The Last Days of the Rainbelt
The Last Days of the Rainbelt

Author: David J. Wishart

Publisher: U of Nebraska Press

Published: 2020-04-01

Total Pages: 268

ISBN-13: 1496209427

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Looking over the vast open plains of eastern Colorado, western Kansas, and southwestern Nebraska, where one can travel miles without seeing a town or even a house, it is hard to imagine the crowded landscape of the last decades of the nineteenth century. In those days farmers, speculators, and town builders flooded the region, believing that rain would follow the plow and that the "Rainbelt" would become their agricultural Eden. It took a mere decade for drought and economic turmoil to drive these dreaming thousands from the land, turning farmland back to rangeland and reducing settlements to ghost towns. David J. Wishart's The Last Days of the Rainbelt is the sobering tale of the rapid rise and decline of the settlement of the western Great Plains. History finds its voice in interviews with elderly residents of the region by Civil Works Administration employees in 1933 and 1934. Evidence similarly emerges from land records, climate reports, census records, and diaries, as Wishart deftly tracks the expansion of westward settlement across the central plains and into the Rainbelt. Through an examination of migration patterns, land laws, town-building, and agricultural practices, Wishart re-creates the often-difficult life of settlers in a semiarid region who undertook the daunting task of adapting to a new environment. His book brings this era of American settlement and failure on the western Great Plains fully into the scope of historical memory.

A Companion to American Agricultural History
A Companion to American Agricultural History

Author: R. Douglas Hurt

Publisher: John Wiley & Sons

Published: 2022-05-11

Total Pages: 608

ISBN-13: 1119632242

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Provides a solid foundation for understanding American agricultural history and offers new directions for research A Companion to American Agricultural History addresses the key aspects of America’s complex agricultural past from 8,000 BCE to the first decades of the twenty-first century. Bringing together more than thirty original essays by both established and emerging scholars, this innovative volume presents a succinct and accessible overview of American agricultural history while delivering a state-of-the-art assessment of modern scholarship on a diversity of subjects, themes, and issues. The essays provide readers with starting points for their exploration of American agricultural history—whether in general or in regards to a specific topic—and highlights the many ways the agricultural history of America is of integral importance to the wider American experience. Individual essays trace the origin and development of agricultural politics and policies, examine changes in science, technology, and government regulations, offer analytical suggestions for new research areas, discuss matters of ethnicity and gender in American agriculture, and more. This Companion: Introduces readers to a uniquely wide range of topics within the study of American agricultural history Provides a narrative summary and a critical examination of field-defining works Introduces specific topics within American agricultural history such as agrarian reform, agribusiness, and agricultural power and production Discusses the impacts of American agriculture on different groups including Native Americans, African Americans, and European, Asian, and Latinx immigrants Views the agricultural history of America through new interdisciplinary lenses of race, class, and the environment Explores depictions of American agriculture in film, popular music, literature, and art A Companion to American Agricultural History is an essential resource for introductory students and general readers seeking a concise overview of the subject, and for graduate students and scholars wanting to learn about a particular aspect of American agricultural history.

The Dust Bowl
The Dust Bowl

Author: R. Douglas Hurt

Publisher: Taylor Trade Publications

Published: 1981

Total Pages: 248

ISBN-13: 9780882295411

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To find more information about Rowman and Littlefield titles, please visit www.rowmanlittlefield.com.

Steam Power on the American Farm
Steam Power on the American Farm

Author: Reynold M. Wik

Publisher: University of Pennsylvania Press

Published: 2016-11-11

Total Pages: 308

ISBN-13: 1512808466

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This book is a volume in the Penn Press Anniversary Collection. To mark its 125th anniversary in 2015, the University of Pennsylvania Press rereleased more than 1,100 titles from Penn Press's distinguished backlist from 1899-1999 that had fallen out of print. Spanning an entire century, the Anniversary Collection offers peer-reviewed scholarship in a wide range of subject areas.