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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. The work was straightforward: grants worn out with the struggle, return­ to transform the image of Kansas in order to ing to more hospitable climes; and for many attract prospective immigrants. As historian years it expressed well enough the popular Carl Becker wrote, this was not easy: opinion of that fated land.! Many of the problems that beset nine­ teenth-century Kansans were common to set­ tlers across the Great Plains. Not surprisingly, some of the solutions proposed to deal with the problems were common across the Plains KEY WORDS: climate, immigration, Kansas, as well, and readers may find echoes of their perception, railroads own states' experiences in those of Kansas. Kansas, like other states, was eager for new Karen De Bres holds a Ph.D. in geography from settlers. Attracting them hinged on overcom­ Columbia University. Her research interests include ing the many reports of adverse conditions the geography of the Central Plains, cultural geography, and the history of science. that filtered out from the state. Promotional materials, which portrayed the Kansas climate, resources, and landscape in optimistic tones, [GPQ 23 (Spring 2003): 111-26] were a common medium used to smooth the 111 112 GREAT PLAINS QUARTERLY, SPRING 2003 rough edges of the physical environment. In temperature. Moisture comes often from the this essay I examine such promotional litera­ surface winds blowing from the Gulf of Mexico, ture, evaluate the strategies pursued by the and rainfall averages between forty inches per "climatic spin doctors" of the time, and dis­ annum in the east to about fifteen inches in cuss the continuous refashioning of the Kan­ the southwest (Fig. 1). The Great Plains is sas climatic image during a complex social and characterized by a wide range of weather con­ environmental history. Books, pamphlets, and ditions that result from the distance of the folders from 1854 to 1900 were selected for Plains from the moderating effect of any ma­ examination from the extensive collection of jor body of water and from the presence of the the Kansas State Historical Society in Topeka. different air masses that frequently alternate These materials are representative of the Plains in their dominance of the region.3 and particularly of Kansas promotional litera­ When Kansas became a territory in 1854 it ture as a whole. did so under the requirements of the Kansas­ The essay is divided into three sections. Nebraska Act. Both territories were to be ad­ The first describes the Kansas climate, pro­ mitted to the Union as either free or vides an overview of the more popular of the slave-owning states, depending upon the vote nineteenth-century climate-change theories, of their citizens. Because of this condition, and reviews nineteenth-century Kansas settle­ various immigration societies were established ment. The second section presents accounts to promote Kansas settlement as a moral im­ of the Kansas climate from the promotional perative. When Kansas achieved statehood in literature and describes the different ap­ 1861, thirty-four of the current 105 counties proaches used to make Kansas's climate at­ were organized, including Riley and Dickinson tractive. The third section analyzes three Counties. Between 1861 and 1874 another general stages in the promotional literature thirty-five counties were added, including Ellis. and explains the ways in which the Kansas The most westward arc of counties was orga­ climate were discussed in ~ach. The counties nized in the 1880s and 1890s, including Gray of Riley, Dickinson, Ellis, and Gray, and their County. Settlers could obtain land through county seats of Manhattan, Abilene, Hays, and the Preemption Act of 1841, the Homestead Cimarron, were chosen as the focus of this Act of 1862, the Timber Culture Act, and essay because they represent different periods from the Office of Indian Affairs, from indi­ of initial settlement, different forms of the viduals, and from the railroads, which had been Kansas economy, and different physical envi­ granted land along their rights-of-way by the ronments. federal government. Between 1854 and 1900 seasonal tempera­ KANSAS CLIMATE, CLIMATE THEORIES, tures and precipitation totals in Kansas were AND FRONTIER SETTLEMENT quite varied. One of worst droughts in Kansas history began in 1859 and lasted until 1868 in Kansas, in the center of the contiguous the settled parts of the state. "Droughty Kan­ forty-eight states, is located 37 to 40 degrees sas" became a common expression, and this north of the equator and between 95 and 102 phrase was of such importance that a Kansas degrees west longitude. Throughout its 400 artist, Henry Worrall, drew a charcoal sketch miles of east-west extent, Kansas changes from by that name to refute it, showing plump Kan­ the moderate elevations and humid conditions sas farmers harvesting gigantic vegetables with of the lower Missouri Basin in the east to the a rainstorm in the background (Fig. 2). High Plains in the west adjacent to the east­ Worrall's illustration carried a clear ideologi­ ern slope of the Rockies. 2 Its continental cli­ cal message and later appeared on the cover of mate means that it is subject to extremes of the Kansas Farmer, a journal financed by the COME TO THE "CHAMPAGNE AIR" 113 FIG. 1. Precipitation patterns in Kansas, 1995. Source: Goodin, Mitchell, Knapp, Bivens (1995). state legislature. It is but one early example of shortly afterward. Beginning in the late 1880s the combative nature often displayed by Kan­ and continuing until the 1930s, the state ex­ sans, exemplifying their desire to defend their perienced milder winters and warmer summers. state and implicitly their own identity as state From the vantage point of the twenty-first residents, against what they viewed as unjust century, the cyclical characteristics of Kansas criticism from outsiders.4 droughts already seem clear, but this was not Another drought began in 1873, and a gen­ yet accepted in the nineteenth century. eral economic panic also impeded Kansas The second half of the nineteenth century settlement and kept the Kansas Pacific Rail­ was also the period in which daily weather road from meeting its bonds. In spite of these data were first recorded for Kansas and the conditions, the push to open central and west­ Plains. Weather data were collected by the ern Kansas continued, with the completion of US Army in Kansas beginning in 1836 and by the two major railroad lines, the Kansas Pa­ the Smithsonian Meteorological Project start­ cific (Union Pacific) and the Atchison, To­ ing in 1858. During the Kansas territorial pe­ peka and Santa Fe across the state (Fig. 3). r.iod (1855-61), Manhattan, the county seat But Kansas, like Nebraska, received more bad of Riley County, was the most westward of the press the next year because of a particularly Kansas stations for the Smithsonian. The severe grasshopper invasion associated with United States Weather Bureau was established the continuing drought in western Kansas. The in 1870 and by 1874 had ninety-four sites, but boom period for Kansas immigration in the only one was in Kansas, at Leavenworth on late nineteenth century took place between the Missouri border, which was also the state's the 1870s drought and the blizzard that swept largest city in the 1870s. A site at Dodge City through the entire Plains in January of 1886. was later established, serving as the sole site Another drought revisited western Kansas for the US Weather Bureau in western Kansas 114 GREAT PLAINS QUARTERLY, SPRING 2003 FIG. 2. "Drouthy Kansas" by Henry Worrall. Courtesy of Kansas State Historical Society. at the time. Reliable weather data, then, was The image of the garden was often employed of a sketchy nature in Kansas during the sec­ by nineteenth-century promoters, and the sec­ ond half of the nineteenth century. ond half of the century witnessed an enor­ Public knowledge of Kansas was often based mous propaganda effort to redefine the Kansas on newspaper accounts, particularly in papers climate as a positive resource for prospective and articles published in the eastern United residents. But the success of such boosterism States, which focused on sensational events was directly threatened by reports of drought.
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