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AGRICULTURE IK THE SEMIARID GREAT PLAINS. 



HISTORY OF THE SETTLEMENT OF THE REGION. 



For 40 years, at least, the history of the settlement of the Plains 

 has been one of periodic advance and retrogression. Periods in which 

 settlement was rapid, energetic, and general have alternated with 

 periods when abandonment, desertion, and return, were almost as 

 rapid and often prosecuted mth as little judgment. But each wave 

 of settlement pushed permanent agriculture farther west. The recoil 

 never forced it back to its former limits, nor were the desertions ever 

 complete. After each exodus, scattered settlers remained all over 

 the territory that had been occupied. 



The first wave that really populated the semiarid region was at 

 its height in 1886. This wave carried settlement across the western 

 counties of Kansas and Nebraska and well into Colorado. There 

 was, however, a wide strip of public land still vacant east of the foot- 

 liills across Colorado and farther north, in Wyoming, and in some of 

 the extreme western counties of Nebraska. Not only did the settlers 

 fail to appreciate the difficulties before them but many were wholly 

 unprepared to face any hardships. They came, not only without any 

 knowledge of the country, but without money with which to establish 

 themselves — without means of maintenance till crops could be grown, 

 to say nothing about stock and machinery. They had little or no 

 working capital. They believed that if they could only get a claim" 

 they would succeed some way. 



A few good crops came, then poor seasons, and the return com- 

 menced. Dry seasons and the panic of the nineties struck together 

 with disastrous results. Lands which had been priced at from $5 to 

 $20 or more per acre were offered for taxes, and often without a 

 bidder. Under these conditions much of the land naturally fell into 

 the hands of loan companies and far-seeing speculators. In one 

 county several thousand quarter sections were allowed to revert to 

 the county for taxes. These were finally all sold to a single company 

 at $30 per 160 acres. 



The abandonment was so complete in places that towns once of 

 several hundred inhabitants were marked only by the empty school 

 buildings, the cellars, and the hydrants remaining from the city water 

 systems. Even within the last few months newspapers have reported 

 the moving of one of these towns during a single night to escape the 

 payment of bonds for over $30,000 voted during boom days to pro- 

 vide a water system. 



At the time these lands were first taken little or nothing was known 

 by the average settler concerning the climate. If there was a sus- 

 picion that rainfall was deficient it was entirely lost sight of in the 

 delusion that rainfall followed the plow. The homesteaders confi- 

 dently expected that in a few years the short-grass country would 



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