In words that are as clean and precise as his haunting, starkly
beautiful photographs, the author vividly recreates the life and
times of the Western Homestead Era, that period beginning around
1885 when the prairie lands lying westward from the longitude of
the western Dakotas became available to pioneering farmers. Some 70
black-and-white duotone photographs, with detailed captions, record
the bleak landscapes and the abandoned farms, outbuildings, farm
implements, and hand tools that are mute testimonies to the failed
hopes of several million families who settled on these arid and
semi-arid lands.
The author explains how their failure resulted from a deadly
combination of natural and economic causes. Neither the federal
government nor the homesteaders themselves were aware that some of
the western homestead land was so dry that artificial irrigation
often was required. But irrigation was unavailable to most of these
farms, and many thousands of them failed within a few years. On
most of the homestead lands, however, dry farming--by which crops
are watered by falling rain and snow--permitted the newcomers to
plant and reap a variety of crops. For several decades, these
regions produced flourishing farms, towns, railroad lines, and dirt
and gravel roads.
Meanwhile, and again unanticipated by both government and the
prospering farmers, the climate of these productive regions was
becoming increasingly dry. This was the natural phenomenon that
culminated in the Dust Bowl of the 1930s, which was coincidentally
accompanied by the Great Depression. Crops went begging for lack of
water, banks closed, railroads were abandoned, and the formerly
prosperous homesteaders went broke by the several millions.
Historians of the Western United States have largely ignored the
homesteaders. There is little romance in farming, especially when
compared with that attached to cowboys, Indians, explorers, and fur
traders. Still, the homesteaders were heroes in their own right.
Theirs was the last great endeavor in the opening of the West, and
this book, with its moving text, historical introduction, and
stunning photographs, tells their story.
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