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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. A native of Montana who grew up on a ranch, he earned degrees at the University of Colo­ rado and a doctorate from the University of Minnesota. One of the most productive scholars in his field, Professor Spence has written numerous books, among them God Charles L. Wood Speed the Plow: The Coming ofSteam Culti­ vation to Great Britain (1960), Mining 1937-1981 Engineers and the American West: The Lace­ Boot Brigade, 1849-1933 (1970), Montana: A Bicentennial History (1978), and The Salva­ Charles L. Wood was a son of the Great Plains tion Army Farm Colonies (1985). He has also and its agricultural heritage. Born into a farm contributed more than thirty-five articles on family in Hemingsford, Nebraska, Chuck subjects ranging from gold dredges to livery Wood was educated at St. Benedict's College stables. in Atchinson, Kansas, and at the University of Professor Spence has acquired a long list of Kansas, where he earned his M.A. and Ph.D. honors in recognition of his scholarly achieve­ degrees in American history under the tutelage ments. He received the A. J. Beveridge of Professors George L. Anderson and John G. Honorable Mention Award from the American Clark. Between 1963 and 1970 and again from Historical Association, the Agricultural 1974 to 1976, he served on the faculty of History Society Book Award, and the Award Hayden High School in Topeka. Chuck joined of Merit from the American Association of the history faculty at Texas Tech University in State and Local History. He has held 1976, where he taught agricultural history until Fulbright, Guggenhiem, and Ford Faculty Fel­ his sudden death at the age of 44 in 1981. lowships. In 1969-70, he served as president Although his stay with us was brief, Chuck of the Western History Association, and he communicated his deep affection for the land has held memberships on the editorial boards and people of the Plains and energetically of six scholarly journals. pursued his research on cattle ranching in the Drawing upon a larger study of pluviculture West. His articles on the range and cattle before the Second World War, published by industry appeared in the Kansas Historical the University of Nebraska Press in 1980, Quarterly and the Journal of the West, and in Clark Spence, in the Wood Lecture, describes 1980 his monograph The Kansas Beef Industry the persistent and sometimes desperate was published by the Regents Press of Kansas. attempts to coax rainfall from the Texas skies. iii Consistent with much of his historical writing, he retains a keen sense of the human elements that characterized rainmakers, whether charla­ tans or men of science. So too, he succeeds in telling the story of both ordinary people in dire need of "rain doctors" and the advances made in meteorology and weather modifica­ tion that encouraged new hope in the farming community. Particularly notable is the wide and rich variety of sources that were used to reveal this side of agricultural history in the Southwest. The following individuals served on the 1985-86 Wood Lecture Series Committee: Joe King, History (Chair); Marvin Cepica, Agricultural Sciences; Kristine Fredericksson, Museum; David Murrah, Southwest Collec­ tion; Cynthia Sturgis, History; and Idris Traylor, Jr., International Center for Arid and Semiarid Land Studies. The lecture was sponsored by: Texas Tech University College of Agricultural Sciences College of Arts and Sciences Department of History International Center for Arid and Semiarid Land Studies Southwest Collection The Museum Ranching Heritage Association West Texas Museum Association We gratefully acknowledge the assistance of Dr. Carolyn Rude, Associate Professor of English, and her students, Ken Goach, Janet Greathouse, and Donna Pritchett, in the production of this publication. Joseph E. King Department of History IV TEXAS AND THE AGE OF PLUVICULTURE CLARK C. SPENCE Like the American West in general, Texas Walter Prescott Webb made the same point in is a land of contrasts---of coastal plains, pine 1957 and was hooted down. Modem scholars forests, honest-to-goodness deserts, high see a cyclical drought pattern, with acute plains, and substantial mountains. Like the aridity every other decade, occurring from the West in general, it shares a common prob­ 1890s on down to the era of the black blizzards, lem-a frequent lack of moisture west of the the dirty thirties, again in the filthy fifties, and ninety-eighth meridian, with annual rainfall yet again in the sorry seventies.2 averaging around twenty inches on its high If the dry years of the 1890s slowed the pace plains and half that in West Texas. 1 For its of settlement, they speeded the process of settlers, water has been its most precious adaptation to the environment-the search for commodity, and in time of drought, desperate drought-resistant crops and more sophisticated farm or ranch people have grasped at any dry farming methods, the limited expansion of straws that have represented even a faint ray irrigation, and, in moments of desperation, of hope. And in those circumstances, efforts to produce artificial rain. The idea of rainmaking practitioners unerringly surfaced rain-making, which is as old as antiquity, was like cats at the back door of a fish market. now wrapped in semi-respectability and resur­ By the middle of the 1880s cattlemen were rected to meet a new challenge. "Progress" pushing farther onto the Texas high plains, was a national catchword, and even country building windmills to pump from wells, and farmers were aware of what science and retaining rainwater in sntall "tanks" held by technology had already done for agriculture. earthen dams. Settling first in the Panhandle, Might they not also solve the moisture prob­ east of the High Plains proper, sodbusters too lem? Unfortunately, many confused science began to edge out on the plains, attracted by with pseudo-science, or even with downright more liberal land laws and the coming of rail­ chicanery. This is what my remarks are about. roads, spawning a crop ~f new towns like It was the President of Stanford University Amarillo, Plainview, and Lubbock. But the who coined the word "pluviculture" to describe 1890s brought devastating drought to West the growing and marketing of rainmaking Texas, frightening cattlemen and farmers schemes-"a never failing drought crop, alike. Eighteen ninety-four was the worst according to the Weather Bureau."3 Pluvicul­ year on record, not only in Texas but through­ ture peaked during the 1890s crisis, then out the Great Plains. Eighteen ninety-four proceeded at a more leisurely pace, rising and was the year Texans, for the first time, saw falling with years of high and low humidity for fish swimming up the Canadian River, another half century before giving way to a leaving a trail of dust behind. An old-timer Brave New World of weather modification, later recalled: "Remember Noah and the Ark, eventually with the weight of both science and when it rained forty days and forty nights? government behind it. In the Age of Pluvicul­ Well, we got half an inch that summer." ture, the wing of the army of cloudbusters con­ But settlers pushing out in good years cerned with legitimately wringing moisture would not discard the idea that "rain follows from the sky was decidedly smaller than the the plow." On the High Plains, as elsewhere, one more concerned with extracting dollars they were convinced that turning the soil, from the pockets of gullible and discouraged planting trees and crops, and building farmers who watched their com curl up and railroads and towns brought increased rainfall. tum brown from lack of water. They would not believe that the Great Plains The lunatic fringe of American rainmakers in general was an area of marginal rainfall, has always demonstrated wondrous imagina­ any more than Texans would acquiesce when tion. These people have proposed the use of secret rays, the stewing of moisture-producing the Inter-State Artificial Rain Company, herbal concoctions, and the focusing of huge reported in 1891 that he had found a Texas magnifying glasses to hasten evaporation backer.
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