DOCSLIB.ORG

The Development of Agricultural Irrigation and Water Law in Nebraska, 1860-1895

Total Page：16

File Type：pdf, Size：1020Kb

Download full-text PDF Read full-text
The Development of Agricultural Irrigation and Water Law in Nebraska, 1860-1895 Nebraska History posts materials online for your personal use. Please remember that the contents of Nebraska History are copyrighted by the Nebraska State Historical Society (except for materials credited to other institutions). The NSHS retains its copyrights even to materials it posts on the web. For permission to re-use materials or for photo ordering information, please see: http://www.nebraskahistory.org/magazine/permission.htm Nebraska State Historical Society members receive four issues of Nebraska History and four issues of Nebraska History News annually. For membership information, see: http://nebraskahistory.org/admin/members/index.htm Article Title: El Dorado on the Platte: The Development of Agricultural Irrigation and Water Law in Nebraska, 1860-1895 Full Citation: Sam S Kepfield, “El Dorado on the Platte: The Development of Agricultural Irrigation and Water Law in Nebraska, 1860-1895,” Nebraska History 75 (1994): 232-243 URL of article: http://www.nebraskahistory.org/publish/publicat/history/full-text/NH1994ElDorado.pdf Date: 8/05/2013 Article Summary: Nebraska irrigation began as an effort to adapt to a semiarid region prone to droughts. Water law developed in a single generation at the end of the nineteenth century, giving the state control of water distribution. Cataloging Information: Names: Samuel Aughey, Charles Dana Wilber, William R Akers, George W Fairfield, Henry St Rayner, Asa B Wood, Charles Purnell, William Ellsworth Smythe, Elwood Mead, Lorenzo Crounse, Silas A Holcomb Terms of Water Law: reasonable use, prior appropriation, riparian rights, permit systems, beneficial use Keywords: Lincoln County Ditch Company, Kearney Canal, William R Akers, Charles W Ford, Farmers’ Canal Company, George W Fairfield, Minatare Irrigation Ditch Company, Henry St Rayner, “Rayner law” (1889), Asa B Wood, Gering Weekly Courier, Charles Purnell, William Ellsworth Smythe, State Irrigation Association, Populists, Republicans, 100th Meridian, National Irrigation Congress, Akers law (H.R. 443, 1895), agribusiness Photographs / Images: chart showing departures from average annual precipitation in Nebraska, 1850-1989; William R Akers; Asa B Wood; map showing irrigation ditches in Scotts Bluff and Cheyenne Counties, 1894; Charles Purnell; broadside advertising 1896 irrigation convention in Lexington; C B Purdy BL DORADO ON THE PLATTE: The Development of Agricultural Irrigation and Water Law in Nebraskal 1860 -1895 BySam S Kepfield Irrigation was an indispensable element its inhabitants want to exploit, and what spite huge crop losses and reports of fam­ in the settlement of western Nebraska dur­ they can exploit. 1Space as a factor is self­ ine in Kansas, land boosters and settlers ing the closing decades of the nineteenth explanatory; the need for irrigation came who wanted to believe them saw the century. In filling the public domain west about only as settlers crossed the 100th drought as an aberration. of the 100th Meridian, European settlers Meridian into a semiarid region prone to Nevertheless, the drought was a fact, encountered a land and climate quite un­ droughts. The interaction of culture and and some took steps to adapt. Washing­ like anything they had known in the environment to produce a modern irriga­ ton M. Hinman, a Pennsylvania millwright wooded, humid eastern states. AE succes­ tion regime in fact and in law took place who settled near the confluence of the sive waves of settlers attempted to build over a relatively short period, no more North and South Platte rivers, built the first an agricultural society on the plains, than a generation. documented irrigation canal in Nebraska largely staying with their old farming prac­ The climate of the Great Plains was a in March 1863,diverting water from the tices, they eventually saw irrigation as a puzzle that settlers did not decipher until south bank of the Platte River six miles necessity. the mid-1890s. It is perhaps most helpful west of Fort McPherson. A year later, John AE the need to divert precious water to characterize the region in terms of what Burke of nearby Cottonwood Springs built from the sparse streams that crossed the it is not, rather than what it is. It is not a a canal below Hinman's. Both were aban­ plains became clearer, so did the need to lush, humid grassland; neither is it an arid doned after 1865, due to the Indian wars adapt a legal system made irrelevant, desert. Yet it is entirely possible for the in the area. However, both men demon­ even antidevelopmental, by geography. A Great Plains to take on either manifesta­ strated the practicability of irrigating crop­ system of water law that awarded eastern tion, at times in alternating years. It was land during the 1863-64 growing seasons.' landholders rights simply because their this aspect of the semiarid climate that ini­ After its founding as a city in 1866, land bordered a stream was inimical to tially lured settlers onto the expanses of North Platte briefly became a center for creating a system of irrigation ditches to the Great Plains, and then destroyed their irrigation activity. In 1870a group of busi­ water plains homesteads. Bythe time set­ crops and their hopes. nessmen organized the lincoln County tlers moved onto the plains in the 1850s, In 1878 Major John Wesley Powell Ditch Company, and built a canal on the riparian rights had been altered by prac­ drew a line of demarcation at the 100th north bank of the Platte River three and a tice, but they were still found wanting. Meridian. West of the line, rainfall aver­ half miles west of the city. It ran northeast Plains settlers and lawmakers borrowed aged less than twenty inches per year, and for half a mile and turned east for another from miners in California in adopting the was insufficient to sustain agriculture three and one-half miles, to a point half a system of prior appropriation, which without irrigation. To read Powell's state­ mile east of North Platte. It averaged two operated on a first-in-time, first-in-right ment that in the semiarid region "agricul­ feet deep and three feet wide, could flood principle. ture will not be uniformly successful from 13,000acres of land, and cost all of $600.5 Great Plains water law developed in re­ season to season.. .it may be doubted Although used mainly for stock watering, sponse to variants in culture, space, and whether, on the whole, agriculture will it was rendered useless by increased pre­ time. Irrigation is primarily an economic prove remunerative" is to know, in a nut­ cipitation in the late 1860s. phenomenon, and as such the impact of shell, the story of plains farming in the lat­ Meanwhile, soldiers at nearby Fort culture on irrigation can be measured by ter half of the nineteenth century.' McPherson were building ditches to irri­ the economic potential of an area, what For centuries, droughts have occurred gate their post garden." In 1872 Fort Sidney on the Great Plains every twenty years or soldiers constructed a canal on Lodge­ Sam S. Kepfield holds alD. degree and an MA. so, as measured by tree-ring records taken pole Creek to water the lawn and trees of in history from the University ofNebraska-Lincoln. from western Nebraska." A drought hit the the barracks and for a vegetable garden. He is currently a doctoral candidate in history at plains around 1858,as settlement was get­ They ran a small ditch around the parade the University of Oklahoma. ting underway, and lasted until 1866.De­ grounds, and long after Fort Sidney was 232 Irrigation in Nebraska abandoned in 1894, rows of cottonwood lowest order was being pushed by then­ reached the Nebraska-Wyoming border.in and cedar lined the ditch routes.' Because renowned academics (Wilber was 1867,it took another twenty yearsJfor of their novelty, these early efforts had no president of the Nebraska Academy of settlement to catch up. Not until 1885did effect on the Nebraska law of waters. Sciences), and as such was given great freeholders begin claiming homesteads in Irrigation lay quiescent for the 1870s credence. the Nebraska Panhandle, along the North and most of the 1880s.The brief drought However, both men were ascribing hu­ Platte River. Settlers drove out the cattle that came in 1874 might have spurred man causes to a wholly natural occur­ herds that dominated the public domain more interest and activity, had it not been rence, the variability of the semiarid plains in the Panhandle with herd laws; overshadowed by a plague of grasshop­ climate, lulling settlers into a false sense of townsites were platted, and claim shacks pers that lasted until 1877. After the grass­ security. Boosters for towns and the state dotted the area by 1887. The rapid expansion of settlement be­ 15 yond the 100th Meridian in the 1880slaid the foundation for prolonging the crash to 10 come. Railroads lured settlers to the west­ I II I , 5 • . ern half of the state in huge numbers after 1885.Credit was easy, supplied by eastern I I!ll L111 I . illl!l II. II LI IJ Ib I.,., t. financiers taking note of the boom in agri­ P11lr IIIiIIJ III­ ~ p r IIIr ~ ~ cultural production as the nation recov­ -5 • III ~ , • ered from the depression of the 1870s. -10 Terms were generous, and those receiving credit were prone to extravagance, 1850 1860 1870 1880 1890 1900 1910 1920 1930 1940 1950 1960 1970 1980 1990 overinvestment, and speculation, with a YEARS consequent inflation in land values. (Average annual precipitation, 22.31 inches) Unfortunately, the boom in agriculture Annual Departures from Average Annual Precipitation in Nebraska, 1850-1989. and settlement coincided with the onset Courtesy of the Conservation and Survey Division, Institute of Agriculture and Natural Resources, University of Nebraska-Lincoln. of another period of drought beyond the 100th Meridian.
Load more

Recommended publications
  • The Settlement of Blackwood Township, Hayes County, Nebraska, 1878-1907
    Nebraska History posts materials online for your personal use. Please remember that the contents of Nebraska History are copyrighted by the Nebraska State Historical Society (except for materials credited to other institutions). The NSHS retains its copyrights even to materials it posts on the web. For permission to re-use materials or for photo ordering information, please see: http://www.nebraskahistory.org/magazine/permission.htm Nebraska State Historical Society members receive four issues of Nebraska History and four issues of Nebraska History News annually. For membership information, see: http://nebraskahistory.org/admin/members/index.htm Article Title: The Settlement of Blackwood Township, Hayes County, Nebraska, 1878-1907 Full Citation: Robert D Clark. “The Settlement of Blackwood Township, Hayes County, Nebraska, 1878-1907,” Nebraska History 66 (1985): 74-110 URL of article: http://www.nebraskahistory.org/publish/publicat/history/full-text/NH1985Blackwood.pdf Date: 12/05/2013 Article Summary: The first settlers of Blackwood Township mistakenly believed that “the rain follows the plow.” Drought caused them to mortgage and subsequently lose their property. By 1985 descendents of only two of the original Blackwood families still lived in the township. Cataloging Information: Early Settlers: Miles J Abbott, Michael Brennan, Warren Clark, Charley Coburger, Joab Copeland, Angus Crucklaw, Charles Deuter, David Fuller, Oscar Gruver, Dock Gruver, Franklin Hanks, John Heitkamp, John S and Mary Hughes, Ellsworth and Maggie Jeffries, William
    [Show full text]
  • Rangelands the Worst Hard Time
    BOOK REVIEW The Worst Hard Time: The Untold Story of Those Who Survived the Great American Dust Bowl. By Timothy Egan. 2006. Mariner Books, Houghton Miffl in Co., Boston, MA, USA. 340 p. US $14.95. paper. ISBN-13 978-0-618-77347-3. Those discussing future rangeland climates would do well to consider the challenges of the past. For Americans, the drought disaster that most haunts our national imagination is the “Dust Bowl,” encom- passing over 100 million acres of the American heartland just over 75 years ago. A coinage of a clever newspaper reporter, the Dust Bowl was an unprecedented economic, social, and ecological catastrophe that followed close upon one of the most rapid transformations of resilient native rangeland into intensive dry-land agriculture that shortly sowed the seeds of its own destruction. What had once been a vast shortgrass steppe, teeming with huge herds of migratory buffalo, and, for a short interval following, an “open range” (often overstocked with Texas Longhorn), became, with the arrival of the railroads, open to settlement and the sod-busting plow of determined, land-hungry immigrants. “Rain follows the plow!” was the clarion call of the day, and for a couple of remarkable decades of “the Great Plow-up,” precipitation was indeed reasonably reliable; the farms took root, and the com- munities grew and prospered, producing “the biggest wheat crop the world had ever seen” that para- doxically contributed to the market’s collapse. When the inevitable multi-year drought inexorably arrived, much of this dryland domain was bare and exposed without perennial cover; the stage was set for it all to just blow away.
    [Show full text]
  • Redeeming the West Colleagues
    Thoughts on “Redeeming the West” Redeeming the West: A History of the Scientific Approach Richard Kohler April 1st, 2013 Dixie State University Colleagues Presentation Albert Bierstadt, On the Oregon Trail, 1867 Albert Bierstadt, Surveyors Wagon in the Rockies, 1859 The pioneers of science in the American West were more often than not those trained in the “art” of surveying. Exploration surveys were funded by Congress, led by military officers (King, Hayden, Wheeler, Ives, Powell), and necessarily included surveyors, photographers and artists many of whom achieved fame in their own right. Thoughts on “Redeeming the West” 1870!! William Hooper before Congress opposing Anti-Mormon bill Thoughts on “Redeeming the West” 1873!! Elizabeth Wood Kane’s Journal!! Elizabeth Wood Kane kept a journal during her stay in St. George, Utah during the winter of 1872 - 1873. ! “She noted that she often felt she was living in an old Syrian world among pastoral folk fulfilling Isaiah’s promise of making a fertile land of the desert plains.” Thoughts on “Redeeming the West” 1879!! Report on the Lands of the Arid Region, JW Powell Thirty years of data concerning climate change were analyzed by the J. W. Powell Survey in 1877. Powell and other government scientists were aware of claims by Mormon settlers that the increased precipitation was a result of their prayerful requests to the Almighty. G. K. Gilbert provided this explanation of the rise of the level of Great Salt Lake over the thirty year period following the Mormon’s arrival. John W. Powell believed that the phenomena was a result of the actions of man.
    [Show full text]
  • Research Connects Soil Moisture to Next-Day Rainfall
    Research connects soil moisture to next- day rainfall 9 August 2016, by Barbara Moran western United States indicates a higher probability of rain the next day. But surprisingly, the opposite is true in the eastern United States, where dry soil today means more likely rain tomorrow. People have looked at this link between soil moisture and rainfall for a long time," says Guido Salvucci, Boston University professor of earth and environment and co-author of the Science paper. "But we felt like scientists didn't necessarily use the right statistical techniques, and they also didn't have as high quality and long a data set as we had. So we revisited it." Samuel Tuttle (GRS'11, '15), now a postdoctoral Are soil and rain somehow linked? New research in research scientist in civil and environmental Science shows that they are—in a surprising way. Credit: engineering at the University of New Hampshire, cgouin/iStock began the work as a PhD candidate under Salvucci. After completing a project examining soil moisture data from NASA's Aqua satellite, Tuttle decided to take the work one step further. In 1881, a land speculator named Charles Dana Wilber wrote a book called The Great Valleys and "We had this nice satellite data set of soil moisture, Prairies of Nebraska and the Northwest, in which nine years long, every day from 2002 to 2011," he, stumping for western settlement, coined a says Tuttle. He decided to use the data in a new phrase: "rain follows the plow." way, "to diagnose the relationship between soil moisture on one day and rainfall on the next day." The phrase captured a popular theory of climatology—that homesteading and farming could permanently change the climate of the arid West, increasing rainfall and turning the Great American Desert, as it was known, into a verdant paradise.
    [Show full text]
  • Chalk Bluff Line Camp, Constructed in 1867 by J.W. Iliff. Perspective and Primary Views
    History of the Pawnee National Grassland During the early stages of American expansion, the high plains of northeastern Colorado were prime grazing land for large populations of deer, antelope, elk and buffalo. The human population consisted of Indians and a few fur trappers. Before 1850, a fur trader named Elbridge Gerry settled where Crow Creek joined the South Platte River east of present-day Greeley. In 1861, John Wesley Iliff started his first cow camp on Crow Creek. The next year, Iliff established a cow camp approximately five miles down Crow Creek from above the Uhl Homestead to provide beef to the railroad crews and also establish a shipping point to the East. Chalk Bluff Line Camp, constructed in 1867 by J.W. Iliff. Perspective and Primary views. In 1868, he bought $40,000 worth of cattle from Charles Goodnight, who trailed them north from Texas. This established the Goodnight-Loving trail through this area. Goodnight continued trailing herds for Iliff through 1876. By 1877, Iliff's domain stretched from the South Platte River north to the Chalk Bluffs by the Colorado- Wyoming border, and from the mountains east to the present Kansas border. He was the biggest cattleman in Colorado. The Homestead Act of 1862 allowed only 160 acres per homestead, and at least one-quarter (40 acres) of that had to be tilled. Later Acts allowed a total of 320 acres. One of these was the Timber Culture Act, en- acted in 1873, allowing the settler to pick up an additional 160 acres by agreeing to plant 2,700 seedlings on 10 acres, of which 675 should be alive and healthy at the time of final proving, five years later.
    [Show full text]
  • I Ain't Got No Home in This World Anymore: Why the Joads Left
    I Ain’t Got No Home In This World Anymore Why the Joads Left Oklahoma and What They Found in California by Jerry James Of all the preposterous assumptions of humanity over humanity, nothing exceeds most of the criticisms made on the habits of the poor by the well-housed, well-warmed, and well-fed. ― Herman Melville The Dust Bowl. The Depression. We see them together, intermixed with grainy, black-and- white images from an old movie or a Ken Burns documentary, with a soundtrack of Woody Guthrie songs. They ride along with John Steinbeck’s Joad family on its journey from Oklahoma to California. Yet despite these events being the worst manmade disasters in American history, they actually had little direct impact on the Joads’ decision to immigrate. THE DUST BOWL In 1807, the leader of a US Army expedition called the Great Plains “uninhabitable by a ground. The sod it formed withstood drought people depending upon agriculture for and weather extremes, ecologically perfect for subsistence.” But the short grass that grew on herds of buffalo. Native Americans thrived those plains sent its roots five feet into the there. 1 When the buffalo was gone, the cattlemen sharecropper’s life, migrated west, eventually took over. They called it the Beef Bonanza, until owning a cotton farm. And that Pa Joad lost the a series of severe winters in the 1880s killed off farm, doubtless when cotton prices dropped their herds. Some saw an opportunity. “Real from 17¢ a pound in 1925 to 9¢ in 1926 to 5¢ in estate syndicates began buying big ranches for 1930.
    [Show full text]
  • Keota Primary Resource
    Homesteading and Hope: Keota, Colorado, 1888- Present What was “homesteading” and why did the United States government encourage it? What kind of people does it take to build a community on the dry plains? Why did the people of Keota move away, and how do they keep the memories of their town alive? By Jennifer Goodland* Standards and Teaching Strategies by: Ming Vlasich, Zach Crandall, and Marcus Lee** Paid for by a grant from the Institute of Museum and Library Sciences * Jennifer Goodland has a master’s in history from University of Colorado Denver, where she concentrated on history tourism and the American West. She taught history at Metro State in Denver. Goodland runs a history research business called Big Year Colorado. Cover Citation: Goodland, Jennifer. “Keota.” Photographs. 2014. Big Year Colorado, Lochbuie, Colorado. ** Ming Vlasich is a 4th grade teacher at Peabody Elementary in Littleton, Zach Crandall teaches 8th grade U.S. Society at Southern Hills Middle in Boulder, Marcus Lee teaches and is the chair of the social studies department at George Washington High School in Denver. 2 Contents Standards Addressed Overview Essay Timeline: Events that Shaped Keota Keota: Sources 1. The Homestead Act of 1862 2. “Home on the Range” 3. Mary Beardsley’s Homestead Claim 4. Map: Beardsley Family Homestead Route, 1860s – 1889 5. Data: Homesteaders by Year/Sex, 1886 – 1908 6. Outside the Store 7. Iowa Day 8. Box Supper 9. Farmers’ Elevator Meeting 10. Patrons of Husbandry 11. Education 12. Data: Homesteader Under the Enlarged Homestead Act, 1909-1934 13. Map: Keota: Topography 14.
    [Show full text]
  • Dust Bowl 1 Dust Bowl
    Dust Bowl 1 Dust Bowl The Dust Bowl or the Dirty Thirties was a period of severe dust storms causing major ecological and agricultural damage to American and Canadian prairie lands from 1930 to 1936 (in some areas until 1940). The phenomenon was caused by severe drought coupled with decades of extensive farming without crop rotation, fallow fields, cover crops or other techniques to prevent erosion.[1] Deep plowing of the virgin topsoil of the Great Plains had displaced the natural grasses that normally kept the soil in place and trapped moisture even during periods of drought and high winds. During the drought of the 1930s, with no natural anchors to keep the soil in place, it dried, turned to dust, and blew away eastward and southward in large dark A farmer and his two sons during a dust storm in Cimarron County, Oklahoma, clouds. At times the clouds blackened the 1936. Photo: Arthur Rothstein. sky reaching all the way to East Coast cities such as New York and Washington, D.C. Much of the soil ended up deposited in the Atlantic Ocean, carried by prevailing winds which were in part created by the dry and bare soil conditions itself. These immense dust storms—given names such as "Black Blizzards" and "Black Rollers"—often reduced visibility to a few feet (around a meter). The Dust Bowl affected 100000000 acres (400000 km2), centered on the panhandles of Texas and Oklahoma, and adjacent parts of New Mexico, Colorado, and Kansas.[2] Millions of acres of farmland became useless, and hundreds of thousands of people were forced to leave their homes; many of these families (often known as "Okies", since so many came from Oklahoma) traveled to California and other states, where they found economic conditions little better than those they had left.
    [Show full text]
  • Changing Promotional Images of the Kansas Climate, 1854 -1900
    University of Nebraska - Lincoln DigitalCommons@University of Nebraska - Lincoln Great Plains Quarterly Great Plains Studies, Center for Spring 2003 Come To The "Champagne Air" Changing Promotional Images Of The Kansas Climate, 1854 -1900 Karen De Bres Columbia University, [email protected] Follow this and additional works at: https://digitalcommons.unl.edu/greatplainsquarterly Part of the Other International and Area Studies Commons De Bres, Karen, "Come To The "Champagne Air" Changing Promotional Images Of The Kansas Climate, 1854 -1900" (2003). Great Plains Quarterly. 2394. https://digitalcommons.unl.edu/greatplainsquarterly/2394 This Article is brought to you for free and open access by the Great Plains Studies, Center for at DigitalCommons@University of Nebraska - Lincoln. It has been accepted for inclusion in Great Plains Quarterly by an authorized administrator of DigitalCommons@University of Nebraska - Lincoln. COME TO THE "CHAMPAGNE AIR" CHANGING PROMOTIONAL IMAGES OF THE KANSAS CLIMATE, 1854 .. 1900 KAREN DE BRES Euro-American settlers poured into Kansas Until 1895 the whole history of the state during the second half of the nineteenth cen­ was a series of disasters, and always some­ tury, and there they encountered a hostile and thing new, extreme, bizarre, until the name unpredictable climate. Rainfall patterns were Kansas became a byword, a synonym, for erratic, and the extremes of temperature were the impossible and the ridiculous, inviting both demanding and daunting. Countering laughter, furnishing occasion for jest and these conditions, or at least tempering them, hilarity. "In God we trusted, in Kansas we became a task for a variety of individuals and busted" became a favorite motto of immi­ organizations.
    [Show full text]
  • A Brief Examination of the History of Persistent Debate About Limits to Western Growth A
    Hastings Environmental Law Journal Volume 10 Article 3 Number 2 Spring 2004 1-1-2004 A Brief Examination of the History of Persistent Debate About Limits to Western Growth A. Dan Tarlock Follow this and additional works at: https://repository.uchastings.edu/ hastings_environmental_law_journal Part of the Environmental Law Commons Recommended Citation A. Dan Tarlock, A Brief Examination of the History of Persistent Debate About Limits to Western Growth, 10 Hastings West Northwest J. of Envtl. L. & Pol'y 155 (2004) Available at: https://repository.uchastings.edu/hastings_environmental_law_journal/vol10/iss2/3 This Article is brought to you for free and open access by the Law Journals at UC Hastings Scholarship Repository. It has been accepted for inclusion in Hastings Environmental Law Journal by an authorized editor of UC Hastings Scholarship Repository. For more information, please contact [email protected]. WEST NORTHWEST I. Introduction A persistent theme in the history of the American West is of the question of what limits, if any, the region’s arid and semiarid climates and harsh landscapes impose on sustainable human settle- ment. As Carry McWilliams noted in his pioneering eco-history of the Los Angeles A Brief Examination of the basin, “the region is a paradox: a desert History of the Persistent that faces an ocean.”1 Many Westerners Debate About Limits have long recognized the problems of to Western Growth putting people in generally warm, but not naturally well-watered areas with poor soils. But, for over a century and one-half, By A. Dan Tarlock* the West has resoundingly answered the limits question, no; there are no climatic or landscape limits on our growth! To settle the West, its promoters harked back to the book of Genesis rather than the Hebrew prophets.
    [Show full text]
  • Charles L. Wood Agricultural History Lecture Series
    The Charles L. Wood Agricultural History Lecture Series Texas and the Age of Pluviculture Clark C. Spence UNIV ARCH GB 841 .I5 1990 No. I The International Center for Arid and Semiarid Land Studies Texas Tech University Lubbock, Texas Publication Number 90-1 The Charles L. Wood Agricultural History Lecture Series Texas and the Age of Pluviculture Clark C. Spence Professor of History University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign Series Editor, David J. Murrah Manuscript editing by Sharon L. Kohout International Center for Arid and Semiarid Land Studies Lubbock, Texas Other Lectures in the Series Gilbert C. Fite, "Recent Trends in United States Agricultural History" Joe B. Frantz, "Little Water, Less Wood" Third in the Series Copyright 1990 by the International Center for Arid and Semiarid Land Studies, Texas Tech University, Lubbock, TX 79409 All rights reserved Printed in the United States of America at PrinTech. An Associate of the International Center for Arid and Semiarid Land Studies at Texas Tech, Chuck Wood had begun to research the ranching industry in West Texas at the time of his death. Chuck's enthusiasm for"his subject, his dedication to good teaching and careful scholarship, and his kind and gentle manner touched students and colleagues alike. Both agricultural history and Texas Tech are richer for the work of Charles L. Wood. For the third annual lecture in the Charles L. Wood Agricultural History Lecture Series, we were pleased to present "Texas and the Age of Pluviculture" by Clark C. Spence, Professor of History at the University of Illinois in Urbana­ Champaign, where he teaches and researches the American West, with an emphasis on the region's mining and agricultural history.
    [Show full text]
  • The Conservation Question, Part 2: Lessons Written in Dust
    The Conservation Question, Part 2: Lessons Written in Dust Jonathan Coppess Department of Agricultural and Consumer Economics University of Illinois October 24, 2019 farmdoc daily (9): 200 Gardner Policy Series Recommended citation format: Coppess, J. “The Conservation Question, Part 2: Lessons Written in Dust.” farmdoc daily (9): 200, Department of Agricultural and Consumer Economics, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, October 24, 2019. Permalink: https://farmdocdaily.illinois.edu/2019/10/the-conservation-question-part-2-lessons-written-in- dust.html The images are indelible, captured in novels, history books, songs and old black-and-white photographs. During the mid-1930s, as Americans were trying to claw their way out of the depths of the Great Depression a severe drought triggered massive dust storms out of the plowed fields of the southern Great Plains. These storms carried topsoil east to the Atlantic Ocean, driving policy responses and changes in farming practices. The Dust Bowl is considered one of the worst environmental disasters in the Nation’s history; a confluence of policy, human activities, climatic shifts, and the outer bounds of nature’s tolerance. A potential historical analogue for the climate change discussion, it offers lessons for policies designed in response. Part two of the Conservation Question series, a discussion of federal farm conservation policy, focuses on the Dust Bowl (farmdoc daily October 17, 2019). Background We request all readers, electronic media and others follow our citation guidelines when re-posting articles from farmdoc daily. Guidelines are available here. The farmdoc daily website falls under University of Illinois copyright and intellectual property rights.
    [Show full text]