Shopping on line can be easy, simple and save you lots of money. It can also take a lot of your time, frustrate you, and result in unwanted purchases. Now the same can be said for regular high street shopping, but with the vast opportunity presented by the Internet it will pay you to spend a few minutes reading this and understanding how to better optimize your Great Plains shopping experience:
1. Compare - without doubt the biggest advantage that the Great Plains offers shoppers today is the ability to compare thousands of Great Plains at a time. This is a great thing, but not necessarily all the time! Too much can be daunting at times so take advantage of the great comparison sites and where possible let them do the hard work for you.
2. Research - if it has been said it will be on the internet. Ignorance is no longer a justifiable reason for buying the wrong thing. Take the time to research in detail everything that you could possible want to know about
3. Testimonials - don't know anybody that has bought a Great Plains? Wrong! If the Great Plains is good the internet will let you know. Use the Internet as a friend and get testimonials before you buy.
4. Questions - Got a question about Great Plains then search the Forums, FAQ's, Blogs etc. Don't be afraid to ask .....
5. Reputation - Never heard of the company selling Great Plains? Don't worry, no reason why you should know every company in the world, but you know someone that does! Use the internet to find out what people are saying about Great Plains and build up a picture of their reputation for sales, returns, customer service, delivery etc.
6. Returns - still worried that even after all of the above your Great Plains wont be what you want? Check out the returns policy. There is so much competition now that someone, somewhere is bound to offer the terms that you are comfortable with.
7. Feedback - happy with your Great Plains then let people know, after all you are depending on others people input in your buying decision, so why not give a little back.
8. Security - check for the yellow padlock on the Great Plains site before you buy, and the s after http:/ /i.e. https:// = a secure site
9. Contact - got a question about Great Plains, or want to leave a comment then check out the sites contact page. Reputable companies have them and respond.
10. Payment - ready to pay for your Great Plains, then use your credit card or PayPal! Be aware of companies that don't accept them, there may be genuine reasons but given the huge amount of choice you have when buying online there is no reason at all not to buy via credit card or PayPal.
, portions of Canada and
Mexico. The 100th meridian west is denoted with the red line.The
Great Plains are the broad expanse of
prairie and steppe which lie east of the Rocky Mountains in the
United States and
Canada. This area covers parts of the
U.S. states of
Colorado, Kansas,
Montana,
Nebraska, New Mexico,
North Dakota,
Oklahoma,
South Dakota, Texas and Wyoming, and the
provinces and territories of Canada of Alberta, Manitoba and
Saskatchewan. In Canada the term
prairie is more common, and the region is known as the
Prairie Provinces or simply "the Prairies".
Divisions
The Great Plains are the westernmost portion of the vast North American Interior Plains, which extend east to the
Appalachian Plateau. The United States Geological Survey divides the Great Plains in the United States into ten physiographic subdivisions:
- Coteau du Missouri, glaciated – east-central South Dakota, northern and eastern North Dakota and northeastern Montana
- Coteau du Missouri, unglaciated – western South Dakota, northeastern Wyoming, southwestern South Dakota and southeastern Montana
- Black Hills – western South Dakota
- High Plains (United States) – eastern New Mexico, northwestern Texas, western Oklahoma, eastern Colorado, western Kansas, most of Nebraska (including the Sand Hills (Nebraska)) and southeastern Wyoming
- Plains Border – central Kansas and northern Oklahoma (including the Flint Hills, Red Hills and Smoky Hills)
- Colorado Piedmont – eastern Colorado
- Raton, New Mexico section – northeastern New Mexico
- Pecos River – eastern New Mexico
- Edwards Plateau – south-central Texas
- Central Texas section – central Texas
The High Plains (United States) is used in a related, more general context to describe the elevated regions of the Great Plains, which are primarily west of the
100th meridian west. The 100th meridian roughly corresponds with the line that divides the Great Plains into an area that receive 20 inches (500 mm) or more of rainfall per year and an area that receives less than 20 inches (500 mm). In this context, the High Plains is semi-arid steppe land and is generally characterized by
ranching or marginal
farming. The region is periodically subjected to extended periods of
drought; high winds in the region may then generate devastating
dust storms.
During the Cretaceous Period (145-65 million years ago), the Great Plains was covered by a shallow inland sea called
Western Interior Seaway. However, during the
Late Cretaceous to the Paleocene (65-55 million years ago), the seaway had begun to recede, leaving behind thick marine deposits and a relatively flat terrain where the seaway had once occupied.
History
Pre-European contact
Historically, the Great Plains were the range of the American Bison and of the Great Plains culture of the
Plains Indians tribes of the
Blackfeet, Crow Nation,
Sioux, Cheyenne, Arapaho,
Comanche and others. Eastern portions of the Great Plains were inhabited by tribes who lived in semipermanent villages of earth house, such as the
Arikara, Mandan,
Pawnee and Wichita (tribe).
European contact
With the arrival of
Francisco Vásquez de Coronado, a Spanish
conquistador, the first recorded history of Europeans in the Great Plains happened in Texas, Kansas and Nebraska from 1540-1542. In that same time period,
Hernando de Soto crossed a west-northwest direction in what is now
Oklahoma and Texas. Today this is known as the
De Soto Trail. The Spanish thought the Great Plains were the location of the mythological
Quivira and Cíbola, a place rich in gold.
In the next one hundred years the
fur trade injected thousands of Europeans onto the Great Plains, as fur trappers from France, Spain, Britain, Russia and the young United States made their way across much of the region. With the
Louisiana Purchase in 1803 and subsequent Lewis & Clark Expedition in 1804, the Great Plains became more accessible. A major fur trading site was located at
Fort Lisa on the
Missouri River in Nebraska. This type of early settlement opened the door to vast westward expansion, with settlements rising across the Great Plains.
Early settlements on the Great Plains
Pioneer settlement
This settlement led to the near-extinction of the
American Bison and the removal of the
Native Americans in the United States to Indian reservations in the 1870s. Much of the Great Plains became Rangeland, hosting ranching operations where anyone was theoretically free to run
cattle. In the spring and fall, roundups were held and the new calves were branded and the cattle sorted out for sale. Ranching began in Texas and gradually moved northward. Texas cattle were driven north to railroad lines in cities Dodge City, Kansas and
Ogallala, Nebraska; from there, cattle were shipped eastward. Many foreign, especially United Kingdom, investors financed the great ranches of the era. Overstocking of the range and the terrible winter of 1886 eventually resulted in a disaster, with many cattle starved and frozen. From then onward, ranchers generally turned to raising feed in order to winter their cattle over.
Pioneer towns on the Great Plains
The Homestead Act of 1862 provided that a settler could claim up to 160 acres (65
hectares) of land, provided that he lived on it for a period of years and cultivated it. This was later expanded under the Kinkaid Act to include a homestead of an entire section (land). Hundreds of thousands of people claimed these homesteads, sometimes building
sods out of the very
Sod of their land. Many of them were not skilled dryland farmings and failures were frequent.
Germans from Russia who had previously farmed in similar circumstances in what is now
Ukraine were marginally more successful than the average homesteader. The
Dominion Lands Act of 1871 served a similar function in Canada.
After 1900
The region roughly centered on the
Oklahoma Panhandle, including southeastern Colorado, southwestern Kansas, the Texas Panhandle, and extreme northeastern New Mexico was known as the Dust Bowl during the late 1920s and early 1930s. The effect of the drought combined with the effects of the Great Depression, forced many farmers off the land throughout the Great Plains.
From the 1950s, on, many areas of the Great Plains have become productive crop-growing areas because of extensive
irrigation. The southern portion of the Great Plains lies over the Ogallala Aquifer, a vast underground layer of water-bearing strata dating from the last
ice age. Center pivot irrigation is used extensively in drier sections of the Great Plains, resulting in
aquifer depletion at a rate that is greater than the ground's ability to recharge.
The rural Plains have lost a third of their population since 1920. Several hundred thousand square miles of the Great Plains have fewer than six persons per square mile—the density standard Frederick Jackson Turner used to declare the Frontier "closed" in 1893. Many have fewer than two persons per square mile. There are more than 6,000
ghost towns in the State of Kansas alone, according to Kansas historian Daniel Fitzgerald. This problem is often exacerbated by the consolidation of farms and the difficulty of attracting modern industry to the region. In addition, the smaller school-age population has forced the consolidation of school districts and the closure of high schools in some communities. This continuing population loss has led some to suggest that the current use of the drier parts of the Great Plains is not
sustainability, and propose that large parts be restored to native grassland grazed by buffalo, a proposal known as
Buffalo Commons.
Further reading
- Chokecherry Places, Essays from the High Plains, Merrill Gilfillan, Johnson Press, Boulder, Colorado, trade paperback, ISBN 1-55566-227-7.
- Colorado Without Mountains, A High Plains Memoir, Harold Hamil, The Lowell Press, Kansas City, Missouri, 1976, Hardback, 284 pages, ISBN 0-913504-33-5.
- Down and Out on the Family Farm: Rural Rehabilitation in the Great Plains, 1929-1945, Michael Johnston Grant, University of Nebraska Press, 2002, ISBN 0-8032-7105-0
- The Dust Bowl: Men, Dirt, and Depression, Paul Bonnifield, University of New Mexico Press, Albuquerque, New Mexico, 1978, hardcover, ISBN 0-8263-0485-0.
- Encyclopedia of the Great Plains, David J. Wishart, University of Nebraska Press, 2004, ISBN 0-8032-4787-7.
- Woody Landscape Plants for the High Plains, D. H. Fairchild and J. E. Klete, Colorado State University, 1993, Technical Bulletin LTB93-1 (Contact CSU to buy this).
- Wolf Willow, A history, a story, and a memory of the last plains frontier, Wallace Stegner, Viking Compass Book, New York, 1966, trade paperback, ISBN 0-670-00197-X
- The Tie That Binds (1984), a novel about farming by Kent Haruf, Vintage Books 2000, paperback, ISBN 0-375-72438-9.
External links
- The Geologic Story of The Great Plains
- Native Prairie from Kansas Heritage Group tree
See also
, portions of Canada and
Mexico. The 100th meridian west is denoted with the red line.The
Great Plains are the broad expanse of prairie and
steppe which lie east of the Rocky Mountains in the United States and
Canada. This area covers parts of the
U.S. states of Colorado,
Kansas, Montana, Nebraska,
New Mexico, North Dakota,
Oklahoma,
South Dakota, Texas and Wyoming, and the
provinces and territories of Canada of Alberta, Manitoba and Saskatchewan. In Canada the term
prairie is more common, and the region is known as the
Prairie Provinces or simply "the Prairies".
Divisions
The Great Plains are the westernmost portion of the vast North American Interior Plains, which extend east to the
Appalachian Plateau. The
United States Geological Survey divides the Great Plains in the United States into ten physiographic subdivisions:
- Coteau du Missouri, glaciated – east-central South Dakota, northern and eastern North Dakota and northeastern Montana
- Coteau du Missouri, unglaciated – western South Dakota, northeastern Wyoming, southwestern South Dakota and southeastern Montana
- Black Hills – western South Dakota
- High Plains (United States) – eastern New Mexico, northwestern Texas, western Oklahoma, eastern Colorado, western Kansas, most of Nebraska (including the Sand Hills (Nebraska)) and southeastern Wyoming
- Plains Border – central Kansas and northern Oklahoma (including the Flint Hills, Red Hills and Smoky Hills)
- Colorado Piedmont – eastern Colorado
- Raton, New Mexico section – northeastern New Mexico
- Pecos River – eastern New Mexico
- Edwards Plateau – south-central Texas
- Central Texas section – central Texas
The
High Plains (United States) is used in a related, more general context to describe the elevated regions of the Great Plains, which are primarily west of the
100th meridian west. The 100th meridian roughly corresponds with the line that divides the Great Plains into an area that receive 20 inches (500 mm) or more of rainfall per year and an area that receives less than 20 inches (500 mm). In this context, the High Plains is
semi-arid steppe land and is generally characterized by
ranching or marginal farming. The region is periodically subjected to extended periods of drought; high winds in the region may then generate devastating dust storms.
During the Cretaceous Period (145-65 million years ago), the Great Plains was covered by a shallow inland sea called
Western Interior Seaway. However, during the Late Cretaceous to the
Paleocene (65-55 million years ago), the seaway had begun to recede, leaving behind thick marine deposits and a relatively flat terrain where the seaway had once occupied.
History
Pre-European contact
Historically, the Great Plains were the range of the American Bison and of the Great Plains culture of the
Plains Indians tribes of the Blackfeet, Crow Nation,
Sioux, Cheyenne,
Arapaho,
Comanche and others. Eastern portions of the Great Plains were inhabited by tribes who lived in semipermanent villages of
earth house, such as the
Arikara,
Mandan, Pawnee and
Wichita (tribe).
European contact
With the arrival of Francisco Vásquez de Coronado, a Spanish
conquistador, the first recorded history of Europeans in the Great Plains happened in Texas, Kansas and Nebraska from 1540-1542. In that same time period,
Hernando de Soto crossed a west-northwest direction in what is now
Oklahoma and
Texas. Today this is known as the De Soto Trail. The Spanish thought the Great Plains were the location of the mythological Quivira and Cíbola, a place rich in gold.
In the next one hundred years the
fur trade injected thousands of Europeans onto the Great Plains, as fur trappers from France, Spain, Britain, Russia and the young United States made their way across much of the region. With the
Louisiana Purchase in 1803 and subsequent Lewis & Clark Expedition in 1804, the Great Plains became more accessible. A major fur trading site was located at
Fort Lisa on the Missouri River in Nebraska. This type of early settlement opened the door to vast westward expansion, with settlements rising across the Great Plains.
Early settlements on the Great Plains
Pioneer settlement
This settlement led to the near-extinction of the
American Bison and the removal of the
Native Americans in the United States to Indian reservations in the 1870s. Much of the Great Plains became
Rangeland, hosting ranching operations where anyone was theoretically free to run cattle. In the spring and fall, roundups were held and the new calves were branded and the cattle sorted out for sale. Ranching began in Texas and gradually moved northward. Texas cattle were driven north to railroad lines in cities
Dodge City, Kansas and Ogallala, Nebraska; from there, cattle were shipped eastward. Many foreign, especially United Kingdom, investors financed the great ranches of the era. Overstocking of the range and the terrible winter of 1886 eventually resulted in a disaster, with many cattle starved and frozen. From then onward, ranchers generally turned to raising feed in order to
winter their cattle over.
Pioneer towns on the Great Plains
The
Homestead Act of 1862 provided that a settler could claim up to 160 acres (65
hectares) of land, provided that he lived on it for a period of years and cultivated it. This was later expanded under the Kinkaid Act to include a homestead of an entire
section (land). Hundreds of thousands of people claimed these homesteads, sometimes building sods out of the very Sod of their land. Many of them were not skilled
dryland farmings and failures were frequent. Germans from Russia who had previously farmed in similar circumstances in what is now Ukraine were marginally more successful than the average homesteader. The Dominion Lands Act of 1871 served a similar function in Canada.
After 1900
The region roughly centered on the Oklahoma Panhandle, including southeastern Colorado, southwestern Kansas, the Texas Panhandle, and extreme northeastern New Mexico was known as the Dust Bowl during the late 1920s and early 1930s. The effect of the drought combined with the effects of the Great Depression, forced many farmers off the land throughout the Great Plains.
From the 1950s, on, many areas of the Great Plains have become productive crop-growing areas because of extensive
irrigation. The southern portion of the Great Plains lies over the
Ogallala Aquifer, a vast underground layer of water-bearing strata dating from the last
ice age.
Center pivot irrigation is used extensively in drier sections of the Great Plains, resulting in
aquifer depletion at a rate that is greater than the ground's ability to recharge.
The rural Plains have lost a third of their population since 1920. Several hundred thousand square miles of the Great Plains have fewer than six persons per square mile—the density standard Frederick Jackson Turner used to declare the Frontier "closed" in 1893. Many have fewer than two persons per square mile. There are more than 6,000
ghost towns in the State of
Kansas alone, according to Kansas historian Daniel Fitzgerald. This problem is often exacerbated by the consolidation of farms and the difficulty of attracting modern industry to the region. In addition, the smaller school-age population has forced the consolidation of school districts and the closure of high schools in some communities. This continuing population loss has led some to suggest that the current use of the drier parts of the Great Plains is not
sustainability, and propose that large parts be restored to native grassland grazed by buffalo, a proposal known as
Buffalo Commons.
Further reading
- Chokecherry Places, Essays from the High Plains, Merrill Gilfillan, Johnson Press, Boulder, Colorado, trade paperback, ISBN 1-55566-227-7.
- Colorado Without Mountains, A High Plains Memoir, Harold Hamil, The Lowell Press, Kansas City, Missouri, 1976, Hardback, 284 pages, ISBN 0-913504-33-5.
- Down and Out on the Family Farm: Rural Rehabilitation in the Great Plains, 1929-1945, Michael Johnston Grant, University of Nebraska Press, 2002, ISBN 0-8032-7105-0
- The Dust Bowl: Men, Dirt, and Depression, Paul Bonnifield, University of New Mexico Press, Albuquerque, New Mexico, 1978, hardcover, ISBN 0-8263-0485-0.
- Encyclopedia of the Great Plains, David J. Wishart, University of Nebraska Press, 2004, ISBN 0-8032-4787-7.
- Woody Landscape Plants for the High Plains, D. H. Fairchild and J. E. Klete, Colorado State University, 1993, Technical Bulletin LTB93-1 (Contact CSU to buy this).
- Wolf Willow, A history, a story, and a memory of the last plains frontier, Wallace Stegner, Viking Compass Book, New York, 1966, trade paperback, ISBN 0-670-00197-X
- The Tie That Binds (1984), a novel about farming by Kent Haruf, Vintage Books 2000, paperback, ISBN 0-375-72438-9.
External links
- The Geologic Story of The Great Plains
- Native Prairie from Kansas Heritage Group tree
See also
Great Plains
Manufacturer of planting, seeding, tillage, and spraying equipment. Includes each company division, dealer locator, and products.
Home at Great Plains Publications
An independent bookpublisher from Winnipeg, Manitoba focusing on Prairie writers.
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UK based stockholders of super duplex flanges and butt weld supplies, with products designed for the oil and petrochemicals industries, with 31c certification.
Great Plains - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
The Great Plains are the broad expanse of prairie and steppe which lie east of the Rocky Mountains in the United States and Canada. This area covers parts of the U.S. states of ...
BBC - Science & Nature - Planet Earth
Great Plains First shown November 2006 Jungles First shown November 2006 Shallow Seas First shown November 2006 Seasonal Forests First shown December 2006
Great Plains Laboratory
Provides urine testing and analysis for autism, fibromyalgia, and other conditions. Company profile, reference material about conditions, tests available, products and services.
Great Plains Network - Home
Great Plains Network WIKI This is the place to learn all about GPN, including upcoming meetings, news, initiatives, projects, participants ...
GREAT PLAINS ALLOYS (UK) LTD NEWS
GREAT PLAINS ALLOYS (UK) LTD iPod Winner Announced Thank you to all entrants of the first Great Plains iPod prize draw. The winner has now been notified and the prize is on it's ...
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Solutions, software, and services to improve ERP and financial, customer-relationship, and supply-chain management. Try it free for 90 days.
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