The Great Plains of the United States is a vast, open, and
mostly agricultural region. In contrast to neighboring areas,
hardly any trees grow on the Great Plains. They lie between the
Rocky Mountains and the Mississippi.
The Great Plains
area is very sparsely populated. With 4 to 13 inhabitants per
square kilometer, North Dakota, South Dakota, Nebraska and
Kansas are among the most sparsely populated US states. For
comparison: North and South Dakota together are larger than
Germany, but have fewer inhabitants than Hamburg. These states
are often jokingly or derogatorily referred to as “flyover
country” because they are (supposedly) ignored by the East and
West Coast elites who only fly over them en route from New York
or Washington to Los Angeles. Conversely, there is also
widespread skepticism about the political and social
establishment, which many residents of the region feel
misunderstood by.
In addition to Americans of European
descent, Native Americans make up a higher proportion of the
population in the Great Plains than in most other US regions.
This is especially true for the states of Oklahoma, South
Dakota, and North Dakota. In recent decades, especially rural
regions in all states of the Great Plains have recorded a
population loss.
The Great Plains include the following states (from north to south):
North Dakota
South Dakota
Nebraska
Kansas
Oklahoma
Furthermore,
Texas, New Mexico, Colorado, Wyoming, Montana, Iowa
and Minnesota
are part of the Great Plains, but belong to other major regions and are
mentioned in other travel guides.
1 Fargo - Largest city in North Dakota
2 Kansas City
3 Lincoln
- Capital of Nebraska
4 Oklahoma City - capital of Oklahoma
5
Omaha - Largest city in Nebraska
6 Rapid City - second largest city
in South Dakota
7 Sioux Falls - Largest city in South Dakota
8
Tulsa - second largest city in Oklahoma
9 Wichita - Largest city in
Kansas
The Great Plains is not packed with attractions. In fact, they are not packed with everything. They are among the least dense states in the Union, and they are iconic for their wide, flat open spaces. The big cities of Kansas City, Oklahoma City, Tulsa, and Omaha have a number of modest attractions, though U.S. travelers won't go out of their way to find them. The Black Hills and Badlands of southwestern South Dakota are literally home to some of the largest attractions in the United States. In particular, there are the Mount Rushmore National Memorial and the Crazy Horse Memorial, as well as a Wild West era cowboy town and rugged mountainous terrain teeming with big game.
English language is by far the most widely spoken and widely understood language. Historically, many indigenous American languages were spoken in the region, but today those who speak them usually also speak comparable, if not better, English. Historically, the region had one of the largest German immigrant populations, but the use of German as a first language fell into disuse during the World Wars, when it was considered unpatriotic and raised suspicions (sometimes justified) of imperial or Nazi sympathies. Today, few people speak more than one German word.
By Airplane.
Flying is probably the fastest and most practical way
to enter the Great Plains region. Many smaller cities in the region are
served by the Midwest hubs of Chicago (ORD IATA and MDW IATA), Kansas
City, Missouri, and Minneapolis; the western hub of Denver; and the
Texas hubs of Dallas and Houston. From these larger airports, Fargo and
Grand Forks, North Dakota; Rapid City and Sioux Falls, South Dakota;
Omaha, Lincoln, Grand Island, Kearney, McCook, Scottsbluff and Alliance,
Nebraska; Salina, Wichita and Topeka, Kansas, Small commuter flights are
available to many small city airports, including Tulsa and Oklahoma
City, Oklahoma.
By Train.
Amtrak serves parts of the region.
Although trains are often not as fast as buses (if at all) and are not
usually cheaper than airplanes except for short trips, the scenery,
legroom, and style of travel more than make up for these drawbacks, at
least for some people, and Amtrak has enjoyed record ridership most
years since 2000 Amtrak has had record ridership in
For cars
Most of the region is connected to interstate highways. However, some
rural roads are in very poor condition.
Buses
Intercity buses
in the U.S.
By automobile.
Generally by automobile. Overall, this is one of
the worst areas to tour the US without a car.
By train or bus.
Greyhound buses have several routes here. The number of services,
especially in South Dakota, is relatively limited compared to other
parts of the U.S.
Although part of the Great Plains' history is
by rail, passenger rail service is very limited. Most of the tracks once
built by pioneers survive to this day, but are largely used by freight
trains. Even large cities like Tulsa and Wichita have been inaccessible
by train since the 1970s. Some large cities, such as Oklahoma City, are
connected by rail to southern Oklahoma and neighboring northern Texas.
With stops in small towns like Dodge City, Kansas, and McCook,
Nebraska, each state (except one) has one passenger rail line that can
take you to rural areas. Unfortunately, South Dakota, home to the famous
Badlands, is a Great Plains state with no rail service at all.
By
plane.
Many large cities have regular air commuter service to larger
hub airports. Smaller towns may have more limited, smaller commuter
service.
The Great Plains have a distinct continental climate with very warm summers and freezing winters. Temperatures tend to decrease towards the north, both in summer and in winter. In general, the Great Plains are known for their rather dry climate.
The Great Plains are bounded to the north by the Canadian Shield and
to the south by the coastal plain of the Gulf of Mexico.
The
western border is formed by the Rocky Mountains. This means that the
eastern quarter of New Mexico, Colorado and Wyoming belong to the Great
Plains, as do around two-thirds of Montana. On the Canadian side,
southern Alberta, Saskatchewan and Manitoba all lie within the Great
Plains.
The eastern border is defined differently. Some
geographers connect all edges of the plain that are at 600 m elevation
and define the resulting line as the eastern boundary, as in the graph
above shaded in green. Others draw the line farther east, consistent
with the spread of the tall grass prairie, and consider North Dakota,
South Dakota, and Nebraska each fully part of the Great Plains.
According to this view, northern Texas, western Oklahoma, most of
Kansas, northern Iowa, and southwest Minnesota also belong to the Great
Plains.
The Great Plains have long been sparsely populated and roamed by
semi-nomadic Native Americans in search of bison and pronghorn. It was
only the horses brought to America by Europeans in the 18th century that
made it possible for the Indians to settle more densely on the prairie
and the formation of the Plains Indians. Some peoples benefited greatly
from the new way of life, hunting bison on horseback. The hitherto weak
Lakota and Comanche, for example, developed into significant power
factors in the Midwest within a short period of time. The way of life of
the Plains peoples was strongly based on the bison. They lived in
teepees that could be quickly set up and taken down, so they followed
the buffalo.
In the mid-19th century, white settlers moved west
across the Great Plains. For a long time, the area was considered an
uninhabitable wasteland. It was not until around 1865 that many
settlers settled, who initially built turf houses as a cheap first
dwelling. As a result, the population of bison fell sharply due to
massive hunting, while the resident Indians were pushed into
reservations until 1890.
Soil erosion occurred after large-scale
clearing of prairie grass and droughts. As a result, strong dust storms
in the 1930s - especially between 1935 and 1938 - turned parts of the
Great Plains into a proverbial "dust bowl" (see Dust Bowl). This led to
mass misery among the farmers, who increasingly migrated towards
California.
While in 1950 almost five million people lived in the
Great Plains area, in 2007 this figure was around ten million.
Population growth, however, was concentrated in a few metropolitan
areas, primarily in Colorado and Texas. Settlements in the area and
small towns lost a lot of inhabitants due to aging and rural exodus.
Approximately two-thirds of all counties were affected by the population
decline, in one in five counties it was even more than 50 percent.[2]
More and more small towns are turning into ghost towns.
Agricultural use of the Great Plains can be roughly divided into two
areas. While west of the 100th degree of longitude there is
predominantly intensive animal husbandry in large fattening farms with
little use of land and extensive animal husbandry (ranching) with very
large use of land, east of the 100th degree of longitude arable farming
is the primary form of agricultural use. Summer/winter wheat as well as
maize and millet are mainly cultivated. The reason for this distribution
is the line of equal rainfall (isohyete at 500 mm), which runs almost
parallel to the 100th longitude and forms the limit for rain-fed
agriculture without artificial irrigation.
The rainier east of
the region, the so-called Grain Belt (grain belt), is also known as the
granary of the USA, or "breadbasket" (breadbasket) because in that
region a huge surplus of agricultural products is generated.
Approximately half of the wheat in the USA is produced in the Great
Plains area, which at 68 million t for the entire USA (as of 2008)
corresponds to approx. 34 million t. The Western High Plains produce 60%
of all US beef, which is why this part of the Great Plains is often
referred to as "Cattle Country". As far as agriculture takes place in
the west, it is usually made possible by artificial irrigation.
Increasing droughts have made agriculture significantly more difficult
in recent decades, and mechanization and automation have made labor
redundant. The Ogallala Aquifer, a deep aquifer, is nearly depleted from
use for artificial irrigation. Cultivated land is already turning back
into grassland, on which bison breeding is increasingly practiced. Under
the name of Buffalo Commons, it is proposed to convert large areas back
into prairies, resettle people and reopen the areas to wild bison.
Hunting and tourism could open up a new economic basis. In addition, the
use of the Great Plains today is increasingly focused on wind power
generation.
This is opposed to a trend of plowing under and
intensively using areas in the northern parts of the plains that have
not yet been used or only used extensively, and which have therefore
retained their grassland character. The reasons for this are the
promotion of the cultivation of energy crops and a special form of
state-subsidized crop failure insurance, which enables cultivation on
marginal yield locations or even areas whose cultivation could not be
profitable without the insurance.
The Sandhills in Nebraska are
among the largest regions of the Great Plains that have not been
subjected to intermittent agricultural use. It is a very large area of
continuous sand dunes stabilized by low vegetation. 85 percent of this
region therefore still has the original plant population.
Measures had to be taken due to various forms of erosion.
Mulch sowing: The soil is cultivated without a plow in order to reduce
or completely prevent soil erosion. However, this "conserved tillage"
does not mean that the soil is no longer loosened, but that instead of a
plough, other equipment such as e.g. B. a cultivator can be used. A deep
loosening of the soil is usually not necessary due to a gradually built
up natural storage (optimal) if no mistakes are made in cultivation.
The no-till method: the soil is not worked mechanically. The soil is
loosened by suitable cover crops and soil organisms. Harvest residues
also remain on the field before sowing, thus preventing erosion and also
reducing water loss.
Dry farming describes an annual alternation
between cultivation and fallow land. The ground is kept free of weeds
and deeply plowed during the fallow year. As a result, the surface
becomes looser and larger, the soil can absorb more moisture. To prevent
evaporation, the soil is also harrowed and rolled after rainfall.
"Contour plowing" promotes the seepage of the water by drawing furrows
in the field parallel to the contour line, which slow down the water so
that the two erosive forces of wind and water are counteracted. Overall,
however, the problem of wind erosion is much more difficult to solve
than forms of erosion caused by water.
Stubble mulching: Farmland is
covered with straw (stubble) during the fallow season and the stubble
from the previous crop is left standing. This is done not only with
straw, but also with other mulches. This measure promotes the moisture
absorption of the soil and reduces soil erosion.
Windbreaks: Forest
protection strips and windbreak hedges are built to reduce soil erosion.
Strip cropping: The soil is cultivated with plants of different ripening
times to reduce soil erosion.
It is not uncommon for several of these
soil protection measures to be used at the same time. This is for the
sole purpose of maintaining greater effectiveness and preventing another
Dust Bowl scenario.
The Great Plains is known as "Tornado Alley," an area where tornadoes
are common during the spring and summer months. See "Tornado Safety" for
more information. While it is somewhat rare for tourists to experience
tornadoes, severe thunderstorms with frequent lightning, high winds,
hail, and heavy rainfall are common during the spring and summer months.
If weather conditions worsen, listen to local radio stations (there are
often "Weather Radio Information" road signs on highways). If you are
taking a cross-country drive in winter, be prepared for the fact that
interstate highways are often closed during inclement winter weather.
The Great Plains is home to the largest number of tornadoes in the
United States and the world. Unfortunately, tornadoes can sometimes be
severe, but thankfully are rare. Most tornadoes average between EF0 and
EF2, but some EF3 and above do occur. If you see strange weather
patterns such as rotating clouds, funnel clouds, or loud roars, seek
shelter in a safe area. Severe thunderstorms are also frequent. In some
areas, tornado sirens sound for severe storms.
Because most areas
in the Great Plains are rural, gun ownership is very common, and hunting
is a popular pastime for many residents. Gun owners are generally
responsible with their weapons, but when hiking in the wilderness, be
sure to wear brightly colored clothing so as not to be mistaken for a
wild animal. Be very careful not to take shortcuts through private
property. There have been incidents of owners shooting trespassers.
Also, avoid talking politics about guns with locals.