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Dust Bowl
The Dust Bowl was the result of a period of severe dust storms that greatly damaged the ecology and agriculture of the American and Canadian prairies during the 1930s. The phenomenon was caused by a combination of natural factors (severe drought) and human-made factors: a failure to apply dryland farming methods to prevent aeolian processes, wind erosion, most notably the destruction of the natural topsoil by settlers in the region. The drought came in three waves: 1934–35 North American drought, 1934, 1936, and 1939–1940, but some regions of the High Plains (United States), High Plains experienced drought conditions for as long as eight years. The Dust Bowl has been the subject of many cultural works, including John Steinbeck's 1939 novel ''The Grapes of Wrath'', the folk music of Woody Guthrie, and Dorothea Lange's photographs depicting the conditions of migrants, particularly ''Migrant Mother'', taken in 1936. Geographic characteristics and early history The Dust B ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Farmer Walking In Dust Storm Cimarron County Oklahoma2
A farmer is a person engaged in agriculture, raising living organisms for food or raw materials. The term usually applies to people who do some combination of raising field crops, orchards, vineyards, poultry, or other livestock. A farmer might own the farm land or might work as a laborer on land owned by others. In most developed economies, a "farmer" is usually a farm owner ( landowner), while employees of the farm are known as ''farm workers'' (or farmhands). However, in other older definitions a farmer was a person who promotes or improves the growth of plants, land or crops or raises animals (as livestock or fish) by labor and attention. Over half a billion farmers are smallholders, most of whom are in developing countries, and who economically support almost two billion people. Globally, women constitute more than 40% of agricultural employees. History Farming dates back as far as the Neolithic, being one of the defining characteristics of that era. By the Bronze Age, ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Migrant Mother
''Migrant Mother'' is a photograph taken in 1936 in Nipomo, California by American photographer Dorothea Lange during her spell at the Resettlement Administration (later the Farm Security Administration). Since then, the photograph has become an icon of the Great Depression and because it is in the public domain, it has been reproduced to serve as advertisements and much more. Today, Lange's work is considered to be a part of the classic canon of American art and international photography. The 28.3 by 21.8 cm (11 1/8 by 8 9/16 in) gelatin silver print photograph depicts two children burying their faces in their mother who anxiously gazes off into the distance. A print is housed at the Museum of Modern Art in New York City. Description ''Migrant Mother'' depicts a mother looking off into the distance with two of her children at her sides and an infant in her lap. Her children's faces are not shown as the children both bury their faces in their mother's shoulders. The black an ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
First Transcontinental Railroad
North America's first transcontinental railroad (known originally as the "Pacific Railroad" and later as the " Overland Route") was a continuous railroad line constructed between 1863 and 1869 that connected the existing eastern U.S. rail network at Council Bluffs, Iowa with the Pacific coast at the Oakland Long Wharf on San Francisco Bay. The rail line was built by three private companies over public lands provided by extensive US land grants.Pacific Railroad Act of 1862, §2 & §3 Building was financed by both state and US government subsidy bonds as well as by company issued mortgage bonds.Pacific Railroad Act of 1862, §5 & §6 The Western Pacific Railroad Company built of track from the road's western terminus at Alameda/ Oakland to Sacramento, California. The Central Pacific Railroad Company of California (CPRR) constructed east from Sacramento to Promontory Summit, Utah Territory. The Union Pacific Railroad (UPRR) built from the road's eastern terminus at the Mis ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
American Civil War
The American Civil War (April 12, 1861 – May 26, 1865; also known by other names) was a civil war in the United States. It was fought between the Union ("the North") and the Confederacy ("the South"), the latter formed by states that had seceded. The central cause of the war was the dispute over whether slavery would be permitted to expand into the western territories, leading to more slave states, or be prevented from doing so, which was widely believed would place slavery on a course of ultimate extinction. Decades of political controversy over slavery were brought to a head by the victory in the 1860 U.S. presidential election of Abraham Lincoln, who opposed slavery's expansion into the west. An initial seven southern slave states responded to Lincoln's victory by seceding from the United States and, in 1861, forming the Confederacy. The Confederacy seized U.S. forts and other federal assets within their borders. Led by Confederate President Jefferson Davis, ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Section (United States Land Surveying)
In U.S. land surveying under the Public Land Survey System (PLSS), a section is an area nominally , containing , with 36 sections making up one survey township on a rectangular grid. The legal description of a tract of land under the PLSS includes the name of the state, name of the county, township number, range number, section number, and portion of a section. Sections are customarily surveyed into smaller squares by repeated halving and quartering. A quarter section is and a "quarter-quarter section" is . In 1832 the smallest area of land that could be acquired was reduced to the quarter-quarter section, and this size parcel became entrenched in American mythology. After the Civil War, freedmen (freed slaves) were reckoned to be self-sufficient with " 40 acres and a mule." In the 20th century real estate developers preferred working with parcels. The phrases "front 40" and " back 40," referring to farm fields, indicate the front and back quarter-quarter sections of land. ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Homestead Act Of 1862
The Homestead Acts were several laws in the United States by which an applicant could acquire ownership of government land or the public domain, typically called a homestead. In all, more than of public land, or nearly 10 percent of the total area of the United States, was given away free to 1.6 million homesteaders; most of the homesteads were west of the Mississippi River. An extension of the homestead principle in law, the Homestead Acts were an expression of the Free Soil policy of Northerners who wanted individual farmers to own and operate their own farms, as opposed to Southern slave-owners who wanted to buy up large tracts of land and use slave labor, thereby shutting out free white farmers. The first of the acts, the Homestead Act of 1862, opened up millions of acres. Any adult who had never taken up arms against the Federal government of the United States could apply. Women and immigrants who had applied for citizenship were eligible. Several additio ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Plantation (settlement Or Colony)
In the history of colonialism, a plantation was a form of colonization where settlers would establish permanent or semi-permanent colonial settlements in a new region. The term first appeared in the 1580s in the English language to describe the process of colonization before being also used to refer to a colony by the 1610s. By the 1710s, the word was also being used to describe large farms where cash crop goods were produced, typically in tropical regions. The first plantations were established during the Edwardian conquest of Wales and the plantations of Ireland by the English Crown. In Wales, King Edward I of England began a policy of constructing a chain of fortifications and castles in North Wales to control the native Welsh population; the Welsh were only permitted to enter the fortifications and castles unarmed during the day and were forbidden from trading. In Ireland, during the Tudor and Stuart eras the English Crown initiated a large-scale colonization of Ireland ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Great American Desert
The term Great American Desert was used in the 19th century to describe the part of North America east of the Rocky Mountains to about the 100th meridian. It can be traced to Stephen H. Long's 1820 scientific expedition which put the Great American Desert on the map. The area is now usually referred to as the High Plains, and the original term is now sometimes used to describe the arid region of North America, which includes parts of northwestern Mexico and the American southwest. The concept of "desert" In the past, the term "desert" had two somewhat incompatible meanings. It was sometimes used to describe any uninhabited or treeless land whether it was arid or not, and sometimes to specifically refer to hot and arid lands, evoking images of sandy wastelands. It was long thought that treeless lands were not good for agriculture, thus the term "desert" also had the connotation of "unfit for farming". By the 19th century, the term had begun to take on its modern meaning. Wors ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Great Plains
The Great Plains (french: Grandes Plaines), sometimes simply "the Plains", is a broad expanse of flatland in North America. It is located west of the Mississippi River and east of the Rocky Mountains, much of it covered in prairie, steppe, and grassland. It is the southern and main part of the Interior Plains, which also include the tallgrass prairie between the Great Lakes and Appalachian Plateau, and the Taiga Plains and Boreal Plains ecozones in Northern Canada. The term Western Plains is used to describe the ecoregion of the Great Plains, or alternatively the western portion of the Great Plains. The Great Plains lies across both Central United States and Western Canada, encompassing: * The entirety of the U.S. states of Kansas, Nebraska, North Dakota and South Dakota; * Parts of the U.S. states of Colorado, Iowa, Minnesota, Missouri, Montana, New Mexico, Oklahoma, Texas and Wyoming; * The southern portions of the Canadian provinces of Alberta, Saskatchewan and Manitoba. ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Shortgrass Prairie
The shortgrass prairie is an ecosystem located in the Great Plains of North America. The two most dominant grasses in the shortgrass prairie are blue grama (''Bouteloua gracilis'') and buffalograss (''Bouteloua dactyloides''), the two less dominant grasses in the prairie are greasegrass (''Tridens flavus'') and sideoats grama (''Bouteloua curtipendula''). The prairie was formerly maintained by grazing pressure of American bison, which is the keystone species. Due to its semiarid climate, the shortgrass prairie receives on average less Precipitation (meteorology), precipitation than that of the tall and mixed grass prairies to the east. The prairie includes lands to the west as far as the eastern foothills of the Rocky Mountains and extends east as far as Nebraska and north into Saskatchewan. The prairie stretches through parts of Alberta, Wyoming, Montana, North Dakota, South Dakota, and Kansas, and passes south through the High Plains (United States), high plains of Colorado, Okl ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Semiarid
A semi-arid climate, semi-desert climate, or steppe climate is a dry climate sub-type. It is located on regions that receive precipitation below potential evapotranspiration, but not as low as a desert climate. There are different kinds of semi-arid climates, depending on variables such as temperature, and they give rise to different biomes. Defining attributes of semi-arid climates A more precise definition is given by the Köppen climate classification, which treats steppe climates (''BSk'' and ''BSh'') as intermediates between desert climates (BW) and humid climates (A, C, D) in ecological characteristics and agricultural potential. Semi-arid climates tend to support short, thorny or scrubby vegetation and are usually dominated by either grasses or shrubs as it usually can't support forests. To determine if a location has a semi-arid climate, the precipitation threshold must first be determined. The method used to find the precipitation threshold (in millimeters): *multiply by ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Rocky Mountains
The Rocky Mountains, also known as the Rockies, are a major mountain range and the largest mountain system in North America. The Rocky Mountains stretch in straight-line distance from the northernmost part of western Canada, to New Mexico in the southwestern United States. Depending on differing definitions between Canada and the U.S., its northern terminus is located either in northern British Columbia's Terminal Range south of the Liard River and east of the Trench, or in the northeastern foothills of the Brooks Range/ British Mountains that face the Beaufort Sea coasts between the Canning River and the Firth River across the Alaska-Yukon border. Its southernmost point is near the Albuquerque area adjacent to the Rio Grande rift and north of the Sandia–Manzano Mountain Range. Being the easternmost portion of the North American Cordillera, the Rockies are distinct from the tectonically younger Cascade Range and Sierra Nevada, which both lie farther to its west. The ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
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