34 Nebraskaland • July 2025
ainfall follows the plow" is one of the most consequential
ideas in Nebraska history. That doesn't mean it was a
good idea.
For centuries, Nebraska's Native American inhabitants
planted corn in the east and hunted bison in the west. When
a U.S. military expedition crossed the region in 1820, the
soldiers noted the lack of trees and the increasingly arid
conditions as they moved west. After that, maps labeled the
Great Plains as the GREAT DESERT. The region was "almost
wholly unfi t for cultivation, and of course uninhabitable by a
people depending upon agriculture for their subsistence," in
the words of an early geographer.
As a result, the U.S. government was happy to leave the
Great Plains as a permanent "Indian Country" into which
displaced eastern tribes could be moved. But by the 1850s,
the U.S. was planning to build a transcontinental railroad
through that region and opened it to settlement. Following
the Civil War, hundreds of thousands of settlers poured into
the new state of Nebraska, pushing ever farther west into
country with less and less rain. West of the 100th meridian
(in other words, west of Cozad), rainfall averaged less than 20
inches a year. Good luck farming with that.
In 1880, a University of Nebraska professor named Samuel
Aughey published a book explaining how plowing the prairie
'R
When Rain Followed
By David L. Bristow
Nebraska State Historical Society
Detail of a map from Stephen Long's 1820 expedition.
The South Platte River runs along the top; today the spot
numbered 22 is the location of the city of North Platte. The
future Nebraska and Kansas are labeled GREAT DESERT.
STEPHEN H. LONG AND EDWIN JAMES, "COUNTRY DRAINED BY THE MISSISSIPPI" (1823)
