The Great Plains is a broad expanse of

flatland ''Flatland: A Romance of Many Dimensions'' is a satirical novella by the English schoolmaster Edwin Abbott Abbott, first published in 1884 by Seeley & Co. of London. Written pseudonymously by "A Square", the book used the fictional two-dime ...

North America North America is a continent in the Northern Hemisphere, Northern and Western Hemisphere, Western hemispheres. North America is bordered to the north by the Arctic Ocean, to the east by the Atlantic Ocean, to the southeast by South Ameri ...

. The region stretches east of the

Rocky Mountains The Rocky Mountains, also known as the Rockies, are a major mountain range and the largest mountain system in North America. The Rocky Mountains stretch in great-circle distance, straight-line distance from the northernmost part of Western Can ...

, much of it covered in

prairie Prairies are ecosystems considered part of the temperate grasslands, savannas, and shrublands biome by ecologists, based on similar temperate climates, moderate rainfall, and a composition of grasses, herbs, and shrubs, rather than trees, as the ...

steppe In physical geography, a steppe () is an ecoregion characterized by grassland plains without closed forests except near rivers and lakes. Steppe biomes may include: * the montane grasslands and shrublands biome * the tropical and subtropica ...

, and

grassland A grassland is an area where the vegetation is dominance (ecology), dominated by grasses (Poaceae). However, sedge (Cyperaceae) and rush (Juncaceae) can also be found along with variable proportions of legumes such as clover, and other Herbaceo ...

. They are the western part of the

Interior Plains The Interior Plains is a vast physiographic region that spreads across the Laurentian craton of central North America, extending along the east flank of the Rocky Mountains from the Gulf Coast region to the Arctic Beaufort Sea. In Canada, it ...

, which include the

mixed grass prairie A mixed-grass prairie is an ecotone located between the tallgrass prairies and shortgrass prairies. The mixed-grass prairie is richer in botanical diversity than either the tall- or shortgrass prairie. The mixed-grass prairie occurs in the Cen ...

, the

tallgrass prairie The tallgrass prairie is an ecosystem native to central North America. Historically, natural and Historical ecology#Anthropogenic fire, anthropogenic fire, as well as grazing by large mammals (primarily bison) provided periodic disturbances to th ...

between the

Great Lakes The Great Lakes, also called the Great Lakes of North America, are a series of large interconnected freshwater lakes spanning the Canada–United States border. The five lakes are Lake Superior, Superior, Lake Michigan, Michigan, Lake Huron, H ...

and

Appalachian Plateau The Appalachian Plateau is a series of rugged dissected plateaus located on the western side of the Appalachian Mountains. The Appalachian Mountains are a range that run from Nova Scotia in Canada to Alabama in the United States. The Appalachi ...

, and the Taiga Plains and Boreal Plains ecozones in

Northern Canada Northern Canada (), colloquially the North or the Territories, is the vast northernmost region of Canada, variously defined by geography and politics. Politically, the term refers to the three Provinces_and_territories_of_Canada#Territories, terr ...

. "Great Plains", or Western Plains, is also the

ecoregion An ecoregion (ecological region) is an ecological and geographic area that exists on multiple different levels, defined by type, quality, and quantity of environmental resources. Ecoregions cover relatively large areas of land or water, and c ...

of the Great Plains or the western portion of the Great Plains, some of which in the farthest west is known as the High Plains. The Great Plains lie across both the

Central United States The Central United States is sometimes conceived as between the Eastern United States, Eastern and Western United States, Western as part of a three-region model, roughly coincident with the United States Census Bureau, U.S. Census Bureau's d ...

and

Western Canada Western Canada, also referred to as the Western provinces, Canadian West, or Western provinces of Canada, and commonly known within Canada as the West, is a list of regions of Canada, Canadian region that includes the four western provinces and t ...

, encompassing: *Most or all of the

U.S. state In the United States, a state is a constituent political entity, of which there are 50. Bound together in a political union, each state holds governmental jurisdiction over a separate and defined geographic territory where it shares its so ...

s of

Kansas Kansas ( ) is a landlocked U.S. state, state in the Midwestern United States, Midwestern region of the United States. It borders Nebraska to the north; Missouri to the east; Oklahoma to the south; and Colorado to the west. Kansas is named a ...

Nebraska Nebraska ( ) is a landlocked U.S. state, state in the Midwestern United States, Midwestern region of the United States. It borders South Dakota to the north; Iowa to the east and Missouri to the southeast, both across the Missouri River; Ka ...

, and

North North is one of the four compass points or cardinal directions. It is the opposite of south and is perpendicular to east and west. ''North'' is a noun, adjective, or adverb indicating Direction (geometry), direction or geography. Etymology T ...

and

South Dakota South Dakota (; Sioux language, Sioux: , ) is a U.S. state, state in the West North Central states, North Central region of the United States. It is also part of the Great Plains. South Dakota is named after the Dakota people, Dakota Sioux ...

; *Eastern parts of the U.S. states of

Colorado Colorado is a U.S. state, state in the Western United States. It is one of the Mountain states, sharing the Four Corners region with Arizona, New Mexico, and Utah. It is also bordered by Wyoming to the north, Nebraska to the northeast, Kansas ...

Montana Montana ( ) is a landlocked U.S. state, state in the Mountain states, Mountain West subregion of the Western United States. It is bordered by Idaho to the west, North Dakota to the east, South Dakota to the southeast, Wyoming to the south, an ...

, and

Wyoming Wyoming ( ) is a landlocked U.S. state, state in the Mountain states, Mountain West subregion of the Western United States, Western United States. It borders Montana to the north and northwest, South Dakota and Nebraska to the east, Idaho t ...

; *Parts of the U.S. states of

New Mexico New Mexico is a state in the Southwestern United States, Southwestern region of the United States. It is one of the Mountain States of the southern Rocky Mountains, sharing the Four Corners region with Utah, Colorado, and Arizona. It also ...

Oklahoma Oklahoma ( ; Choctaw language, Choctaw: , ) is a landlocked U.S. state, state in the South Central United States, South Central region of the United States. It borders Texas to the south and west, Kansas to the north, Missouri to the northea ...

Texas Texas ( , ; or ) is the most populous U.S. state, state in the South Central United States, South Central region of the United States. It borders Louisiana to the east, Arkansas to the northeast, Oklahoma to the north, New Mexico to the we ...

; *Sometimes western parts of

Iowa Iowa ( ) is a U.S. state, state in the upper Midwestern United States, Midwestern region of the United States. It borders the Mississippi River to the east and the Missouri River and Big Sioux River to the west; Wisconsin to the northeast, Ill ...

Minnesota Minnesota ( ) is a U.S. state, state in the Upper Midwestern region of the United States. It is bordered by the Canadian provinces of Manitoba and Ontario to the north and east and by the U.S. states of Wisconsin to the east, Iowa to the so ...

, and

Missouri Missouri (''see #Etymology and pronunciation, pronunciation'') is a U.S. state, state in the Midwestern United States, Midwestern region of the United States. Ranking List of U.S. states and territories by area, 21st in land area, it border ...

; *The southern portions of the

Canadian provinces Canada has ten provinces and three territories that are sub-national administrative divisions under the jurisdiction of the Canadian Constitution. In the 1867 Canadian Confederation, three provinces of British North America—New Brunswick, N ...

Alberta Alberta is a Provinces and territories of Canada, province in Canada. It is a part of Western Canada and is one of the three Canadian Prairies, prairie provinces. Alberta is bordered by British Columbia to its west, Saskatchewan to its east, t ...

Saskatchewan Saskatchewan is a Provinces and territories of Canada, province in Western Canada. It is bordered on the west by Alberta, on the north by the Northwest Territories, on the east by Manitoba, to the northeast by Nunavut, and to the south by the ...

and

Manitoba Manitoba is a Provinces and territories of Canada, province of Canada at the Centre of Canada, longitudinal centre of the country. It is Canada's Population of Canada by province and territory, fifth-most populous province, with a population ...

Usage

The term "Great Plains" is used in the United States to describe a sub-section of the even more vast

physiographic division, which covers much of the interior of North America. It also has currency as a region of

human geography Human geography or anthropogeography is the branch of geography which studies spatial relationships between human communities, cultures, economies, and their interactions with the environment, examples of which include urban sprawl and urban ...

, referring to the

Plains Indians Plains Indians or Indigenous peoples of the Great Plains and Canadian Prairies are the Native American tribes and First Nations peoples who have historically lived on the Interior Plains (the Great Plains and Canadian Prairies) of North ...

or the Plains states. In Canada the term is rarely used;

Natural Resources Canada Natural Resources Canada (NRCan; ; )Natural Resources Canada is the applied title under the Federal Identity Program; the legal title is Department of Natural Resources (). is the department of the Government of Canada responsible for natural r ...

, the government department responsible for official mapping, treats the Interior Plains as one unit consisting of several related plateaus and plains. There is no region referred to as the "Great Plains" in the ''

Atlas of Canada The Atlas of Canada () is an online atlas published by Natural Resources Canada that has information on every city, town, village, and hamlet in Canada. It was originally a print atlas, with its first edition being published in 1906 by geographer ...

''. In terms of human geography, the term ''prairie'' is more commonly used in Canada, and the region is known as the

Canadian Prairies The Canadian Prairies (usually referred to as simply the Prairies in Canada) is a region in Western Canada. It includes the Canadian portion of the Great Plains and the Prairie provinces, namely Alberta, Saskatchewan, and Manitoba. These provin ...

, prairie provinces or simply "the prairies". The ''

North American Environmental Atlas The ''North American Environmental Atlas'' is an interactive mapping tool created through a partnership of government agencies in Canada, Mexico and the United States, along with the Commission for Environmental Cooperation, a trilateral internati ...

'', produced by the

Commission for Environmental Cooperation The Commission for Environmental Cooperation (CEC; ; ) is an intergovernmental organization established by Canada, Mexico, and the United States to implement the North American Agreement on Environmental Cooperation (NAAEC), the environmental si ...

, a

North American Free Trade Agreement The North American Free Trade Agreement (, TLCAN; , ALÉNA), referred to colloquially in the Anglosphere as NAFTA, ( ) was an agreement signed by Canada, Mexico, and the United States that created a trilateral trade bloc in North America. The ...

(NAFTA) agency composed of the geographical agencies of the Mexican, American, and Canadian governments, uses the "Great Plains" as an

synonymous with predominant prairies and grasslands rather than as physiographic region defined by topography. The Great Plains ecoregion includes five sub-regions: Temperate Prairies, West-Central Semi-Arid Prairies, South-Central Semi-Arid Prairies, Texas Louisiana Coastal Plains, and Tamaulipas-Texas Semi-Arid Plain, which overlap or expand upon other Great Plains designations.

Extent

The region is about east to west and north to south. Much of the region was home to

American bison The American bison (''Bison bison''; : ''bison''), commonly known as the American buffalo, or simply buffalo (not to be confused with Bubalina, true buffalo), is a species of bison that is endemic species, endemic (or native) to North America. ...

herds until they were hunted to near extinction during the mid/late-19th century. It has an area of approximately . Current thinking regarding the geographic boundaries of the Great Plains is shown by thi
map
at the Center for Great Plains Studies,

University of Nebraska–Lincoln The University of Nebraska–Lincoln (Nebraska, NU, or UNL) is a Public university, public Land-grant university, land-grant research university in Lincoln, Nebraska, United States. Chartered in 1869 by the Nebraska Legislature as part of the M ...

. This definition, however, is primarily ecological, not physiographic. The Boreal Plains of Western Canada are physiographically the same, but differentiated by their tundra and forest (rather than grassland) appearance. The term "Great Plains", for the region west of about the 96th meridian west and east of the

, was not generally used before the early 20th century. Nevin Fenneman's 1916 study ''Physiographic Subdivision of the United States'' brought the term Great Plains into more widespread usage. Before that the region was almost invariably called the High Plains, in contrast to the lower Prairie Plains of the Midwestern states. Today the term " High Plains" is used for a subregion of the Great Plains. The term still remains little-used in Canada compared to the more common "prairie".

Geography

The Great Plains are the westernmost portion of the vast North American

, which extend east to the

. The

United States Geological Survey The United States Geological Survey (USGS), founded as the Geological Survey, is an agency of the U.S. Department of the Interior whose work spans the disciplines of biology, geography, geology, and hydrology. The agency was founded on Mar ...

divides the Great Plains in the United States into ten physiographic subdivisions: *

Missouri Coteau The Missouri Coteau, or Missouri Plateau, () is a large plateau that stretches along the eastern side of the valley of the Missouri River in central North Dakota and north-central South Dakota in the United States. In the Canadian provinces of Sa ...

or Missouri Plateau (which also extends into Canada), glaciated – east central South Dakota, northern and eastern North Dakota and northeastern Montana; *Coteau du Missouri, unglaciated – western South Dakota, northeastern

, southwestern North Dakota and southeastern Montana; *

Black Hills The Black Hills is an isolated mountain range rising from the Great Plains of North America in western South Dakota and extending into Wyoming, United States. Black Elk Peak, which rises to , is the range's highest summit. The name of the range ...

– western South Dakota; * High Plains – southeastern Wyoming, southwestern South Dakota, western Nebraska (including the Sand Hills), eastern Colorado, western Kansas, western Oklahoma, eastern New Mexico, and northwestern Texas (including the

Llano Estacado The Llano Estacado (), sometimes translated into English as the Staked Plains, is a region in the Southwestern United States that encompasses parts of eastern New Mexico and northwestern Texas. One of the largest mesas or tablelands on the North A ...

and Texas Panhandle); *Plains Border – central Kansas and northern Oklahoma (including the

Flint Flint, occasionally flintstone, is a sedimentary cryptocrystalline form of the mineral quartz, categorized as the variety of chert that occurs in chalk or marly limestone. Historically, flint was widely used to make stone tools and start ...

Red Red is the color at the long wavelength end of the visible spectrum of light, next to orange and opposite violet. It has a dominant wavelength of approximately 625–750 nanometres. It is a primary color in the RGB color model and a seconda ...

and

Smoky Hills The Smoky Hills are an upland region of hills in the central Great Plains of North America. They are located in the Midwestern United States, encompassing north-central Kansas and a small portion of south-central Nebraska. The hills are a diss ...

); *

Colorado Piedmont The Colorado Piedmont is an area along the base of the foothills of the Front Range in north central Colorado in the United States. The region consists of a broad hilly valley, just under 5000 ft (1500 m) in elevation, stretching north and northe ...

– eastern Colorado; * Raton section – northeastern New Mexico; * Pecos Valley – eastern New Mexico; *

Edwards Plateau The Edwards Plateau is a geographic region forming the crossroads of Central, South and West Texas, United States. It is named in honor of Haden Edwards. It is bounded by the Balcones Fault to the south and east; the Llano Uplift and the Lla ...

– south central Texas; and *

Central Texas Central Texas is a region in the U.S. state of Texas roughly bordered on the west by San Saba, to the southeast by Bryan- College Station, the south by San Marcos and to the north by Hillsboro. Central Texas overlaps with and includes part ...

section – central Texas. Further to this can be added Canadian physiographic sub-regions such as the Alberta Plain, Cypress Hills, Manitoba Escarpment (eastward), Manitoba Plain,

(shared), Rocky Mountain Foothills (eastward), and Saskatchewan Plain. The Great Plains consist of a broad stretch of country underlain by nearly horizontal

strata In geology and related fields, a stratum (: strata) is a layer of Rock (geology), rock or sediment characterized by certain Lithology, lithologic properties or attributes that distinguish it from adjacent layers from which it is separated by v ...

extending westward from the

97th meridian west The 97th meridian west of Greenwich is a line of longitude that extends from the North Pole across the Arctic Ocean, North America, the Gulf of Mexico, the Pacific Ocean, the Southern Ocean, and Antarctica to the South Pole. The 97th meridian w ...

to the base of the

, a distance of . It extends northward from the Mexican boundary far into Canada. Although the

altitude Altitude is a distance measurement, usually in the vertical or "up" direction, between a reference datum (geodesy), datum and a point or object. The exact definition and reference datum varies according to the context (e.g., aviation, geometr ...

of the plains increases gradually from or on the east to or near the mountains, the local relief is generally small. The

semi-arid climate A semi-arid climate, semi-desert climate, or steppe climate is a dry climate sub-type. It is located on regions that receive precipitation below potential evapotranspiration, but not as low as a desert climate. There are different kinds of se ...

excludes tree growth and opens far-reaching views. The plains are by no means a simple unit. They are of diverse structure and of various stages of

erosion Erosion is the action of surface processes (such as Surface runoff, water flow or wind) that removes soil, Rock (geology), rock, or dissolved material from one location on the Earth's crust#Crust, Earth's crust and then sediment transport, tran ...

al development. They are occasionally interrupted by

butte In geomorphology, a butte ( ) is an isolated hill with steep, often vertical sides and a small, relatively flat top; buttes are smaller landforms than mesas, plateaus, and table (landform), tablelands. The word ''butte'' comes from the French l ...

s and

escarpment An escarpment is a steep slope or long cliff that forms as a result of faulting or erosion and separates two relatively level areas having different elevations. Due to the similarity, the term '' scarp'' may mistakenly be incorrectly used inte ...

s. They are frequently broken by valleys. Yet on the whole, a broadly extended surface of moderate relief so often prevails that the name, Great Plains, for the region as a whole is well-deserved. The western boundary of the plains is usually well-defined by the abrupt ascent of the mountains. The eastern boundary of the plains (in the United States) is more climatic than

topographic Topography is the study of the forms and features of land surfaces. The topography of an area may refer to the landforms and features themselves, or a description or depiction in maps. Topography is a field of geoscience and planetary scienc ...

. The line of of annual

rainfall Rain is a form of precipitation where water droplets that have condensed from atmospheric water vapor fall under gravity. Rain is a major component of the water cycle and is responsible for depositing most of the fresh water on the Earth. ...

trends a little east of northward near the 97th meridian. If a boundary must be drawn where nature presents only a gradual transition, this rainfall line may be taken to divide the drier plains from the moister prairies. However, in Canada the eastern boundary of the plains is well defined by the presence of the

Canadian Shield The Canadian Shield ( ), also called the Laurentian Shield or the Laurentian Plateau, is a geologic shield, a large area of exposed Precambrian igneous and high-grade metamorphic rocks. It forms the North American Craton (or Laurentia), th ...

to the northeast. The plains (within the United States) may be described in northern, intermediate, central and southern sections, in relation to certain peculiar features. In Canada, no such division is used: the climatic and vegetation regions are more impactful on human settlement than mere topography, and therefore the region is split into (from north to south), the

taiga Taiga or tayga ( ; , ), also known as boreal forest or snow forest, is a biome characterized by coniferous forests consisting mostly of pines, spruces, and larches. The taiga, or boreal forest, is the world's largest land biome. In North A ...

plains, boreal plains,

aspen parkland Aspen parkland refers to a very large area of ecotone, transitional biome between prairie and boreal forest in two sections, namely the Peace River Country of northwestern Alberta crossing the border into British Columbia, and a much larger area ...

, and prairie ecoregion regions.

Northern Great Plains

The northern section of the Great Plains, north of latitude 44°, includes eastern

, eastern

, most of

North Dakota North Dakota ( ) is a U.S. state in the Upper Midwest, named after the indigenous Dakota people, Dakota and Sioux peoples. It is bordered by the Canadian provinces of Saskatchewan and Manitoba to the north and by the U.S. states of Minneso ...

and

, southwestern

and portions of the Canadian provinces including southeastern

, southern

and southwestern

. The strata here are

Cretaceous The Cretaceous ( ) is a geological period that lasted from about 143.1 to 66 mya (unit), million years ago (Mya). It is the third and final period of the Mesozoic Era (geology), Era, as well as the longest. At around 77.1 million years, it is the ...

or early

Tertiary Tertiary (from Latin, meaning 'third' or 'of the third degree/order..') may refer to: * Tertiary period, an obsolete geologic period spanning from 66 to 2.6 million years ago * Tertiary (chemistry), a term describing bonding patterns in organic ch ...

, lying nearly horizontal. The surface is shown to be a plain of degradation by a gradual ascent here and there to the crest of a ragged escarpment, the escarpment-remnant of a resistant stratum. There are also the occasional

lava Lava is molten or partially molten rock (magma) that has been expelled from the interior of a terrestrial planet (such as Earth) or a Natural satellite, moon onto its surface. Lava may be erupted at a volcano or through a Fissure vent, fractu ...

-capped

mesa A mesa is an isolated, flat-topped elevation, ridge, or hill, bounded from all sides by steep escarpments and standing distinctly above a surrounding plain. Mesas consist of flat-lying soft sedimentary rocks, such as shales, capped by a ...

s and dike formed ridges, surmounting the general level by or more and manifestly demonstrating the widespread

of the surrounding plains. All these reliefs are more plentiful towards the mountains in central Montana. The peneplain is no longer in the cycle of erosion that witnessed its production. It appears to have suffered a regional uplift or increase in elevation, for the upper

Missouri River The Missouri River is a river in the Central United States, Central and Mountain states, Mountain West regions of the United States. The nation's longest, it rises in the eastern Centennial Mountains of the Bitterroot Range of the Rocky Moun ...

and its branches no longer flow on the surface of the plain, but in well graded, maturely opened valleys, several hundred feet below the general level. A significant exception to the rule of mature valleys occurs, however, in the case of the Missouri, the largest river, which is broken by several falls on hard sandstones about east of the mountains. This peculiar feature is explained as the result of displacement of the river from a better graded preglacial valley by the

Pleistocene The Pleistocene ( ; referred to colloquially as the ''ice age, Ice Age'') is the geological epoch (geology), epoch that lasted from to 11,700 years ago, spanning the Earth's most recent period of repeated glaciations. Before a change was fin ...

ice sheet In glaciology, an ice sheet, also known as a continental glacier, is a mass of glacier, glacial ice that covers surrounding terrain and is greater than . The only current ice sheets are the Antarctic ice sheet and the Greenland ice sheet. Ice s ...

. Here, the ice sheet overspread the plains from the moderately elevated Canadian highlands far on the north-east, instead of from the much higher mountains nearby on the west. The present altitude of the plains near the mountain base is . The northern plains are interrupted by several small mountain areas. The Black Hills, chiefly in western South Dakota, are the largest group. They rise like a large island from the sea, occupying an oval area of about north-south by east-west. At

Black Elk Peak Black Elk Peak, formerly known as Harney Peak, is the highest natural point in the U.S. state of South Dakota and the Midwestern United States. It lies in the Black Elk Wilderness area, in southern Pennington County, in the Black Hills. The pe ...

, they reach an altitude of and have an effective relief over the plains of This mountain mass is of flat-arched, dome-like structure, now well dissected by radiating consequent streams. The weaker uppermost strata have been eroded down to the level of the plains where their upturned edges are evenly truncated. The next following harder strata have been sufficiently eroded to disclose the core of underlying

igneous Igneous rock ( ), or magmatic rock, is one of the three main rock types, the others being sedimentary and metamorphic. Igneous rocks are formed through the cooling and solidification of magma or lava. The magma can be derived from partial ...

and

metamorphic Metamorphic rocks arise from the transformation of existing rock to new types of rock in a process called metamorphism. The original rock (protolith) is subjected to temperatures greater than and, often, elevated pressure of or more, causi ...

crystalline rocks in about half of the domed area.

Intermediate Great Plains

In the intermediate section of the plains, between latitudes 44° and 42°, including southern South Dakota and northern

, the erosion of certain large districts is peculiarly elaborate. Known as the

Badlands Badlands are a type of dry terrain where softer sedimentary rocks and clay-rich soils have been extensively eroded."Badlands" in '' Chambers's Encyclopædia''. London: George Newnes, 1961, Vol. 2, p. 47. They are characterized by steep slopes, ...

, it is a minutely dissected form with a relief of a few hundred feet. This is due to several causes: *the dry climate, which prevents the growth of a grassy turf *the fine texture of the Tertiary strata in the badland districts *every little rill, at times of rain, carves its own little valley.

Central Great Plains

The central section of the Great Plains, between latitudes 42° and 36°, occupying eastern

and western

, is mostly a dissected fluviatile plain. That is, this section was once smoothly covered with a gently sloping plain of gravel and sand that had been spread far forward on a broad denuded area as a

piedmont Piedmont ( ; ; ) is one of the 20 regions of Italy, located in the northwest Italy, Northwest of the country. It borders the Liguria region to the south, the Lombardy and Emilia-Romagna regions to the east, and the Aosta Valley region to the ...

deposit by the rivers which issued from the mountains. Since then, it has been more or less dissected by the erosion of valleys. The central section of the plains thus presents a marked contrast to the northern section. While the northern section owes its smoothness to the removal of local gravels and sands from a formerly uneven surface by the action of degrading rivers and their inflowing tributaries, the southern section owes its smoothness to the deposition of imported gravels and sands upon a previously uneven surface by the action of aggrading rivers and their outgoing distributaries. The two sections are also alike in that residual eminences still here and there surmount the peneplain of the northern section, while the fluviatile plain of the central section completely buried the pre-existent relief. An exception to this statement must be made for the southwest, close to the mountains in southern Colorado, where some lava-capped mesas (

Mesa de Maya The Mesa de Maya is a prominent volcanic tableland rising to above the Great Plains in southeastern Colorado. A narrow finger of the mesa extends eastward through the northeastern corner of New Mexico and a few miles into Oklahoma where it is kn ...

, Raton Mesa) stand several thousand feet above the general plain level, and thus testify to the widespread erosion of this region before it was aggraded.

Southern Great Plains

The southern section of the Great Plains, between latitudes 35.5° and 25.5°, lies in western

, eastern

, and western

. Like the central section, it is for the most part a dissected fluviatile plain. However, the lower lands which surround it on all sides place it in such strong relief that it stands up as a table-land, known from the time of Mexican occupation as the

. It measures roughly east-west and north-south. It is of very irregular outline, narrowing to the south. Its altitude is at the highest western point, nearest the mountains whence its gravels were supplied. From there, it slopes southeastward at a decreasing rate, first about , then about , to its eastern and southern borders, where it is in altitude. Like the High Plains farther north, it is extraordinarily smooth. It is very dry, except for occasional shallow and temporary water sheets after rains. Llano is separated from the plains on the north by the mature consequent valley of the

Canadian River The Canadian River is the longest tributary of the Arkansas River in the United States. It is about long, starting in Colorado and traveling through New Mexico, the Texas Panhandle, and Oklahoma. The drainage area is about .Pecos River The Pecos River ( ; ) originates in north-central New Mexico and flows into Texas, emptying into the Rio Grande. Its headwaters are on the eastern slope of the Sangre de Cristo mountain range in Mora County north of Pecos, New Mexico, at an elev ...

. On the east, it is strongly undercut by the retrogressive erosion of the headwaters of the Red, Brazos, and Colorado rivers of Texas and presents a ragged escarpment approximately high, overlooking the central denuded area of that state. There, between the Brazos and Colorado rivers, occurs a series of isolated outliers capped by limestone that underlies both the Llano Uplift on the west and the Grand Prairies escarpment on the east. The southern and narrow part of the table-land, called the

, is more dissected than the rest, and falls off to the south in a frayed-out fault scarp. This scarp overlooks the coastal plain of the

Rio Grande The Rio Grande ( or ) in the United States or the Río Bravo (del Norte) in Mexico (), also known as Tó Ba'áadi in Navajo language, Navajo, is one of the principal rivers (along with the Colorado River) in the Southwestern United States a ...

embayment A bay is a recessed, coastal body of water that directly connects to a larger main body of water, such as an ocean, a lake, or another bay. A large bay is usually called a ''gulf'', ''sea'', ''sound'', or ''bight''. A ''cove'' is a small, ci ...

. The central denuded area, east of the Llano, resembles the east-central section of the plains in exposing older rocks. Between these two similar areas, in the space limited by the Canadian and Red Rivers, rise the subdued forms of the

Wichita Mountains The Wichita Mountains are located in the southwestern portion of the U.S. state of Oklahoma. It is the principal relief system in the Southern Oklahoma Aulacogen, being the result of a failed continental rift. The mountains are a northwest-south ...

, the westernmost member of the Ouachita system.

Other terminology

The term "Western Plains" is used to describe the

of the Great Plains, or alternatively the western portion of the Great Plains.

Natural history

Climate

In general, the Great Plains have a wide range of weather, with very cold and harsh winters and very hot and humid summers. Wind speeds are often very high, especially in winter. The 100th meridian roughly corresponds with the line that divides the Great Plains into an area that receives or more of rainfall per year and an area that receives less than . In this context, the High Plains, as well as

Southern Alberta Southern Alberta is a region located in the Canadian province of Alberta. In 2016, the region's population was approximately 291,112. The primary cities are Lethbridge and Medicine Hat. The region is known mostly for agricultural production, but o ...

, south-western Saskatchewan and Eastern Montana are mainly

semi arid A semi-arid climate, semi-desert climate, or steppe climate is a dry climate sub-type. It is located on regions that receive precipitation below potential evapotranspiration, but not as low as a desert climate. There are different kinds of sem ...

steppe land and are generally characterised by

rangeland Rangelands are grasslands, shrublands, woodlands, wetlands, and deserts that are grazed by domestic livestock or wild animals. Types of rangelands include tallgrass and shortgrass prairies, desert grasslands and shrublands, woodlands, savanna ...

or marginal

farmland Agricultural land is typically land ''devoted to'' agriculture, the systematic and controlled use of other forms of lifeparticularly the rearing of livestock and production of cropsto produce food for humans. It is generally synonymous with bot ...

. The region (especially the High Plains) is periodically subjected to extended periods of

drought A drought is a period of drier-than-normal conditions.Douville, H., K. Raghavan, J. Renwick, R.P. Allan, P.A. Arias, M. Barlow, R. Cerezo-Mota, A. Cherchi, T.Y. Gan, J. Gergis, D. Jiang, A. Khan, W. Pokam Mba, D. Rosenfeld, J. Tierney, ...

; high winds in the region may then generate devastating

dust storm A dust storm, also called a sandstorm, is a meteorological phenomenon common in arid and semi-arid regions. Dust storms arise when a gust front or other strong wind blows loose sand and dirt from a dry surface. Fine particles are transpo ...

s. The eastern Great Plains near the eastern boundary falls in the

humid subtropical climate A humid subtropical climate is a subtropical -temperate climate type, characterized by long and hot summers, and cool to mild winters. These climates normally lie on the southeast side of all continents (except Antarctica), generally between ...

zone in the southern areas, and the northern and central areas fall in the

humid continental climate A humid continental climate is a climatic region defined by Russo-German climatologist Wladimir Köppen in 1900, typified by four distinct seasons and large seasonal temperature differences, with warm to hot (and often humid) summers, and cold ...

. Many

thunderstorm A thunderstorm, also known as an electrical storm or a lightning storm, is a storm characterized by the presence of lightning and its acoustics, acoustic effect on the Earth's atmosphere, known as thunder. Relatively weak thunderstorm ...

s occur in the plains in the spring through summer. The southeastern portion of the Great Plains is the most

tornado A tornado is a violently rotating column of air that is in contact with the surface of Earth and a cumulonimbus cloud or, in rare cases, the base of a cumulus cloud. It is often referred to as a twister, whirlwind or cyclone, although the ...

active area in the world and is sometimes referred to as

Tornado Alley Tornado Alley, also known as Tornado Valley, is a loosely defined location of the central United States and, in the 21st century, Canada where tornadoes are most frequent. The term was first used in 1952 as the title of a research project to st ...

Flora

The Great Plains are part of the floristic North American Prairies province, which extends from the Rocky Mountains to the

Appalachians The Appalachian Mountains, often called the Appalachians, are a mountain range in eastern to northeastern North America. The term "Appalachian" refers to several different regions associated with the mountain range, and its surrounding terrain ...

Fauna

Mammals

Although the

(''Bison bison'') historically ranged throughout much of North America (from

New York New York most commonly refers to: * New York (state), a state in the northeastern United States * New York City, the most populous city in the United States, located in the state of New York New York may also refer to: Places United Kingdom * ...

Oregon Oregon ( , ) is a U.S. state, state in the Pacific Northwest region of the United States. It is a part of the Western U.S., with the Columbia River delineating much of Oregon's northern boundary with Washington (state), Washington, while t ...

and Canada to northern Mexico), they are strongly associated with the Great Plains where they once roamed in immense herds.

Pronghorn The pronghorn (, ) (''Antilocapra americana'') is a species of artiodactyl (even-toed, hoofed) mammal indigenous to interior western and central North America. Though not an antelope, it is known colloquially in North America as the American ante ...

(''Antilocapra americana'') range into western areas of the region. The

black-tailed prairie dog The black-tailed prairie dog (''Cynomys ludovicianus'') is a rodent of the family Sciuridae (the squirrels) found in the Great Plains of North America from about the United States–Canada border to the United States–Mexico border. Unlike some ...

(''Cynomys ludovicianus'') is another iconic species among several rodents that are linked to the region including the thirteen-lined ground squirrel (''Ictidomys tridecemlineatus''), spotted ground squirrel (''Xerospermophilus spilosoma''), Franklin's ground squirrel (''Poliocitellus franklinii''),

plains pocket gopher The plains pocket gopher (''Geomys bursarius'') is one of 35 species of pocket gophers, so named in reference to their externally located, fur-lined cheek pouches. They are burrowing animals, found in grasslands and agricultural land across the G ...

(''Geomys bursarius''), hispid pocket mouse (''Chaetodipus hispidus''), olive-backed pocket mouse (''Perognathus fasciatus''), plains pocket mouse (''Perognathus flavescens''), and plains harvest mouse (''Reithrodontomys montanus''), Two carnivores associated with the Great Plains include the

swift fox The swift fox (''Vulpes velox'') is a small light orange-tan fox around the size of a domestic cat found in the western grasslands of North America, such as Montana, Colorado, New Mexico, Kansas, Oklahoma and Texas. It also lives in southern M ...

(''Vulpes velox'') and the endangered

black-footed ferret The black-footed ferret (''Mustela nigripes''), also known as the American polecatHeptner, V. G. (Vladimir Georgievich); Nasimovich, A. A; Bannikov, Andrei Grigorovich; Hoffmann, Robert S. (2001)''Mammals of the Soviet Union''Volume: v. 2, pt. 1 ...

(''Mustela nigripes'').Reid, Fiona, A. 2006. ''A Field Guide to mammals of North America North of Mexico, Peterson Field Guide Series'', 4th ed. Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. New York, N. Y. xx, 579 pp.

Birds

The

lesser prairie-chicken The lesser prairie-chicken (''Tympanuchus pallidicinctus'') is a species in the grouse family. Description Adult individuals are medium to large birds, striped white and brown like its near relative, the Greater prairie-chicken (''T. cupido''), ...

(''Tympanuchus pallidicinctus'') is

endemic Endemism is the state of a species being found only in a single defined geographic location, such as an island, state, nation, country or other defined zone; organisms that are indigenous to a place are not endemic to it if they are also foun ...

to the Great Plains and the distribution of the greater prairie-chicken (''Tympanuchus cupido'') predominantly occurs in the region, although the latter historically ranged further eastward. The Harris's sparrow (''Zonotrichia querula'') spends winter months in southern areas of the region. Other species migrate from the south in the spring and spend their breeding season on the plains, including the white-faced ibis (''Plegadis chihi''),

mountain plover The mountain plover (''Anarhynchus montanus'') is a medium-sized ground bird in the plover family ( Charadriidae). It is misnamed, as it lives on level land. Unlike most plovers, it is usually not found near bodies of water or even on wet soil; ...

(''Charadrius montanus''), marbled godwit (''Limosa fedoa''), Sprague's pipit (''Anthus spragueii''),

Cassin's sparrow Cassin's sparrow (''Peucaea cassinii'') is a medium-sized sparrow. This passerine bird's range is from western Nebraska to north-central Mexico. Taxonomy The first Cassin's sparrow was described in 1852 by Samuel W. Woodhouse from a specimen ...

(''Peucaea cassinii''), Baird's sparrow (''Centronyx bairdii''), lark bunting (''Calamospiza melanocorys''),

chestnut-collared longspur The chestnut-collared longspur (''Calcarius ornatus'') is a species of bird in the family Calcariidae. Like the other longspurs, it is a small ground-feeding bird that primarily eats seeds. It breeds in prairie habitats in Canada and the northern ...

(''Calcarius ornatus''), thick-billed longspur or McCown's longspur (''Rhynchophanes mccownii''), and dickcissel (''Spiza americana'').Mulroy, Kevin (Editor-in-Chief). 2002. ''Field Guide to the Birds of North America'', 4th edition. National Geographic, Washington, D. C. 480 pp.

Reptiles

The prairie rattlesnake ('' Crotalus viridis'') ranges throughout much of the Great Plains and into the valleys and lower elevations of the eastern

and portions of the

American southwest The Southwestern United States, also known as the American Southwest or simply the Southwest, is a geographic and cultural list of regions of the United States, region of the United States that includes Arizona and New Mexico, along with adjacen ...

. Other snakes include the plains hog-nosed snake ('' Heterodon nasicus''), western milksnake ('' Lampropeltis gentilis''), Great Plains ratsnake ('' Pantherophis emoryi''), bullsnake ('' Pituophis catenifer sayi''), plains black-headed snake ('' Tantilla nigriceps''), plains gartersnake ('' Thamnophis radix''), and lined snake (''

Tropidoclonion lineatum ''Tropidoclonion'' is a genus of snake in the subfamily Natricinae of the Family (biology), family Colubridae. The genus is Monotypic taxon, monotypic, containing the sole species ''Tropidoclonion lineatum'', Common name, commonly known as the li ...

''). Reptile diversity increases significantly in southern regions of the Great Plains. The ornate box turtle (''

Terrapene ornata ''Terrapene ornata'' is a species of North American box turtle sometimes referred to as the western box turtle or the ornate box turtle. It is one of two recognized species of box turtle in the United States, having two subspecies. The second rec ...

'') and Great Plains skink ('' Plestiodon obsoletus'') occur in southern areas.Powell, Robert, Roger Conant, and Joseph Collins. 2016. ''Peterson Field Guide to Reptiles and Amphibians of Eastern and Central North America'', 4th ed. Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. New York, N. Y. xiii, 494 pp. ages 202-209

Amphibians

Although few salamanders are strongly associated with the region, the western tiger salamander (''Ambystoma mavortium'') ranges through much of the Great Plains and the Rocky Mountains, as does the Rocky Mountain toad (''Anaxyrus w. woodhousi''). Other

anurans A frog is any member of a diverse and largely semiaquatic group of short-bodied, tailless amphibian vertebrates composing the order Anura (coming from the Ancient Greek , literally 'without tail'). Frog species with rough skin texture due to ...

related to region include the Great Plains toad (''Anaxyrus cognatus''), plains leopard frog (''Lithobates blairi''), and

plains spadefoot toad The plains spadefoot toad (''Spea bombifrons'') is a species of American spadefoot toad which ranges from southwestern Canada, throughout the Great Plains of the western United States, and into northern Mexico. Like other species of spadefoot toad ...

(''Spea bombifrons'').Dodd Jr., C. Kenneth (2013) ''Frogs of the United States and Canada, Vol. I & II''. Johns Hopkins University Press, Baltimore. 982 pp.

Fish

Some species predominantly associated with various river basins in the Great Plains include sturgeon chub (''Macrhybopsis gelida''), peppered chub (''Macrhybopsis tetranema''), prairie chub (''Macrhybopsis australis''), western silvery minnow (''Hybognathus argyritis''), plains minnow (''Hybognathus placitus''), smalleye shiner (''Notropis buccula''), Arkansas River shiner (''Notropis girardi''), Red River shiner (''Notropis bairdi''), Topeka shiner (''Notropis topeka''), plains topminnow (''Fundulus sciadicus''), plains killifish ('' Fundulus zebrinus''), Red River pupfish ('' Cyprinodon rubrofluviatilis''), and Arkansas darter (''Etheostoma cragini'').Lee, D. S., C. R. Gilbert, C. H. Hocutt, R. E. Jenkins, D. E. McAllister, and J. R. Stauffer, Jr. 1980. ''Atlas of North American Freshwater Fishes'', North Carolina State Museum of Natural History. x, 867 pp. Page, L. M. and B. M. Burr. 2011. ''Peterson Field Guide to Freshwater Fishes: North America North of Mexico, Second Edition'', Peterson Field Guide Series. Houghton Mifflin Company. Boston, Massachusetts. xix, 663 pp.

Invertebrates

The Great Plains also has many

invertebrate Invertebrates are animals that neither develop nor retain a vertebral column (commonly known as a ''spine'' or ''backbone''), which evolved from the notochord. It is a paraphyletic grouping including all animals excluding the chordata, chordate s ...

species living here both alive and

extinct Extinction is the termination of an organism by the death of its Endling, last member. A taxon may become Functional extinction, functionally extinct before the death of its last member if it loses the capacity to Reproduction, reproduce and ...

such as the American burying beetle (''Nicrophorus americus''), Salt Creek tiger beetle (''Cinidela nevadica lincolniana''), Great Plains giant tiger beetle (''Amblycheila chylindriformis''), '' Microstylum morosum'', bean leaf beetle (''Cerotoma trifurcata''), Great Plains camel cricket (''Daihinia brevipes''), and the Great Plains spittlebug (''Lepyronia gibbosa''). Some species in the Great Plains have gone extinct like the Rocky Mountain locust (''Melanoplus spretus''). File:Bison bison Wichita Mountain Oklahoma.jpg, American bison (''Bison bison''), Wichita Mountain Wildlife Refuge, Oklahoma File:Black-footed Ferrets in Preconditioning Pens (15519959116) (cropped).jpg, Black-footed ferret (''Mustela nigripes'') National Black-footed Ferret Conservation Center, Colorado File:Swift Fox (cropped).jpg, Swift fox (''Vulpes velox''), Colorado File:Tympanuchus pallidicinctus-1jpg (cropped).jpg, Lesser prairie-chicken (''Tympanuchus pallidicinctus'') on a lek in the Red Hills of Kansas File:Great Plains Rat Snake (Pantherophis emoryi) (8726969667).jpg, Great Plains ratsnake (''Pantherophis emoryi''), Missouri File:Great Plains toad (cropped).jpg, Great Plains toad (''Anaxyrus cognatus'') File:Amerikanischer Totengräber (Nicrophorus americanus).jpg,

Nicrophorus americanus ''Nicrophorus americanus'', also known as the American burying beetle or giant carrion beetle, is a critically endangered species of beetle endemic (ecology), endemic to North America. It belongs to the order Coleoptera and the family Silphidae ...

Paleontology

During the

Period (145–66 million years ago), the Great Plains were covered by a shallow

inland sea An inland sea (also known as an epeiric sea or an epicontinental sea) is a continental body of water which is very large in area and is either completely surrounded by dry land (landlocked), or connected to an ocean by a river, strait or " arm of ...

called the

Western Interior Seaway The Western Interior Seaway (also called the Cretaceous Seaway, the Niobraran Sea, the North American Inland Sea, or the Western Interior Sea) was a large inland sea (geology), inland sea that existed roughly over the present-day Great Plains of ...

. However, during the

Late Cretaceous The Late Cretaceous (100.5–66 Ma) is the more recent of two epochs into which the Cretaceous Period is divided in the geologic time scale. Rock strata from this epoch form the Upper Cretaceous Series. The Cretaceous is named after ''cre ...

to the

Paleocene The Paleocene ( ), or Palaeocene, is a geological epoch (geology), epoch that lasted from about 66 to 56 mya (unit), million years ago (mya). It is the first epoch of the Paleogene Period (geology), Period in the modern Cenozoic Era (geology), ...

(65–55 million years ago), the seaway had begun to recede, leaving behind thick marine deposits and a relatively flat terrain which the seaway had once occupied. During the

Cenozoic era The Cenozoic Era ( ; ) is Earth's current geological Era (geology), era, representing the last 66million years of Earth's history. It is characterized by the dominance of mammals, Insect, insects, birds and flowering plant, angiosperms (floweri ...

, specifically about 25 million years ago during the

Miocene The Miocene ( ) is the first epoch (geology), geological epoch of the Neogene Period and extends from about (Ma). The Miocene was named by Scottish geologist Charles Lyell; the name comes from the Greek words (', "less") and (', "new") and mea ...

and

Pliocene The Pliocene ( ; also Pleiocene) is the epoch (geology), epoch in the geologic time scale that extends from 5.33 to 2.58niche for mammals, including many

ungulate Ungulates ( ) are members of the diverse clade Euungulata ("true ungulates"), which primarily consists of large mammals with Hoof, hooves. Once part of the clade "Ungulata" along with the clade Paenungulata, "Ungulata" has since been determined ...

s and

glires Glires (, Latin ''glīrēs'' 'dormice') is a clade (sometimes ranked as a grandorder) consisting of rodents and lagomorphs ( rabbits, hares, and pikas). The hypothesis that these form a monophyletic group has been long debated based on morph ...

, that switched from browsing diets to grazing diets. Traditionally, the spread of grasslands and the development of grazers have been strongly linked. However, an examination of mammalian teeth suggests that it is the open, gritty habitat and not the grass itself which is linked to diet changes in mammals, giving rise to the " grit, not grass" hypothesis.

Paleontological Paleontology, also spelled as palaeontology or palæontology, is the scientific study of the life of the past, mainly but not exclusively through the study of fossils. Paleontologists use fossils as a means to classify organisms, measure geolo ...

finds in the area have yielded bones of

mammoth A mammoth is any species of the extinct elephantid genus ''Mammuthus.'' They lived from the late Miocene epoch (from around 6.2 million years ago) into the Holocene until about 4,000 years ago, with mammoth species at various times inhabi ...

saber-toothed cats Machairodontinae (from Ancient Greek μάχαιρα ''Makhaira, machaira,'' a type of Ancient Greek sword and ὀδόντος ''odontos'' meaning tooth) is an extinct subfamily of carnivoran mammals of the cat family Felidae, representing the ...

and other ancient animals, as well as dozens of other

megafauna In zoology, megafauna (from Ancient Greek, Greek μέγας ''megas'' "large" and Neo-Latin ''fauna'' "animal life") are large animals. The precise definition of the term varies widely, though a common threshold is approximately , this lower en ...

(large animals over ) – such as giant sloths,

horses The horse (''Equus ferus caballus'') is a domesticated, one-toed, hoofed mammal. It belongs to the taxonomic family Equidae and is one of two extant subspecies of ''Equus ferus''. The horse has evolved over the past 45 to 55 milli ...

mastodon A mastodon, from Ancient Greek μαστός (''mastós''), meaning "breast", and ὀδούς (''odoús'') "tooth", is a member of the genus ''Mammut'' (German for 'mammoth'), which was endemic to North America and lived from the late Miocene to ...

s, and

American lion The American lion (''Panthera atrox'' (), with the species name meaning "savage" or "cruel", also called the North American lion) is an extinct pantherine cat native to North America during the Late Pleistocene from around 129,000 to 12,800 y ...

– that dominated the area of the ancient Great Plains for thousands to millions of years. The vast majority of these animals became extinct in North America at the end of the

(around 13,000 years ago). A number of significant fossil sites are located in the Great Plains including Agate Fossil Beds National Monument (

), Ashfall Fossil Beds (

), Clayton Lake State Park (

), Dinosaur Valley State Park (

), Hudson-Meng Bison Kill (Nebraska), Makoshika State Park (Montana), and The Mammoth Site (

Public and protected lands

Public and protected lands in the Great Plains include National Parks and National Monuments, administers by the

National Park Service The National Park Service (NPS) is an List of federal agencies in the United States, agency of the Federal government of the United States, United States federal government, within the US Department of the Interior. The service manages all List ...

with the responsibility of preserving ecological and historical places and making them available to the public.National Park Service
About Us
(referenced April 9, 2022) The U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service manages the National Wildlife Refuges, with the primary responsibility of conserving and protecting fish, wildlife, plants, and habitat in the public trust.United States Fish and Wildlife Service: https://www.fws.gov/ (referenced April 9, 2022) Both are agencies of the

Department of the Interior The United States Department of the Interior (DOI) is an executive department of the U.S. federal government responsible for the management and conservation of most federal lands and natural resources. It also administers programs relatin ...

. In contrast,

U.S. Forest Service The United States Forest Service (USFS) is an agency within the U.S. Department of Agriculture. It administers the nation's 154 national forests and 20 national grasslands covering of land. The major divisions of the agency are the Chief's ...

, an agency of the U. S. Department of Agriculture, administers the National Forests and National Grasslands, under a multiple-use concept. By law, the U.S. Forest Service must consider all resources, with no single resource emphasized to the detriment of others, including water, soil, grazing, timber harvesting, and minerals (mining and drilling), as well as recreation and conservation of fish and wildlife.United States Forest Service
Managing the Land
(referenced April 9, 2022) Each individual state also administers state lands, typically smaller areas, for various purposes including conservation and recreation. Grasslands are among the least protected biomes. Humans have converted much of the prairies for agricultural purposes or to create pastures. Several of the protected lands in the region are centered around aberrant and uncharacteristic features of the region, such as mountains, outcrops, and canyons (e.g. Devil's Tower National Monument,

Wind Cave National Park Wind Cave National Park is a national park of the United States located north of the town of Hot Springs in western South Dakota. Established on January 3, 1903 by President Theodore Roosevelt, it was the sixth national park in the U.S. and t ...

, Scotts Bluff National Monument), and as splendid and worthy as they are, they are not primarily focused on conserving the plains and prairies. United States: *Colorado: **

Comanche National Grassland Comanche National Grassland is a National Grassland located in southeastern Colorado, United States. It is the sister grassland of Cimarron National Grassland and contains both prairie grasslands and canyons. It is separated into two sections, ...

() **

Pawnee National Grassland Pawnee National Grassland is a United States National Grassland located in northeastern Colorado on the Colorado Eastern Plains. The grassland is located in the South Platte River basin in remote northern and extreme northeastern Weld County ...

() *Iowa: ** DeSoto National Wildlife Refuge () *Kansas: ** Cheyenne Bottoms Wildlife Area () **

Cimarron National Grassland Cimarron National Grassland is a National Grassland located in Morton County, Kansas, United States, with a very small part extending eastward into Stevens County. Cimarron National Grassland is located near Comanche National Grassland which ...

() ** Flint Hills National Wildlife Refuge () ** Kirwin National Wildlife Refuge () ** Marais des Cygnes National Wildlife Refuge () **

Tallgrass Prairie National Preserve Tallgrass Prairie National Preserve is a United States National Preserve located in the Flint Hills region of Kansas, north of Strong City, Kansas, Strong City. The preserve protects a nationally significant example of the once vast tallgrass ...

Fort Niobrara National Wildlife Refuge Fort Niobrara National Wildlife Refuge is located in the U.S. state of Nebraska and includes 19,131 acres (77.42 km2). The refuge borders the Niobrara National Scenic River on the west and is managed by the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Se ...

() **

John and Louise Seier National Wildlife Refuge John and Louise Seier National Wildlife Refuge is located in the U.S. state of Nebraska and includes 2,400 acres (9.71 km2). The refuge protects a portion of the largest remaining area of tall and mid grass prairie remaining in the U.S ...

() ** North Platte National Wildlife Refuge () ** Rainwater Basin Wetland Management District () ** Scotts Bluff National Monument () ** Valentine National Wildlife Refuge () *New Mexico: ** Grulla National Wildlife Refuge () ** Kiowa National Grassland () *North Dakota: ** Arrowwood National Wildlife Refuge () ** Audubon National Wildlife Refuge () ** Little Missouri State Park () ** Sheyenne National Grassland () **

Theodore Roosevelt National Park Theodore Roosevelt National Park is a List of national parks of the United States, national park of the United States in the badlands of western North Dakota comprising three geographically separated areas. This park pays homage to the time that ...

() *Oklahoma: **

Black Kettle National Grassland The Black Kettle National Grassland, in Roger Mills County, Oklahoma, and Hemphill County, Texas, contains of which are in Oklahoma. Named for the Indian leader Black Kettle, the grassland is managed by the Cibola National Forest, which also ...

() **

Salt Plains National Wildlife Refuge The Salt Plains National Wildlife Refuge is part of the United States system of national wildlife refuges. It is located in Alfalfa County, Oklahoma, Alfalfa County in northern Oklahoma, north of Jet, Oklahoma, Jet (pop. 230), along Great Salt P ...

() **

Wichita Mountains Wildlife Refuge Wichita Mountains Wildlife Refuge, located in southwestern Oklahoma near Lawton, has protected unique wildlife habitats since 1901 and is the oldest managed wildlife facility in the United States Fish and Wildlife Service system. The refuge's l ...

() *South Dakota: **

Badlands National Park Badlands National Park () is a List of national parks of the United States, national park of the United States in southwestern South Dakota. The park protects of sharply Erosion, eroded buttes and Pinnacle (geology), pinnacles, along with the l ...

() **

Black Hills National Forest Black Hills National Forest is located in southwestern South Dakota and northeastern Wyoming, United States. The forest has an area of over 1.25 million acres (5,066 km2) and is managed by the Forest Service. Forest headquarters are located ...

() **

Custer State Park Custer State Park is a South Dakota State Park and wildlife reserve in the Black Hills of the United States. Located in Custer County, the park is South Dakota's first and largest state park, named after Lieutenant Colonel George Armstrong C ...

() ** Fort Pierre National Grassland () ** Grand River National Grassland () **

() *Texas: ** Buffalo Lake National Wildlife Refuge () ** Caddo National Grassland () ** Caprock Canyons State Park () ** Hagerman National Wildlife Refuge () ** Lyndon B. Johnson National Grassland () ** Muleshoe National Wildlife Refuge () **

Palo Duro Canyon State Park Palo Duro Canyon is a canyon system of the Caprock Escarpment located in the Texas Panhandle near the cities of Amarillo, Texas, Amarillo and Canyon, Texas, Canyon. The second largest canyon system in the United States, it is roughly long and ha ...

() ** Rita Blanca National Grassland () *Wyoming: ** Curt Gowdy State Park () ** Devil's Tower National Monument () ** Glendo State Park (ca. ) **

Thunder Basin National Grassland The Thunder Basin National Grassland is located in northeastern Wyoming in the Powder River Basin between the Big Horn Mountains and the Black Hills. The Grassland ranges in elevation from , and the climate is semi-arid. The Grassland provide ...

() Canada: *Alberta: **

Elk Island National Park Elk Island National Park is a National Parks of Canada, national park in Alberta, Canada, that played an important part in the conservation of the plains bison. The park is administered by the Parks Canada Agency. This "island of conservation" ...

() ** Suffield National Wildlife Area () *Manitoba: **

Riding Mountain National Park Riding Mountain National Park is a national park in Manitoba, Canada. The park is located within Treaty 2 Territory and sits atop the Manitoba Escarpment. Consisting of a protected area of , the forested parkland stands in sharp contrast to the ...

() ** Turtle Mountain Provincial Park () *Saskatchewan: **

Grasslands National Park Grasslands National Park is a Canadian national park located near the village of Val Marie, Saskatchewan, and one of 44 national parks and park reserves in Canada's national park system (though one of only two in Saskatchewan itself). This n ...

() ** Last Mountain Lake National Wildlife Area ()

Ecological changes

the Great Plains biome is found to be at the brink of collapse due to

woody plant encroachment Woody plant encroachment (also called woody encroachment, bush encroachment, shrub encroachment, shrubification, woody plant proliferation, or bush thickening) is a natural phenomenon characterised by the area expansion and density increase of ...

, with 62% of Northern American grassland lost to date.

History to 1850

Original American contact

The first Peoples (

Paleo-Indians Paleo-Indians were the first peoples who entered and subsequently inhabited the Americas towards the end of the Late Pleistocene period. The prefix ''paleo-'' comes from . The term ''Paleo-Indians'' applies specifically to the lithic period in ...

) arrived on the Great Plains thousands of years ago. The introduction of corn around 800 CE allowed the development of the mound-building

Mississippian culture The Mississippian culture was a collection of Native American societies that flourished in what is now the Midwestern, Eastern, and Southeastern United States from approximately 800 to 1600 CE, varying regionally. It was known for building la ...

along rivers that crossed the Great Plains and that included trade networks west to the Rocky Mountains. Mississippians settled the Great Plains at sites now in

and

Siouan language Siouan ( ), also known as Siouan–Catawban ( ), is a language family of North America located primarily in the Great Plains, Ohio and Mississippi valleys and southeastern North America with a few other languages in the east. Name Authors who ...

speakers may have originated in the lower

Mississippi River The Mississippi River is the main stem, primary river of the largest drainage basin in the United States. It is the second-longest river in the United States, behind only the Missouri River, Missouri. From its traditional source of Lake Ita ...

region. They were agriculturalists and may have been part of the Mound Builder civilization during the 9th–12th centuries. Pressure from other Indian tribes, themselves driven west and south by the encroachment of European settlers as well as economic incentives such as the fur trade, alongside the arrival of the horse and firearms from Europe pushed multiple tribes onto the Great Plains. Among those to have lived on the Great Plains were the

Blackfoot The Blackfoot Confederacy, ''Niitsitapi'', or ''Siksikaitsitapi'' (ᖹᐟᒧᐧᒣᑯ, meaning "the people" or " Blackfoot-speaking real people"), is a historic collective name for linguistically related groups that make up the Blackfoot or Bl ...

Crow A crow is a bird of the genus ''Corvus'', or more broadly, a synonym for all of ''Corvus''. The word "crow" is used as part of the common name of many species. The related term "raven" is not linked scientifically to any certain trait but is rathe ...

Sioux The Sioux or Oceti Sakowin ( ; Dakota/ Lakota: ) are groups of Native American tribes and First Nations people from the Great Plains of North America. The Sioux have two major linguistic divisions: the Dakota and Lakota peoples (translati ...

Cheyenne The Cheyenne ( ) are an Indigenous people of the Great Plains. The Cheyenne comprise two Native American tribes, the Só'taeo'o or Só'taétaneo'o (more commonly spelled as Suhtai or Sutaio) and the (also spelled Tsitsistas, The term for th ...

Arapaho The Arapaho ( ; , ) are a Native American people historically living on the plains of Colorado and Wyoming. They were close allies of the Cheyenne tribe and loosely aligned with the Lakota and Dakota. By the 1850s, Arapaho bands formed t ...

Comanche The Comanche (), or Nʉmʉnʉʉ (, 'the people'), are a Tribe (Native American), Native American tribe from the Great Plains, Southern Plains of the present-day United States. Comanche people today belong to the List of federally recognized tri ...

, and others. Eastern portions of the Great Plains were inhabited by tribes who lived at

Etzanoa Etzanoa is a historical city of the Wichita people, located in present-day Arkansas City, Kansas, near the Arkansas River, that flourished between 1450 and 1700. Dubbed "the Great Settlement" by Spanish explorers who visited the site, Etzanoa ma ...

and in semi-permanent villages of earth lodges, such as the

Arikara The Arikara ( ), also known as Sahnish,
''Mandan, Hidatsa, and Arikara Nation.'' (Retrieved Sep 29, 2011) ...

Mandan The Mandan () are a Native American tribe of the Great Plains who have lived for centuries primarily in what is now North Dakota. They are enrolled in the Three Affiliated Tribes of the Fort Berthold Reservation. About half of the Mandan still ...

Pawnee Pawnee initially refers to a Native American people and its language: * Pawnee people * Pawnee language Pawnee is also the name of several places in the United States: * Pawnee, Illinois * Pawnee, Kansas * Pawnee, Missouri * Pawnee City, Nebraska * ...

, and Wichita. Wars with the

Ojibwe The Ojibwe (; Ojibwe writing systems#Ojibwe syllabics, syll.: ᐅᒋᐺ; plural: ''Ojibweg'' ᐅᒋᐺᒃ) are an Anishinaabe people whose homeland (''Ojibwewaki'' ᐅᒋᐺᐘᑭ) covers much of the Great Lakes region and the Great Plains, n ...

and

Cree people The Cree, or nehinaw (, ), are a North American Indigenous people, numbering more than 350,000 in Canada, where they form one of the country's largest First Nations. They live primarily to the north and west of Lake Superior in the province ...

s pushed the

Lakota Lakota may refer to: *Lakota people, a confederation of seven related Native American tribes *Lakota language Lakota ( ), also referred to as Lakhota, Teton or Teton Sioux, is a Siouan languages, Siouan language spoken by the Lakota people of ...

(Teton Sioux) west onto the Great Plains in the mid- to late-17th century. The

Shoshone The Shoshone or Shoshoni ( or ), also known by the endonym Newe, are an Native Americans in the United States, Indigenous people of the United States with four large cultural/linguistic divisions: * Eastern Shoshone: Wyoming * Northern Shoshon ...

originated in the western

Great Basin The Great Basin () is the largest area of contiguous endorheic watersheds, those with no outlets to the ocean, in North America. It spans nearly all of Nevada, much of Utah, and portions of California, Idaho, Oregon, Wyoming, and Baja Californi ...

and spread north and east into present-day

Idaho Idaho ( ) is a landlocked U.S. state, state in the Pacific Northwest and Mountain states, Mountain West subregions of the Western United States. It borders Montana and Wyoming to the east, Nevada and Utah to the south, and Washington (state), ...

and Wyoming. By 1500, some Eastern Shoshone had crossed the

into the Great Plains. After 1750, warfare and pressure from the Blackfoot, Crow, Lakota, Cheyenne, and Arapaho pushed Eastern Shoshone south and westward. Some of them moved as far south as Texas, emerging as the

by 1700.

Arrival of horses

George Catlin - Indian Family Alarmed at the Approach of a Prairie Fire - 1985

The first known contact between Europeans and Indians in the Great Plains occurred in what is now Texas, Kansas, and Nebraska from 1540 to 1542 with the arrival of

Francisco Vázquez de Coronado Francisco Vázquez de Coronado (; 1510 – 22 September 1554) was a Spanish conquistador and explorer who led a large expedition from what is now Mexico to present-day Kansas through parts of the southwestern United States between 1540 and 1542 ...

, a Spanish conquistador. In that same period,

Hernando de Soto Hernando de Soto (; ; 1497 – 21 May 1542) was a Spanish explorer and conquistador who was involved in expeditions in Nicaragua and the Yucatan Peninsula. He played an important role in Francisco Pizarro's conquest of the Inca Empire in Peru, ...

crossed a west-northwest direction in what is now Oklahoma and Texas which is now known as the De Soto Trail. The Spanish thought that the Great Plains were the location of the mythological ''

Quivira Quivira was a province of the ancestral Wichita people, located near the Great Bend of the Arkansas River in central Kansas, The exact site may be near present-day Lyons extending northeast to Salina. The Wichita city of Etzanoa, which flouris ...

and Cíbola'', a place said to be rich in gold. People in the southwest began to acquire horses in the 16th century by trading or stealing them from Spanish colonists in New Mexico. As horse culture moved northward, the Comanche were among the first to commit to a fully mounted

nomad Nomads are communities without fixed habitation who regularly move to and from areas. Such groups include hunter-gatherers, pastoral nomads (owning livestock), tinkers and trader nomads. In the twentieth century, the population of nomadic pa ...

ic lifestyle. This occurred by the 1730s, when they had acquired enough horses to put all their people on horseback. The real beginning of the horse culture of the plains began with the Pueblo Revolt of 1680 in New Mexico and the capture of thousands of horses and other livestock. In 1683 a Spanish expedition into Texas found horses among Native people. In 1690, a few horses were found by the Spanish among the Indians living at the mouth of the

Colorado River The Colorado River () is one of the principal rivers (along with the Rio Grande) in the Southwestern United States and in northern Mexico. The river, the List of longest rivers of the United States (by main stem), 5th longest in the United St ...

of Texas and the

Caddo The Caddo people comprise the Caddo Nation of Oklahoma, a federally recognized tribe headquartered in Binger, Oklahoma. They speak the Caddo language. The Caddo Confederacy was a network of Indigenous peoples of the Southeastern Woodlands, who ...

of eastern Texas had a sizeable number.Haines, Francis. "The Northward Spread of Horses among the Plains Indians. ''American Anthropologist'', Vol 40, No. 3 (1988) p. 382 The French explorer

Claude Charles Du Tisne Claude may refer to: People and fictional characters * Claude (given name), a list of people and fictional characters * Claude (surname), a list of people * Claude Callegari (1962–2021), English Arsenal supporter * Claude Debussy (1862–1918), ...

found 300 horses among the Wichita on the Verdigris River in 1719, but they were still not plentiful. Another Frenchman, Bourgmont, could only buy seven at a high price from the Kaw in 1724, indicating that horses were still scarce among tribes in

. By 1770, that Plains Indians culture was mature, consisting of mounted buffalo-hunting nomads from Saskatchewan and

southward nearly to the

Alfred Jacob Miller - Hunting Buffalo - Walters 371940190

The milder winters of the southern Plains favored a pastoral economy by the Indians. On the northeastern Plains of Canada, the Indians were less favored, with families owning fewer horses, remaining more dependent upon dogs for transporting goods, and hunting bison on foot. The scarcity of horses in the north encouraged raiding and warfare in competition for the relatively small number of horses that survived the severe winters. Comanche power peaked in the 1840s when they conducted large-scale raids hundreds of miles into Mexico proper, while also warring against the Anglo-Americans and

Tejanos Tejanos ( , ) are descendants of Texas Creoles and Mestizos who settled in Texas before its admission as an American state. The term is also sometimes applied to Texans of Mexican descent. Etymology The word ''Tejano'', with a ''J'' instead o ...

who had settled in independent Texas.

Fur trade

The

fur trade The fur trade is a worldwide industry dealing in the acquisition and sale of animal fur. Since the establishment of a world fur market in the early modern period, furs of boreal ecosystem, boreal, polar and cold temperate mammalian animals h ...

brought thousands of colonial settlers into the Great Plains over the next 100 years. Fur trappers made their way across much of the region, making regular contacts with Indians. The

Hudson's Bay Company The Hudson's Bay Company (HBC), originally the Governor and Company of Adventurers of England Trading Into Hudson’s Bay, is a Canadian holding company of department stores, and the oldest corporation in North America. It was the owner of the ...

(HBC) had first been granted in 1670 a commercial monopoly over the huge

Hudson Bay Hudson Bay, sometimes called Hudson's Bay (usually historically), is a large body of Saline water, saltwater in northeastern Canada with a surface area of . It is located north of Ontario, west of Quebec, northeast of Manitoba, and southeast o ...

drainage area known as

Rupert's Land Rupert's Land (), or Prince Rupert's Land (), was a territory in British North America which comprised the Hudson Bay drainage basin. The right to "sole trade and commerce" over Rupert's Land was granted to Hudson's Bay Company (HBC), based a ...

covering a northern portion of the Great Plains. The

North West Company The North West Company was a Fur trade in Canada, Canadian fur trading business headquartered in Montreal from 1779 to 1821. It competed with increasing success against the Hudson's Bay Company in the regions that later became Western Canada a ...

fur trade incumbent had also been present in the area until acquired by the HBC during the early 1820s. The United States acquired the

Louisiana Purchase The Louisiana Purchase () was the acquisition of the Louisiana (New France), territory of Louisiana by the United States from the French First Republic in 1803. This consisted of most of the land in the Mississippi River#Watershed, Mississipp ...

in 1803 and conducted the

Lewis and Clark Expedition The Lewis and Clark Expedition, also known as the Corps of Discovery Expedition, was the United States expedition to cross the newly acquired western portion of the country after the Louisiana Purchase. The Corps of Discovery was a select gro ...

in 1804–1806, and more information became available concerning the Plains, and various pioneers entered the areas. Fur trading posts were often the basis of later settlements. Through the 19th century, more settlers migrated to the Great Plains as part of a vast westward expansion of population, and new settlements became dotted across the Great Plains. The settlers also brought diseases against which the Indians had no resistance. Between a half and two-thirds of the Plains Indians are thought to have died of

smallpox Smallpox was an infectious disease caused by Variola virus (often called Smallpox virus), which belongs to the genus '' Orthopoxvirus''. The last naturally occurring case was diagnosed in October 1977, and the World Health Organization (W ...

by the time of the Louisiana Purchase. The 1837 Great Plains smallpox epidemic spread across the Great Plains, killing many thousands between 1837 and 1840. In the end, it is estimated that two-thirds of the Blackfoot population died, along with half of the Assiniboines and Arikaras, a third of the Crows, and a quarter of the Pawnees.

European settlement

Beginning in 1821, the

Santa Fe Trail The Santa Fe Trail was a 19th-century route through central North America that connected Franklin, Missouri, with Santa Fe, New Mexico. Pioneered in 1821 by William Becknell, who departed from the Boonslick region along the Missouri River, the ...

ran from the Missouri River to New Mexico, skirting north of

Comancheria The Comancheria (Comanche: Nʉmʉnʉʉ Sookobitʉ, 'Comanche land'; Spanish: ''Comanchería''), also known as the Comancherian Empire, was a historic region covering modern New Mexico, West Texas, and nearby areas that was occupied by the Comanch ...

. Beginning in the 1830s, the

Oregon Trail The Oregon Trail was a east–west, large-wheeled wagon route and Westward Expansion Trails, emigrant trail in North America that connected the Missouri River to valleys in Oregon Territory. The eastern part of the Oregon Trail crossed what ...

led from the Missouri River across the Great Plains. Much of the Great Plains became open range where cattle roamed free, hosting ranching operations where anyone was free to run cattle. In the spring and fall, ranchers held roundups where their cowboys branded new calves, treated animals, and sorted the cattle for sale. Such ranching began in Texas and gradually moved northward. Between 1866 and 1895, cowboys herded 10 million cattle north to rail heads such as

Dodge City, Kansas Dodge City is a city in and the county seat of Ford County, Kansas, United States. As of the 2020 census, the population of the city was 27,788. It was named after nearby Fort Dodge, which was named in honor of Grenville Dodge. The city ...

and

Ogallala, Nebraska Ogallala is a city in and the county seat of Keith County, Nebraska, United States. The population was 4,878 at the 2020 census, up from 4,737 at the 2010 census. In the days of the Nebraska Territory, the city was a stop on the Pony Express ...

; from there, cattle were shipped east. Passage of the Kansas-Nebraska Act in 1854 opened both territories to White settlement. The

Homestead Acts The Homestead Acts were several laws in the United States by which an applicant could acquire ownership of government land or the public domain, typically called a homestead. In all, more than of public land, or nearly 10 percent of t ...

of 1862 further encouraged settlement and agricultural development in the Great Plains; the population of Nebraska, for instance, increased from under 30,000 in 1860 to over one million in 1890. A homesteader was permitted to claim up to of land for only a small filing fee, provided that he or she lived on the land for a period of five years and cultivated it. The provisions were expanded under the

Kinkaid Act The Kinkaid Act of 1904 (ch. 1801, , Apr. 28, 1904, ) is a United States government, U.S. statute that amended the 1862 Homestead Act so that one section (land), section (1 mi2, 2.6 km2, 640 acres) of public domain land could be acquire ...

of 1904 to include a homestead of an entire section. Hundreds of thousands of people claimed such homesteads, sometimes building houses out of the very turf of the land. Many of them were not skilled farmers, and failures were frequent. The Canadian ''

Dominion Lands Act The ''Dominion Lands Act'' () was an 1872 Canadian law that aimed to encourage the settlement of the Canadian Prairies and to help prevent the area being claimed by the United States. The Act was closely based on the U.S. '' Homestead Act of 186 ...

'' of 1871 served a similar function for establishing homesteads on the prairies in Canada.

Railroads

After 1870, the new railroads across the Plains brought hunters who killed off almost all the

bison A bison (: bison) is a large bovine in the genus ''Bison'' (from Greek, meaning 'wild ox') within the tribe Bovini. Two extant taxon, extant and numerous extinction, extinct species are recognised. Of the two surviving species, the American ...

for their hides. The railroads offered attractive packages of land and transportation to American farmers, who rushed to settle the land. They also took advantage of the homestead laws to obtain farms. Land speculators and local boosters identified many potential towns, and those reached by the railroad had a chance, while the others became ghost towns. Towns flourished if they were favored by proximity to the railroad. The population of Minnesota, Dakota, Nebraska, and Kansas experienced significant growth during the 1870s. The total population in these states grew from 1.0 million in 1870 to 2.4 million in 1880, more than doubling in just 10 years. The number of farms in the region tripled, increasing from 99,000 in 1870 to 302,000 in 1880. The improved acreage (land under cultivation) quintupled, rising from 5.0 million acres to 24.6 million acres during the same period. the new settlers mostly purchased land on generous terms from transcontinental railroads that were given land grants by Washington. They focused on wheat and cattle. This rapid population influx and agricultural expansion was a hallmark of the settlement and development of the Great Plains in the late 19th century, as the region attracted waves of new settlers from Germany, Scandinavia, and Russia, as well as farmers who sold land in older states to move to larger farms. File:Homesteader NE 1866.png, Homesteaders in central

in 1866 File:Johnson 1920 HighPlains.jpg, The Great Plains before the native grasses were plowed under, Haskell County, Kansas, 1897, showing a man near a

buffalo wallow A buffalo wallow or bison wallow is a natural topographical depression in flat prairie land that holds rain water and runoff. Though thriving bison herds roamed and grazed the great prairies of North America for thousands of years, they left f ...

File:Cowboy1902.jpg, Cattle herd and cowboy, c. 1902 File:"Wheat field on Dutch flats near Mitchell, Nebr. Farm of T.C. Shawver." - NARA - 294480.tif, Wheat field on Dutch flats near

Mitchell, Nebraska Mitchell is a city in Scotts Bluff County, Nebraska, Scotts Bluff County, Nebraska, United States. It is part of the Scottsbluff, Nebraska Scottsbluff micropolitan area, Micropolitan Statistical Area. The population was 1,548 at the 2020 United ...

, 1910

First American settlements

Alfred Jacob Miller - Fort Laramie - Walters 37194049

The first White settlements in the Great Plains were forts, particularly along the Santa Fe Trail, and trading posts. Some of the first built were: * Fort Lisa (1809), North Dakota *

Red River Colony The Red River Colony (or Selkirk Settlement), also known as Assiniboia, was a colonization project set up in 1811 by Thomas Douglas, 5th Earl of Selkirk, on of land in British North America. This land was granted to Douglas by the Hudson's Bay ...

or Selkirk Settlement (1811), Manitoba * Fort Lisa (1812), Nebraska *

Fort Atkinson (Nebraska) Fort Atkinson was the first United States Army post to be established west of the Missouri River in the unorganized region of the Louisiana Purchase of the United States. Located just east of present-day Fort Calhoun, Nebraska, the fort was er ...

(1819), Nebraska * Fontenelle's Post (1822), Nebraska * Cabanne's Trading Post (1822), Nebraska * Fort Kiowa (1822), South Dakota *

Fort Laramie Fort Laramie (; founded as Fort William and known for a while as Fort John) was a significant 19th-century trading post, diplomatic site, and military installation located at the confluence of the Laramie and the North Platte Rivers. They joi ...

(1834), Texas * Fort Parker (1834), Texas * Zinkenburg (1845), Texas * Fort Kearney (1848), Nebraska * Fort Martin Scott (1848), Texas * Fort Croghan (1849), Texas * Fort Gates (1849), Texas * Fort Graham (1849), Texas *

Fort Worth Fort Worth is a city in the U.S. state of Texas and the county seat of Tarrant County, Texas, Tarrant County, covering nearly into Denton County, Texas, Denton, Johnson County, Texas, Johnson, Parker County, Texas, Parker, and Wise County, Te ...

(1849), Texas * Fort Belknap (1851), Texas *

Fort Mason Fort Mason, in San Francisco, California is a former United States Army post located in the northern Marina District, alongside San Francisco Bay. Fort Mason served as an Army post for more than 100 years, initially as a coastal defense site a ...

(1851), Texas *

Fort Chadbourne Fort Chadbourne was a fort established by the United States Army on October 28, 1852, in what is now Coke County, Texas, to protect the western frontier and the Butterfield Overland Mail route. It was named after Lt. T.L. Chadbourne, who was k ...

(1852), Texas * Fort McKavett (1852), Texas *

Fort Phantom Hill Fort Phantom Hill, also called the Camp on the Clear Fork, is a former United States Army installation located in Jones County, Texas. The fort was established in 1851 as part of a line of forts in Texas to protect migrants passing through t ...

(1852), Texas * Camp Colorado (1855), Texas *

Fort McPherson Fort McPherson was a U.S. Army military base located in Atlanta, Georgia, bordering the northern edge of the city of East Point, Georgia. It was the headquarters for the U.S. Army Installation Management Command, Southeast Region; the U.S. Ar ...

(1863), Nebraska * Fort Mitchell (1864), Nebraska * Fort Concho (1867), Texas * Fort Griffin (1867), Texas * Fort Richardson (1867), Texas *

Fort Sidney Fort Sidney is a historic fort located in Sidney, Nebraska, United States. The 37th Regiment, Infantry Regiment established "Sidney Station" at a point midway between the Platte Rivers, where the modern community of Sidney, Nebraska, now stands. ...

(1867), Nebraska *

Fort Omaha Fort Omaha, originally known as Sherman Barracks and then Omaha Barracks, is an Indian War-era United States Army supply installation. Located at 5730 North 30th Street, with the entrance at North 30th and Fort Streets in modern-day North Oma ...

(1868), Nebraska * Fort Hartsuff (1874), Nebraska *

Fort Sill Fort Sill is a United States Army post north of Lawton, Oklahoma, about 85 miles (137 km) southwest of Oklahoma City. It covers almost . The fort was first built during the Indian Wars. It is designated as a National Historic Landmark a ...

(1869), Oklahoma *

Fort Robinson Fort Robinson is a former United States Army, U.S. Army fort and now a major feature of Fort Robinson State Park, a public recreation and historic preservation area located west of Crawford, Nebraska, Crawford on U.S. Route 20 in the Pine Ri ...

(1874), Nebraska * Camp Sheridan (1874), Nebraska * Fort Niobrara (1880), Nebraska * Fort Elliott (1875), Texas

Social life

The railroads opened up the Great Plains for settlement, making it possible to ship wheat and other crops at low cost to the urban markets in the East and overseas. Homestead land was free for American settlers. Railroads sold their land at cheap rates to immigrants in the expectation that they would generate traffic as soon as farms were established. Immigrants poured in, especially from Germany and Scandinavia. On the plains, very few single men attempted to operate a farm or ranch by themselves; they understood the need for a hard-working wife and numerous children to handle the many responsibilities. During the early years of settlement, farm women played an integral role in assuring family survival by working outdoors. After approximately one generation, women increasingly left the fields, thus redefining their roles within the family. New technology encouraged women to turn to domestic roles, including sewing and washing machines. Media and government extension agents promoted the "scientific housekeeping" movement, along with county fairs which featured achievements in home cookery and canning, advice columns for women regarding farm book keeping, and home economics courses in the schools. The eastern image of farm life in the prairies emphasized the isolation of the lonely farmer and wife, yet plains residents created busy social lives for themselves. They often sponsored activities which combined work, food, and entertainment, such as

barn raising A barn raising, also historically called a raising bee or rearing in the U.K., is an action in which a barn for a resident of a community is built or rebuilt collectively by its members. Barn raising was particularly common in 18th- and 19th-cen ...

s, corn huskings, quilting bees, Grange meetings, church activities and school functions. Women organized shared meals and potluck events, as well as extended visits among families.

20th century

Progressive Era

The Progressive movement was a reform movement that took place in all parts of the country during the late 19th and early 20th centuries. The movement sought to address social, political, and economic problems that had arisen as a result of the Industrial Revolution. Progressives believed that the government could play a role in solving these problems by regulating businesses, protecting workers, and providing social welfare programs. The Plains states were a hotbed of Progressive activity. Many of the reforms that were enacted at the national level were first implemented in the Plains states. For example, the initiative and referendum process, which allows voters to directly enact laws, was first adopted in South Dakota in 1898. The direct primary, which allows voters to choose their party's candidates in primary elections, was first adopted in Wisconsin in 1903. Progressive reformers in the Great Plains focused on high priority issues, especially: *Regulation of railroads and public utilities *Prohibition *Employer liability and workers' compensation *Protections for consumers *State-owned enterprises *Woman suffrage Progressives in the Great Plains were more likely to support direct democracy, woman suffrage, and Prohibition than their counterparts elsewhere. They were also more likely to favor state-owned enterprises, especially those devoted to economic development. Plains progressivism was more radical than progressivism in eastern states, with a greater focus on direct democracy, woman suffrage, and Prohibition. Plains progressives were more isolationist regarding foreign policy, largely in response to the large German and Scandinavian elements. Socialists were more active than elsewhere, Progressive reforms had a significant long-term impact on the region. They helped to improve the lives of workers, farmers, and consumers. They also helped to make the Plains states more democratic and responsive to the needs of their citizens.

Dust Bowl and water resources

The region roughly centered on the Oklahoma Panhandle was known as the

Dust Bowl The Dust Bowl was a period of severe dust storms that greatly damaged the ecology and agriculture of the American and Canadian prairies during the 1930s. The phenomenon was caused by a combination of natural factors (severe drought) and hum ...

during the late 1920s and early 1930s, including southeastern Colorado, southwestern Kansas, the Texas Panhandle, and extreme northeastern New Mexico. The effects of an extended drought, inappropriate cultivation, and financial crises of the

Great Depression The Great Depression was a severe global economic downturn from 1929 to 1939. The period was characterized by high rates of unemployment and poverty, drastic reductions in industrial production and international trade, and widespread bank and ...

forced many farmers off the land throughout the Great Plains. From the 1950s on, many areas of the Great Plains have become productive crop-growing areas because of extensive irrigation on large land-holdings. The United States is a major exporter of agricultural products. The southern portion of the Great Plains lies over the

Ogallala Aquifer The Ogallala Aquifer () is a shallow water table aquifer surrounded by sand, silt, clay, and gravel located beneath the Great Plains in the United States. As one of the world's largest aquifers, it underlies an area of approximately in po ...

, a huge underground layer of water-bearing strata.

Center pivot irrigation Center-pivot irrigation (sometimes called central pivot irrigation), also called water-wheel and circle irrigation, is a method of crop irrigation in which equipment rotates around a pivot and crops are watered with sprinklers. A circular area ...

is used extensively in drier sections of the Great Plains, resulting in aquifer depletion at a rate that is greater than the ground's ability to recharge.

Population decline

The rural Plains have lost a third of their population since 1920. Several hundred thousand square miles of the Great Plains have fewer than , the density standard that

Frederick Jackson Turner Frederick Jackson Turner (November 14, 1861 – March 14, 1932) was an American historian during the early 20th century, based at the University of Wisconsin-Madison until 1910, and then Harvard University. He was known primarily for his front ...

used to declare the American frontier "closed" in 1893. Many have fewer than . According to Kansas historian Daniel Fitzgerald, there are more than 6,000 ghost towns in Kansas alone. This problem is often exacerbated by the consolidation of farms and the difficulty of attracting modern industry to the region. In addition, the smaller school-age population has forced the consolidation of school districts and the closure of high schools in some communities. The continuing population loss has led some to suggest that the current use of the drier parts of the Great Plains is not sustainable,Amanda Rees, ''The Great Plains region'' (2004) p. xvi and there has been a proposal to return approximately of these drier parts to native prairie land as a Buffalo Commons. GreenMountainWindFarm Fluvanna 2004

Wind power

The Great Plains contributes substantially to

wind power in the United States Wind power is a branch of the energy industry that has expanded quickly in the United States over the last several years. In 2024, 453.5 terawatt-hours were generated by wind power, or 10.54% of electricity in the United States. The average wi ...

. T. Boone Pickens developed wind farms after a career as a petroleum executive, and he called for the U.S. to invest $1 trillion to build an additional 200,000 MW of wind power in the Plains as part of his Pickens Plan. He cited Sweetwater, Texas, as an example of economic revitalization driven by wind power development.

References

External links

''Great Plains Quarterly''
scholarly journal
Kansas Heritage Group: ''Native Prairie, Preserve, Flowers, and Research''University of Nebraska-Lincoln: ''Center for Great Plains Studies''
*
Oklahoma Digital Maps: Digital Collections of Oklahoma and Indian Territory
{{Authority control Ecoregions of the United States Physiographic provinces Plains of Canada Plains of the United States Regions of Canada Regions of the United States Central United States Regions of the Western United States Temperate grasslands, savannas, and shrublands in the United States

Usage

Extent

Geography

Northern Great Plains

Intermediate Great Plains

Central Great Plains

Southern Great Plains

Other terminology

Natural history

Climate

Flora

Fauna

Mammals

Birds

Reptiles

Amphibians

Fish

Invertebrates

Paleontology

Public and protected lands

Ecological changes

History to 1850

Original American contact

Arrival of horses

Fur trade

European settlement

Railroads

First American settlements

Social life

20th century

Progressive Era

Dust Bowl and water resources

Population decline

Wind power

See also

International steppe-lands

References

Further reading

Secondary sources

Primary sources

External links