Settling The West: Farming the plains
The Beginning of Settlement

Big Ideas:
 To encourage people to settle in the newer
additions to the United States, the
government offered acreage for free to
anyone who could make a living off the land.
“Go West, young man;
Go West and grow up
with the country.
- Newspaper man Horace
Greeley
The Beginning of Settlement

The Great Plains was
the name given to the
relatively flat prairie
and grassland between
the Mississippi River
and the Rocky
Mountains.
 It was nicknamed “The
Great American
Desert,” because it
received so little rain
and had virtually no
trees.
The Beginning of Settlement

In 1862 Congress
passed the
Homestead Act to
encourage settlement.
 A person had to live on
the land for 5 years,
clear the land, and build
a cabin. If they did that,
they could get the deed
and ownership.
The Beginning of Settlement

Being a homesteader
was tough:
 The weather was violent.
 Pests were everywhere.
 Extreme hot and cold
temperatures.
 Had to dig for well water
 Prairie grass fires

With no trees many lived
as “sodbusters.” They
built their homes out
slabs of dirt.
The Beginning of Settlement

‘Scientists’ at the time
promoted the idea that
humans could change
the climate simply by
tilling the soil. They
claimed, “…rain would
follow the plow.”
The Wheat Belt

Big Ideas:
 Since the country’s founding, Americans
always looked to the West for a chance
to make a new start.
The Wheat Belt

Many farmers of the
Great Plains practiced
dry farming. They
planted their seeds deep
in the ground where
there was enough
moisture to grow. So
they did not need to
irrigate their crops.
 The invention of seed drills
made this process much
easier.
The Wheat Belt


The Wheat Belt
covered much of the
Dakotas, Nebraska,
and Kansas.
New farming
equipment made it
possible to cultivate
bonanza farms that
were as large as
50,000 acres.
The Wheat Belt

The industrialization of
wheat farming resulted
in a large increase in
the amount of wheat on
the market in the
1890s.
 This drove prices
downward and, along
with bad weather
conditions, led many
farmers to go bankrupt.
The Wheat Belt

By 1889, the frontier was mostly settled and the
government gave away the last bit of land in
Oklahoma.