Great American Desert

Historic name for the Great Plains region of the USA, lying between the Mississippi River in the east and the Rocky Mountains in the west. Named by US government-appointed explorer Major Stephen Long in 1823, the term was used on 19th-century maps and deterred settlers of the 1840s and 1850s, who assumed that the region was infertile. The mislabelling contributed to the delayed settlement of the Great Plains, the last major area of the USA to be settled during the era of westward expansion. When land ran out in California and Oregon, the Homestead Act (1862) encouraged homesteaders into the Plains, a process accelerated by the opening of the Transcontinental Railroad in 1869.

Long explored the region between 1819 and 1823 and called it the Great American Desert in his diaries, published in 1823. As a government-appointed explorer, his conclusions carried some authority and his maps formed the basis of maps of the region used in the 1840s and 1850s. Settlers assumed that a desert would be unsuitable for farming, the one activity that gave large amounts of land value in the 19th century, but were prepared to cross it in their wagons to reach the reportedly perfect farmland in California and Oregon. Their experiences on the journey, including drought, cold, and wild animals, simply confirmed their belief that the Great American Desert was unfit for habitation by American farmers and would always remain so. Even after settlement began in the 1860s the title Great American Desert retained some elements of truth as many homesteaders struggled owing to the lack of water and extremes of temperature experienced on the Plains.