Great American Desert

400px|thumb|"Great American Desert," mapped by Stephen H. Long in 1820

300px|thumb|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) ]]

The term Great American Desert was used in the 19th century to describe the part of North America east of the Rocky Mountains to approximately the 100th meridian. It can be traced to Stephen H. Long's 1820 scientific expedition which put the Great American Desert on the map.

Today the area is usually referred to as the High Plains, and the original term is sometimes used to describe the arid region of North America, which includes parts of northwestern Mexico and the American southwest.

The concept of "desert"

The meaning of the term "desert" has varied through time and across cultures. The term was sometimes used to describe any uninhabited or treeless land, whether or not it was arid, and sometimes to refer to hot and arid lands, evoking images of sandy wastelands. Anglo-European colonists believed that treeless lands were not good for agriculture, thus the term desert also had the connotation of "unfit for farming." Spanish colonists had already established successful agricultural communities in the region by this time.

The High Plains 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 settler farming.

Description

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". 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." In the report that accompanied the map, the party's geographer Edwin James wrote of the region:

<blockquote>I do not hesitate in giving the opinion, that it is almost wholly unfit for cultivation, and of course, uninhabitable by a people depending upon agriculture for their subsistence. Although tracts of fertile land considerably extensive are occasionally to be met with, yet the scarcity of wood and water, almost uniformly prevalent, will prove an insuperable obstacle in the way of settling the country. 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.

In popular culture

A Study in Scarlet (1887) by Arthur Conan Doyle contains a reference to a "desert" in the center of North America: <blockquote>In the central portion of the great North American Continent there lies an arid and repulsive desert, which for many a long year served as a barrier against the advance of civilisation. From the Sierra Nevada to Nebraska, and from the Yellowstone River in the north to the Colorado upon the south, is a region of desolation and silence. Nor is Nature always in one mood throughout this grim district. It comprises snow-capped and lofty mountains, and dark and gloomy valleys. There are swift-flowing rivers which dash through jagged cañons; and there are enormous plains, which in winter are white with snow, and in summer are grey with the saline alkali dust. They all preserve, however, the common characteristics of barrenness, inhospitality, and misery.</blockquote>
In Chapters 20 and 27 of Roughing It (1872), Mark Twain refers to the Great American Desert, but he is applying the term to the Forty Mile Desert of Nevada's Lahontan Valley.

References

External links

Staff (ndg) "Country drained by the Mississippi, western section", Kansas Historical Society