sobering tale of the rapid rise and decline of the settlement of the western Great Plains. History finds its voice in interviews with elderly residents of the region by Civil Works Administration employees in 1933 and 1934. Evidence similarly emerges from land records, climate reports, census records, and diaries, as Wishart deftly tracks the expansion of westward settlement across the central plains and into the Rainbelt. Through an examination of migration patterns, land laws, town-building, and agricultural practices, Wishart re-creates the often-difficult life of settlers in a semiarid region who undertook the daunting task of adapting to a new environment. His book brings this era of American settlement and failure on the western Great Plains fully into the scope of historical memory.
Get the book
Similar books
-
American Endurance: Buffalo Bill, the Great Cowboy Race of 1893, and the Vanishing Wild West
By Richard A. SerranoPulitzer Prize-winning journalist and author Richard A. Serrano's new book American Endurance: Buffalo Bill, the Great Cowboy Race of 1893, and the Vanishing Wild West is history, mystery, and Western...
-
The Routledge History of Rural America
By Pamela Riney-KehrbergHigbie, Frank Tobias. Indispensable Outcasts: Hobo Workers and Community in the American Midwest, 1880–1930. Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 2003. Isern, Thomas. Custom Combining on the Great Plains: A History ...
-
The Fur Trade of the American West: 1807 - 1840 ; a Geographical Synthesis
By David J. WishartThis is an impressive achievement for a book so brief. . . . [It] opens out onto new methodological vistas and paradigms in western history.
-
Here on the Coast: Reflections from the Rainbelt
By Howard WhiteHoward White offers humour-laced sketches of small-town life on the BC Coast.
-
Great Plains Indians
By David J. WishartBell Farms was particularly attracted to this location by the abundant water available in the Ogallala Aquifer (it was estimated that the hogfarm would consume 1.7 million gallons a day) and by the reservation's inherent sovereignty ...
-
Grasslands Grown: Creating Place on the U.S. Northern Plains and Canadian Prairies
By Molly P. RozumPathfinders of the West , Being the Thrilling Story of the Adventures of the Men Who Discovered the Great Northwest : Radisson , La Vérendrye , Lewis and Clark . 1904. Reprint , London : Macmillan , 1907 . Lavin , Stephen J. , Fred M.
-
The Making of America's Culture Regions
By Richard L. Nostrand72, for population along the St. Lawrence River. For archaic given names in New Mexico, see Nostrand, The Hispano Homeland, 9. For two-wheeled carts, see Peattie, “The Isolation of the Lower St. Lawrence Valley,” 117.
-
Hope Amid Hardship: Pioneer Voices from Kansas Territory
By Linda JohnstonWriter's Reference Wild Strawberry Common Name (possible) Wild Strawberry GRASSES Grama WOODY PLANTS Ash Bass Birch Black Walnut Boxelder Bur Oak Coffee Bean Cottonwood Crab Apple Elm Gooseberry Grapes Side-Oats Grama Green Ash American ...
-
An Unspeakable Sadness: The Dispossession of the Nebraska Indians
By David J. WishartThe Dispossession of the Nebraska Indians David J. Wishart ... A. J. Carrier , “ Report , ” ARCIA , 1875 , 248–50 ; Dorsey , “ Ponka Mission , ” May 6 , 1872 ; Birkett to Smith , Jan. 13 , 1873 ; and Capt . C. A. Webb to Birkett , Aug.
-
Never Caught Twice: Horse Stealing in Western Nebraska, 1850-1890
By Matthew S. LuckettFor some, that solution was violence. Never Caught Twice shows how the story of horse stealing across western Nebraska and the Great Plains was in many ways the story of the old West itself.