Although sometimes written in a light hearted manner and professing to have studied mostly secondary sources, the excellent Bibliographic Essay shows how much research Dr. Athearn did.
This deals with the character and development (not much with the political events) of the present day states that border the Missouri River. "The principal effort in this work is to view the entire region in broad sweeps in an effort to understand its relationship to the larger story of American growth and to bring out any dominant highlights that characterize its history. Among these the most peristent theme is that of exploitation and experimentation carried on by remote control from the more settled parts of America (vii)."
26 well chosen photos and index.
From my notes:
Chapter Two. Traps and Trinkets. pp. 27-44 + Bibliographic Essay pp. 335-338.
Fur traders were the first to take advantage of the work of Lewis & Clark. They explored much of the land in pursuit of the pelts that could be profitably shipped to market. "Like that of most frontiers, the day of the fur trader was short and spectacular (28)." "It was a story of upset vessels, water-damaged furs, attacks by hostile Indians, heavy losses of supplies, bankruptcies, failures, and renewed attempts. Courage, occasional rich hauls in pelts, and an ability generally to get along with the Indians of both sexes provided the necessary drive to propel the fur brigade forward (28)."
Manuel Lisa returned to St. Louis in 1808 to tell of his experience trapping in the Yellowstone area and a company with $40,000 in capital was founded. Dr. Athearn tells of their hard luck and small returns. Another company was formed in 1822 (later the Rocky Mountain Fur Co.) with even more capital and it recruited young men who would become famous: Jedediah Smith, Jim Bridger, etc. Using well designed keel boats to travel up the Missouri River, the firm had a good first season. They led a goodly company upriver in 1823 but the Arikara (Ree) Indians successfully blocked the river and defeated them, and also defeated the Sixth Infantry led by Col. Leavenworth, the army thereafter doing little to help trappers. However, trappers were able to find their way into the country overland and sometimes succeed despite hostile Blackfeet and Sioux Indians. Their ensued twenty years of struggle by the 'opposition' companies to prosper in the face of the entry of John Jacob Astor's American Fur Company in 1822. Astor and his lieutenants were rough customers (he himself never went to St. Louis or upriver) and Professor Athearn describes the struggles. This competition led to the introduction of 'Indian whiskey' and "the effect upon the natives was devastating. More detrimental than the white man's other contributions of smallpox and syphilis, alcohol not only destroyed those who used it, but inflamed them to a point where murder was an everyday event (36)." William Astor's letter to the Secretary of War in 1831 is cited; he says they brought in $500,000 annually from the fur trade, buying out opposition firms from time to time.
"Paramount among Astor's remarkable qualities was the intuitive knowledge of the proper time to quit. In 1834 he sold out; believing that the end of profitable fur trading was in sight. About that time he wrote from London: 'I very much fear beaver will not sell very soon unless very fine. It appears that they make hats of silk in place of beaver' (41)."
The steamship Yellowstone, especially built with a very small draft, was put on the Missouri River in 1831 and in 1832 there was enough water to reach Fort Union (upriver in three months).
The trade continued to decline. The author ends it with Jim Bridger building his fort on Black's Fork of the Green River in Wyoming with the intention of selling goods and services to travelers. "Should they need blacksmith work, horses, or supplies, he would oblige, for money--'cash from the states,' as he put it (43). [Note that many Argonauts came brought capital with them.]
Farmers still looked upon the plains as unsuitable for agriculture and so only enterprises that could find something light enough to be shipped while yielding a profit would go there. Gold mining came next.
Chapter Three. The Way West. pp. 45-65 + Bibliographic essay pp. 335-338
Some Americans were attracted by the mystique of Oregon. "It was far off, therefore both romantic and undoubtedly better than existing tracts open to settlement. It lay beyond the treacherous plains swarming with hostile Indians and there was a serious question of ownership. Rumors of a verdant countryside, teeming with fur-bearing animals, possessed of a soil that awaited the plowman's attention, a place eyed by the always-suspect British, proved to be more than the Yankees could stand. They had to go (45)."
Dr. Athearn singles out New England activists and western senators (Thomas Hart Benton, of course) as promoters of settling Oregon beginning in the 1820s. Nathaniel Wyeth, a Harvard grad, organized and led a serious group overland from Boston in 1832, some of whom arrived in the Oregon country; most did not remain long. Marcus Whitman and Henry Spaulding soon followed and in 1840 Joe Meek and Robert Newell were actually able to get their wagons all the way west. "In 1843, somewhere between nine hundred and a thousand people passed across the plains, Oregon-bound. With them went about seven hundred oxen and approximately as many beef cattle. By 1845 there were some six thousand people in Oregon; in five years that figure had more than doubled. Most of them had come overland (47)." [I question that the Indians would have left unmolested travelers who did not form wagon trains (47).]
The Latter Day Saints also passed through the High Country, establishing Salt Lake City. Professor Athearn emphasizes they hoped to leave the USA behind, and settled in Mexican lands, although that changed 2 February 1848. Travel by new members recruited in the US and abroad (especially Europe) went on. The amount of traffic through the area was amazing by 1850, boosted by the gold rush in California. Another gold rush brought people to Colorado, traveling part of the way on the Santa Fe Trail. William Bent (Bent's Fort) had a noted trading post and âKing' McKenzie had one at Fort Union on the Missouri River, the rest of the country being unsettled. "When the fur trade fell off, the government tried to buy Bent out the same year it purchased Fort Laramie--1849. But the price was not right and, tired of quibbling, the owner mined his establishment with gunpowder and blew it skyward. When the Fifty-Niners came along they traded with the old gentleman at his new post, forty miles up the Arkansas. Later it would be leased by the Army and called Fort Lyon. The Santa Fe Trail, like its other western counterparts, was of interest to men only because it led someplace, to a mean of gain (54)."
The last sentence is Dr. Athearn's reason for discussing these travelers; he is emphasizing that they are merely passing through. However, the 'desert' began to diminish as settlers gradually moved westward and abolitionists came from New England to settle in Kansas before the war.
"Low prices at home [flour in Cincinnati was worth $6.25 a barrel and fell in three years to $2.51, a bushel of wheat needed to be worth half a dollar to make the farmer a small profit but fell to a quarter dollar] coupled with the American dream that something better lay just to the west, made men think in terms of advance, not retreat, across the continent (58)."
The author emphasizes that the promise of railroad transportation of crops drew a group of Americans from all sections of the nation to the high plains. "As time went by they discovered that by new methods, certain concessions to a semiarid climate, and stubborn persistence a living could be made (59)." They might begin with growing corn but moved on to crops better suited to the area. Professor Athearn finds that the hopeful settlers were the ones that succeeded; pessimists and those that did not turn to and work hard tended to fail.
The Yellowstone launched the steamboat era by arriving at Fort Union in 1832 but "...until the middle Fifties, traffic on the Upper Missouri was not heavy. One or two American Fur Company vessels a year comprised the steamboat trade (61)." After 1855 traffic increased a bit on the Upper Missouri but improvements in steamboat technology and demand led to many boats on the Lower Missouri. "One could travel from New York to Omaha for a little over forty dollars at midcentury. The fare from St. Louis to Kansas City was only twelve. Or those who elected under the auspices of the Emigrant Aid Societies could go for nearly nothing. One of them offered a ten dollar fare from Pittsburgh to St. Louis and passage on to Kansas City for an equal sum. Nor did travelers have to wait long for service. In 1858 there were no fewer than sixty regular packets operating on the Missouri in addition to around forty nonscheduled âtramps' (62)."
The Excel navigated the Kansas River in 1854 (high water was needed) and despite the snags, steamboats traveled as far as Fort Riley. This ended when the railroads induced the Kansas legislatures (1866) to declare these tributaries non-navigable, meaning that the railroads could erect stationary bridges across them.
"Until the great horn of mineral plenty poured forth gold dust in quantity, drawing on legions of hopefuls; until the railroads succeeded freight wagons and farmers followed stockmen out onto the plains, the desert remained in the minds of most men a thing to be shunned. Much of it was still unknown (64)."
Chapter Six. The Cow Kingdom. pp. 127-151
Before the war, gold and furs were about the only products of the Missouri basin that were compact enough to be carried to market. "Following the war the nature of extractive industries was heavier, bulkier, and of lower value. Beef, wool, grain, lumber, and lower-grade minerals constituted the bulk of it. In all cases cheap transportation was the key. Without it production of none of them was feasible (127)." It is not surprising that cattle were the first post-war interest as they had been driven from the Midwest to NYC in the 1830s and to New Orleans (often via Missouri) in the 1840s and 1850s. This ended when the Union cut the CSA in half at the Mississippi River and by 1867 Texas' huge surplus of cattle were being driven north. John Chisolm is lauded for blazing the trail and Joseph G. McCoy for building the yards in Abilene and buying cattle for sale to his connections further east. The ATSF, UPRR, and Kansas Pacific were eager for trade. Thus livestock was the bedrock of the plains economy before the arrival of farmers. Given the pressure of settlers and outbreaks of Texas fever among cattle (especially in 1884), the cowtowns (where the herds were sold and shipped) lasted as such for not much longer than did end of tracks towns.
In the late 1870s cattle driven north were sometimes put on the ample grass of Montana and Wyoming. Entrepreneurs with little capital could file on a homestead and have their cattle graze on the open range. Costs were so low that expansion continued even after the Panic of 1873. The opening of the Dakotas in 1877 led to the arrival of large numbers of Texas cattle and even some driven east from Oregon. Eastern and European interests invested in these new cattle ranches, some bringing in large sums.
Dr. Athearn describes how ranchers, even the large operators, had to cooperate--they were not feudal lords. There were local livestock associations and statewide ones; that of Wyoming is described.
The winter of 1880-1881 was hard but the Spring is always green and so Nature's warning was not heeded, leading to huge losses in the winter of 1886-1887. Recovery was partial given that the bloom was off the business. It did leave behind the Midwest feed lots and packing houses.
"Like the frontier of the trapper and the placer miner, the cattlemen's frontier spread with amazing rapidity, experienced violent fluctuations, and was relatively shortlived. Similarly, it was founded upon the existence of an enormous tract of unsettled, unclaimed land whose utility was as yet unappreciated by the traditional small settler. The stock grower was simply a latter-day prospector, mining the land in a slightly different way than that used by his predecessors (149)." Ranchers did not abandon the field when pushed by the 'next big thing,' i.e. farmers, and remained on the land.
Chapter Seven. Web of Steel. pp. 152-175 + 338-343 Bibliographic essay
"The foundation of high plains civilization was made of steel. Not steel dug from the western earth and processed in the region's mills, but steel brought from industrial America in the form of rails. Spread across the tough sod, they generally preceded settlement. Where they went, towns appeared, and from these grew larger communities. These islands of population not only owed their existence to the railroad, they also looked to them for survival. Steel was the base, the fiber, and the lifeline for an otherwise isolated people (152)."
Dr. Athearn emphasizes that without the RR, little more than pelts and some mines could have been developed in the high plains, there being no other cash crop that could be transported profitably to market from distant locales. He cites pre-Civil War evaluation of the area that emphasizes how different it is from the wooded areas of the Mississippi River Valley with its various navigable rivers. There was a vast area of vacant prairie beyond the Missouri River (the only navigable river, plus at times the Kansas River) 'beckoning' in 1865.
General Grenville Dodge is praised for his excellent work on the ground in constructing the UPRR. "Most of the track-laying was done under the direct supervision of the Casement brothers, Dan and Jack, whose army of workers fought distance, barren plains, and Indians in the westward course. Thousands of men, including former soldiers from both Confederate and Union forces, Irish immigrants, muleskinners, mountain men, and Midwestern farm boys, toiled all day while a hardened corps of gamblers, saloonkeepers, and harpies stood by, prepared to offer some of the more recreational aspects of railroad-building in the evening (155)." The author offers several examples of towns that served as end-of-track settlements and then barely survived as the railroad moved West.
General Sherman is quoted several times in this chapter because he commanded the area for many years after the war, at first doubtful that the land was would amount to anything, and later amazed at the degree of settlement and enterprise. Forts had to be built to protect trails [I think of the 2nd Gulf War] and supplies laboriously brought in but by 1883 he was praising the ease with which both troops and the quartermaster were served by the railroads.
The Plum Creek 'affair' (Summer, 1867) in Nebraska demonstrated how tough the Indians then were. They tore up part of the track, burned a work train, and killed several railroad men before General Dodge brought relief forces. But "...even bigger wars to come would not stop (157)" the building of the UPRR.
Professor Athearn believes that, despite the scandals over financing and land speculation, people felt the rapid building of the railroads were worth it. "To them, now the main end was to get a railroad. Without it, economic extraction on a major scale was an impossibility. So they joined in celebrating the road's advance and laid plans to get their share of the national patrimony (158)."
The Kansas Pacific (eventually) to Denver, the Northern Pacific (bankrupt in 1873), the Great Northern (Jim Hill built it without land grants), and Denver & Rio Grande that connected the east to west lines are discussed. The transcontinental route of 1869 was aimed at obtaining traffic to and from the Orient, the Denver & Rio Grande connected mining towns, and the others needed to get settlers in place to have any revenue.
"Western railroads were to rival the United States government in land distribution. By 1880, the various railroads were granted more than 155 million acres, while individual homesteaders claimed only 55 million from the government (168)." Dr. Athearn offers excellent examples of how railroads lured settlers, especially from Europe. Extraordinarily low fares and accommodations were offered and circulars praising the available land issued. Those who believed that the area was too arid for successful agriculture were not hired to write these handbills. Generous terms were offered to those who would take up land, with discounts for cash up front or liberal credit offers. Especially clever was the 1874 change in Kansas law that allowed exemption from military duty on the basis of belief;German Mennonites traveled from Southern Russia to settle alongside ATSF tracks.
It is noted that these settlers were not the 'frontiersmen' of old, who had fought Indians and cleared farms from the Eastern seaboard onward in earlier generations. They just wanted to get about the business of farming. Professor Athearn also notes that after all the railroads did for them, these settlers soon were complaining about the freight rates they were having to pay.
Chapter Nine. Dissension in the Desert. pp. 204-223.
This is about the rise and fall of the Populist Party. [As Noam Chomsky explains, today's populists that have right wing agendas are very different.]
For fifty years after the Louisiana Purchase there was no territorial government (Indian removal included setting up reservations west of the 95th meridian) but in 1853 Congress took up the question and when it returned to it the question of slavery was unfortunately included, leading to the Kansas-Nebraska Act of 1854 (and Bleeding Kansas). There were other territories laid out in the 1860s, starting with Colorado in 1861.
After the settlers enjoyed good weather and rainfall for nearly ten years, the promises of the boosters and railroad recruiters seeming to be valid for those who worked hard. Dr. Athearn says that mortgage money was easy to obtain because the interest rate was attractive to lenders.
The terrible winter of 1886-1887 devastated many ranchers and crops failed in 1887 because of water shortages. Dr. Athearn says that led to farmers in the western areas from Kansas to the Canadian line abandoning their property and the population of towns fell. He singles out Wichita as having partially built houses left to rot over the years as construction halted. [I have never seen this tied in with the Los Angeles property value drop of 1887--is it connected?]
Better located farmers hung on, awaiting better weather. Athearn points out that climatic problems (or grasshoppers) can't be solved by mankind. He finds that the farmers went after the railroads because they were relatively close by, unlike the far away 'money trust,' land speculators, or the silver-tongued boomers that promised a Garden of Eden. They did not blame themselves for moving too far west into relatively arid lands or farming as they had in the relatively humid Mississippi Valley. Prices for their produce, especially in the 1890s, were ruinous but the railroads still charged the same rates which ate up a larger part of the amount received from the grain elevator, etc.
Dr. Athearn offers the best exposition of the railroads' arguments. They had transported people and their goods on half fares, sold land cheaply because they wanted settlement that would bring traffic for the railroad, faced fixed charges in hard times, and most cars that took grain, etc. to market had to be hauled in empty. The railroads themselves faced bankruptcy and so did not cut rates (although they certainly did so in certain eastern markets where railroad competition was tough).
Professor Athearn dismissed the Grange as mostly a social and educational institution, identifying the Farmers' Alliance as being interested in politics.
Disaffected farmers joined the Populist Party movement and it gained strength until they elected Cleveland in 1892 by denying votes to the GOP. Professor Athearn offers some detail, but in the end the usual suspects regained control of politics in these plains states; Populists mostly returned to the Democratic or Republican parties. The farmers never did get the help they needed although both FDR and Ike tried to help them in different ways. Thus Dr. Athearn criticizes Wm. Allen White (Emporia Gazette) whose 'What's the Matter with Kansas' editorial in 1896 put some nails in the coffin of the Populist Party. He argued that solid citizens should step up against the wild talk and crazy proposals of some of the prominent Populists.
Chapter Twelve. Uncle Sam's West. pp. 278-296 + Bibliographic essay pp. 347-352.
At the turn of the 20th Century, Americans took stock of what lands remained unclaimed in the West. There was growing support for conservation in the East and while Westerners, as had frontiersmen, still favored development they were stymied and so lobbied the federal government for funds after local and state efforts fell short. Dr. Athearn briefly identifies several large (and expensive) irrigation projects of the early 20th C. For example, land in the Uncompahgre Basin of Colorado was worth only two dollars an acre before irrigation. Later efforts by both GOP and Democratic administrations were ever more expensive. For example, under Secretary of the Interior Harold L. Ickes, in the end much of the water came from wells. "On the credit side of the ledger, the Bureau of Reclamation has greatly increased the stability of water supply in areas previously under irrigation, but from the standpoint of a larger picture the Missouri Basin project has been a typically American political extravaganza whose price has been high (287)."
Westerners were unhappy when they found that reclamation and conservation were joined in the minds of most people, conservation was popular nationwide, and presidents and congresses began to refuse to allow the exploitation of lands in their states. On the other hand, Professor Athearn points out that these were lands that the frontiersmen did not take up.
TR was especially vigorous in reserving forest lands, setting them aside by the millions of acres. Most people in the West did not and do not resent the setting aside of lands for National Parks and welcome the tourist dollars. However, national forests bring few tourists and in these states relatively little of the forests are in private hands. Defenders of conservation note the sharing of lease revenue with local counties (forests 25%, mineral lands 37.5%, and grazing districts 12.5%). [Regarding the latter, the permits are given at low rates to ranchers, in my opinion.]
"Another category of land withheld from the pioneer plowmen was that reserved to the Indians. During the Eighties and Nineties the extent of Indian lands shrank considerably but after about 1910 reservations remained nearly the same in size (292)." In the seven states of the high plains, Indians possess 15,000,000 acres, the reservations in varying in size. South Dakota reservations amount to 5.5 million acres.
Writing during the DDE administration, Dr. Athearn concludes "the contest is by no means over (296)."
Chapter 13 Empire of Dust pp. 297-327 + Bibliographic essay pp. 347-352
WWI saw decent harvests and good prices, leading many farmers to buy more land and machinery with little concern for the frequent problems on the plains with inadequate prices and rainfall.
Professor Athearn notes the weak prices of the 1920s and attributes the problems to some people abandoning the meat and potato cuisine, recovered European productivity, and farmers fighting low prices by planting more.
There were many failures of country banks and Athearn reports that the Federal Reserve was squeezing them for holding farm and ranch mortgages by demanding additional collateral on existing mortgages and almost closing the rediscount window with a 7% rate. [He does not mention that many RRs were in receivership.]
Dr. Athearn sets the stage to discuss the Depression by noting that past hard times had been labeled 'panics' and were of short duration. Congress made efforts to back the mortgages so foreclosures were delayed and the Agricultural Adjustment Act attempted to improve commodity prices. "The immediate relief granted farmers by this means was a lifesaver to thousands of them (305)." The AAA never did solve the problem of surplus production and low prices.
There were many farmers who did learn to conserve the moisture in their fields with contours and fallow seasons. There had been no trees in much of the plains because of insufficient rainfall but windbreaks could be planted along ditches that would sometimes have more water than the nearby field.
WWII brought improved demand and higher prices. "The new bonanza had old results. The plainsmen became intoxicated by high prices and good crops. Once again they played agricultural poker with the same reckless abandon they had known in World War I (311)." Much of the work of the New Deal was undone as marginal lands were planted, speculators found buyers for unsustainable farms, and conservation arrangements abandoned. There was not a postwar crash despite some problems with drought because many farmers did utilize new methods to avoid loss of moisture and the Marshall Plan extended the market.
The DDE administration continued policies of the FDR administration to aid farmers in various ways.
This deals with the character and development (not much with the political events) of the present day states that border the Missouri River. "The principal effort in this work is to view the entire region in broad sweeps in an effort to understand its relationship to the larger story of American growth and to bring out any dominant highlights that characterize its history. Among these the most peristent theme is that of exploitation and experimentation carried on by remote control from the more settled parts of America (vii)."
26 well chosen photos and index.
From my notes:
Chapter Two. Traps and Trinkets. pp. 27-44 + Bibliographic Essay pp. 335-338.
Fur traders were the first to take advantage of the work of Lewis & Clark. They explored much of the land in pursuit of the pelts that could be profitably shipped to market. "Like that of most frontiers, the day of the fur trader was short and spectacular (28)." "It was a story of upset vessels, water-damaged furs, attacks by hostile Indians, heavy losses of supplies, bankruptcies, failures, and renewed attempts. Courage, occasional rich hauls in pelts, and an ability generally to get along with the Indians of both sexes provided the necessary drive to propel the fur brigade forward (28)."
Manuel Lisa returned to St. Louis in 1808 to tell of his experience trapping in the Yellowstone area and a company with $40,000 in capital was founded. Dr. Athearn tells of their hard luck and small returns. Another company was formed in 1822 (later the Rocky Mountain Fur Co.) with even more capital and it recruited young men who would become famous: Jedediah Smith, Jim Bridger, etc. Using well designed keel boats to travel up the Missouri River, the firm had a good first season. They led a goodly company upriver in 1823 but the Arikara (Ree) Indians successfully blocked the river and defeated them, and also defeated the Sixth Infantry led by Col. Leavenworth, the army thereafter doing little to help trappers. However, trappers were able to find their way into the country overland and sometimes succeed despite hostile Blackfeet and Sioux Indians. Their ensued twenty years of struggle by the 'opposition' companies to prosper in the face of the entry of John Jacob Astor's American Fur Company in 1822. Astor and his lieutenants were rough customers (he himself never went to St. Louis or upriver) and Professor Athearn describes the struggles. This competition led to the introduction of 'Indian whiskey' and "the effect upon the natives was devastating. More detrimental than the white man's other contributions of smallpox and syphilis, alcohol not only destroyed those who used it, but inflamed them to a point where murder was an everyday event (36)." William Astor's letter to the Secretary of War in 1831 is cited; he says they brought in $500,000 annually from the fur trade, buying out opposition firms from time to time.
"Paramount among Astor's remarkable qualities was the intuitive knowledge of the proper time to quit. In 1834 he sold out; believing that the end of profitable fur trading was in sight. About that time he wrote from London: 'I very much fear beaver will not sell very soon unless very fine. It appears that they make hats of silk in place of beaver' (41)."
The steamship Yellowstone, especially built with a very small draft, was put on the Missouri River in 1831 and in 1832 there was enough water to reach Fort Union (upriver in three months).
The trade continued to decline. The author ends it with Jim Bridger building his fort on Black's Fork of the Green River in Wyoming with the intention of selling goods and services to travelers. "Should they need blacksmith work, horses, or supplies, he would oblige, for money--'cash from the states,' as he put it (43). [Note that many Argonauts came brought capital with them.]
Farmers still looked upon the plains as unsuitable for agriculture and so only enterprises that could find something light enough to be shipped while yielding a profit would go there. Gold mining came next.
Chapter Three. The Way West. pp. 45-65 + Bibliographic essay pp. 335-338
Some Americans were attracted by the mystique of Oregon. "It was far off, therefore both romantic and undoubtedly better than existing tracts open to settlement. It lay beyond the treacherous plains swarming with hostile Indians and there was a serious question of ownership. Rumors of a verdant countryside, teeming with fur-bearing animals, possessed of a soil that awaited the plowman's attention, a place eyed by the always-suspect British, proved to be more than the Yankees could stand. They had to go (45)."
Dr. Athearn singles out New England activists and western senators (Thomas Hart Benton, of course) as promoters of settling Oregon beginning in the 1820s. Nathaniel Wyeth, a Harvard grad, organized and led a serious group overland from Boston in 1832, some of whom arrived in the Oregon country; most did not remain long. Marcus Whitman and Henry Spaulding soon followed and in 1840 Joe Meek and Robert Newell were actually able to get their wagons all the way west. "In 1843, somewhere between nine hundred and a thousand people passed across the plains, Oregon-bound. With them went about seven hundred oxen and approximately as many beef cattle. By 1845 there were some six thousand people in Oregon; in five years that figure had more than doubled. Most of them had come overland (47)." [I question that the Indians would have left unmolested travelers who did not form wagon trains (47).]
The Latter Day Saints also passed through the High Country, establishing Salt Lake City. Professor Athearn emphasizes they hoped to leave the USA behind, and settled in Mexican lands, although that changed 2 February 1848. Travel by new members recruited in the US and abroad (especially Europe) went on. The amount of traffic through the area was amazing by 1850, boosted by the gold rush in California. Another gold rush brought people to Colorado, traveling part of the way on the Santa Fe Trail. William Bent (Bent's Fort) had a noted trading post and âKing' McKenzie had one at Fort Union on the Missouri River, the rest of the country being unsettled. "When the fur trade fell off, the government tried to buy Bent out the same year it purchased Fort Laramie--1849. But the price was not right and, tired of quibbling, the owner mined his establishment with gunpowder and blew it skyward. When the Fifty-Niners came along they traded with the old gentleman at his new post, forty miles up the Arkansas. Later it would be leased by the Army and called Fort Lyon. The Santa Fe Trail, like its other western counterparts, was of interest to men only because it led someplace, to a mean of gain (54)."
The last sentence is Dr. Athearn's reason for discussing these travelers; he is emphasizing that they are merely passing through. However, the 'desert' began to diminish as settlers gradually moved westward and abolitionists came from New England to settle in Kansas before the war.
"Low prices at home [flour in Cincinnati was worth $6.25 a barrel and fell in three years to $2.51, a bushel of wheat needed to be worth half a dollar to make the farmer a small profit but fell to a quarter dollar] coupled with the American dream that something better lay just to the west, made men think in terms of advance, not retreat, across the continent (58)."
The author emphasizes that the promise of railroad transportation of crops drew a group of Americans from all sections of the nation to the high plains. "As time went by they discovered that by new methods, certain concessions to a semiarid climate, and stubborn persistence a living could be made (59)." They might begin with growing corn but moved on to crops better suited to the area. Professor Athearn finds that the hopeful settlers were the ones that succeeded; pessimists and those that did not turn to and work hard tended to fail.
The Yellowstone launched the steamboat era by arriving at Fort Union in 1832 but "...until the middle Fifties, traffic on the Upper Missouri was not heavy. One or two American Fur Company vessels a year comprised the steamboat trade (61)." After 1855 traffic increased a bit on the Upper Missouri but improvements in steamboat technology and demand led to many boats on the Lower Missouri. "One could travel from New York to Omaha for a little over forty dollars at midcentury. The fare from St. Louis to Kansas City was only twelve. Or those who elected under the auspices of the Emigrant Aid Societies could go for nearly nothing. One of them offered a ten dollar fare from Pittsburgh to St. Louis and passage on to Kansas City for an equal sum. Nor did travelers have to wait long for service. In 1858 there were no fewer than sixty regular packets operating on the Missouri in addition to around forty nonscheduled âtramps' (62)."
The Excel navigated the Kansas River in 1854 (high water was needed) and despite the snags, steamboats traveled as far as Fort Riley. This ended when the railroads induced the Kansas legislatures (1866) to declare these tributaries non-navigable, meaning that the railroads could erect stationary bridges across them.
"Until the great horn of mineral plenty poured forth gold dust in quantity, drawing on legions of hopefuls; until the railroads succeeded freight wagons and farmers followed stockmen out onto the plains, the desert remained in the minds of most men a thing to be shunned. Much of it was still unknown (64)."
Chapter Six. The Cow Kingdom. pp. 127-151
Before the war, gold and furs were about the only products of the Missouri basin that were compact enough to be carried to market. "Following the war the nature of extractive industries was heavier, bulkier, and of lower value. Beef, wool, grain, lumber, and lower-grade minerals constituted the bulk of it. In all cases cheap transportation was the key. Without it production of none of them was feasible (127)." It is not surprising that cattle were the first post-war interest as they had been driven from the Midwest to NYC in the 1830s and to New Orleans (often via Missouri) in the 1840s and 1850s. This ended when the Union cut the CSA in half at the Mississippi River and by 1867 Texas' huge surplus of cattle were being driven north. John Chisolm is lauded for blazing the trail and Joseph G. McCoy for building the yards in Abilene and buying cattle for sale to his connections further east. The ATSF, UPRR, and Kansas Pacific were eager for trade. Thus livestock was the bedrock of the plains economy before the arrival of farmers. Given the pressure of settlers and outbreaks of Texas fever among cattle (especially in 1884), the cowtowns (where the herds were sold and shipped) lasted as such for not much longer than did end of tracks towns.
In the late 1870s cattle driven north were sometimes put on the ample grass of Montana and Wyoming. Entrepreneurs with little capital could file on a homestead and have their cattle graze on the open range. Costs were so low that expansion continued even after the Panic of 1873. The opening of the Dakotas in 1877 led to the arrival of large numbers of Texas cattle and even some driven east from Oregon. Eastern and European interests invested in these new cattle ranches, some bringing in large sums.
Dr. Athearn describes how ranchers, even the large operators, had to cooperate--they were not feudal lords. There were local livestock associations and statewide ones; that of Wyoming is described.
The winter of 1880-1881 was hard but the Spring is always green and so Nature's warning was not heeded, leading to huge losses in the winter of 1886-1887. Recovery was partial given that the bloom was off the business. It did leave behind the Midwest feed lots and packing houses.
"Like the frontier of the trapper and the placer miner, the cattlemen's frontier spread with amazing rapidity, experienced violent fluctuations, and was relatively shortlived. Similarly, it was founded upon the existence of an enormous tract of unsettled, unclaimed land whose utility was as yet unappreciated by the traditional small settler. The stock grower was simply a latter-day prospector, mining the land in a slightly different way than that used by his predecessors (149)." Ranchers did not abandon the field when pushed by the 'next big thing,' i.e. farmers, and remained on the land.
Chapter Seven. Web of Steel. pp. 152-175 + 338-343 Bibliographic essay
"The foundation of high plains civilization was made of steel. Not steel dug from the western earth and processed in the region's mills, but steel brought from industrial America in the form of rails. Spread across the tough sod, they generally preceded settlement. Where they went, towns appeared, and from these grew larger communities. These islands of population not only owed their existence to the railroad, they also looked to them for survival. Steel was the base, the fiber, and the lifeline for an otherwise isolated people (152)."
Dr. Athearn emphasizes that without the RR, little more than pelts and some mines could have been developed in the high plains, there being no other cash crop that could be transported profitably to market from distant locales. He cites pre-Civil War evaluation of the area that emphasizes how different it is from the wooded areas of the Mississippi River Valley with its various navigable rivers. There was a vast area of vacant prairie beyond the Missouri River (the only navigable river, plus at times the Kansas River) 'beckoning' in 1865.
General Grenville Dodge is praised for his excellent work on the ground in constructing the UPRR. "Most of the track-laying was done under the direct supervision of the Casement brothers, Dan and Jack, whose army of workers fought distance, barren plains, and Indians in the westward course. Thousands of men, including former soldiers from both Confederate and Union forces, Irish immigrants, muleskinners, mountain men, and Midwestern farm boys, toiled all day while a hardened corps of gamblers, saloonkeepers, and harpies stood by, prepared to offer some of the more recreational aspects of railroad-building in the evening (155)." The author offers several examples of towns that served as end-of-track settlements and then barely survived as the railroad moved West.
General Sherman is quoted several times in this chapter because he commanded the area for many years after the war, at first doubtful that the land was would amount to anything, and later amazed at the degree of settlement and enterprise. Forts had to be built to protect trails [I think of the 2nd Gulf War] and supplies laboriously brought in but by 1883 he was praising the ease with which both troops and the quartermaster were served by the railroads.
The Plum Creek 'affair' (Summer, 1867) in Nebraska demonstrated how tough the Indians then were. They tore up part of the track, burned a work train, and killed several railroad men before General Dodge brought relief forces. But "...even bigger wars to come would not stop (157)" the building of the UPRR.
Professor Athearn believes that, despite the scandals over financing and land speculation, people felt the rapid building of the railroads were worth it. "To them, now the main end was to get a railroad. Without it, economic extraction on a major scale was an impossibility. So they joined in celebrating the road's advance and laid plans to get their share of the national patrimony (158)."
The Kansas Pacific (eventually) to Denver, the Northern Pacific (bankrupt in 1873), the Great Northern (Jim Hill built it without land grants), and Denver & Rio Grande that connected the east to west lines are discussed. The transcontinental route of 1869 was aimed at obtaining traffic to and from the Orient, the Denver & Rio Grande connected mining towns, and the others needed to get settlers in place to have any revenue.
"Western railroads were to rival the United States government in land distribution. By 1880, the various railroads were granted more than 155 million acres, while individual homesteaders claimed only 55 million from the government (168)." Dr. Athearn offers excellent examples of how railroads lured settlers, especially from Europe. Extraordinarily low fares and accommodations were offered and circulars praising the available land issued. Those who believed that the area was too arid for successful agriculture were not hired to write these handbills. Generous terms were offered to those who would take up land, with discounts for cash up front or liberal credit offers. Especially clever was the 1874 change in Kansas law that allowed exemption from military duty on the basis of belief;German Mennonites traveled from Southern Russia to settle alongside ATSF tracks.
It is noted that these settlers were not the 'frontiersmen' of old, who had fought Indians and cleared farms from the Eastern seaboard onward in earlier generations. They just wanted to get about the business of farming. Professor Athearn also notes that after all the railroads did for them, these settlers soon were complaining about the freight rates they were having to pay.
Chapter Nine. Dissension in the Desert. pp. 204-223.
This is about the rise and fall of the Populist Party. [As Noam Chomsky explains, today's populists that have right wing agendas are very different.]
For fifty years after the Louisiana Purchase there was no territorial government (Indian removal included setting up reservations west of the 95th meridian) but in 1853 Congress took up the question and when it returned to it the question of slavery was unfortunately included, leading to the Kansas-Nebraska Act of 1854 (and Bleeding Kansas). There were other territories laid out in the 1860s, starting with Colorado in 1861.
After the settlers enjoyed good weather and rainfall for nearly ten years, the promises of the boosters and railroad recruiters seeming to be valid for those who worked hard. Dr. Athearn says that mortgage money was easy to obtain because the interest rate was attractive to lenders.
The terrible winter of 1886-1887 devastated many ranchers and crops failed in 1887 because of water shortages. Dr. Athearn says that led to farmers in the western areas from Kansas to the Canadian line abandoning their property and the population of towns fell. He singles out Wichita as having partially built houses left to rot over the years as construction halted. [I have never seen this tied in with the Los Angeles property value drop of 1887--is it connected?]
Better located farmers hung on, awaiting better weather. Athearn points out that climatic problems (or grasshoppers) can't be solved by mankind. He finds that the farmers went after the railroads because they were relatively close by, unlike the far away 'money trust,' land speculators, or the silver-tongued boomers that promised a Garden of Eden. They did not blame themselves for moving too far west into relatively arid lands or farming as they had in the relatively humid Mississippi Valley. Prices for their produce, especially in the 1890s, were ruinous but the railroads still charged the same rates which ate up a larger part of the amount received from the grain elevator, etc.
Dr. Athearn offers the best exposition of the railroads' arguments. They had transported people and their goods on half fares, sold land cheaply because they wanted settlement that would bring traffic for the railroad, faced fixed charges in hard times, and most cars that took grain, etc. to market had to be hauled in empty. The railroads themselves faced bankruptcy and so did not cut rates (although they certainly did so in certain eastern markets where railroad competition was tough).
Professor Athearn dismissed the Grange as mostly a social and educational institution, identifying the Farmers' Alliance as being interested in politics.
Disaffected farmers joined the Populist Party movement and it gained strength until they elected Cleveland in 1892 by denying votes to the GOP. Professor Athearn offers some detail, but in the end the usual suspects regained control of politics in these plains states; Populists mostly returned to the Democratic or Republican parties. The farmers never did get the help they needed although both FDR and Ike tried to help them in different ways. Thus Dr. Athearn criticizes Wm. Allen White (Emporia Gazette) whose 'What's the Matter with Kansas' editorial in 1896 put some nails in the coffin of the Populist Party. He argued that solid citizens should step up against the wild talk and crazy proposals of some of the prominent Populists.
Chapter Twelve. Uncle Sam's West. pp. 278-296 + Bibliographic essay pp. 347-352.
At the turn of the 20th Century, Americans took stock of what lands remained unclaimed in the West. There was growing support for conservation in the East and while Westerners, as had frontiersmen, still favored development they were stymied and so lobbied the federal government for funds after local and state efforts fell short. Dr. Athearn briefly identifies several large (and expensive) irrigation projects of the early 20th C. For example, land in the Uncompahgre Basin of Colorado was worth only two dollars an acre before irrigation. Later efforts by both GOP and Democratic administrations were ever more expensive. For example, under Secretary of the Interior Harold L. Ickes, in the end much of the water came from wells. "On the credit side of the ledger, the Bureau of Reclamation has greatly increased the stability of water supply in areas previously under irrigation, but from the standpoint of a larger picture the Missouri Basin project has been a typically American political extravaganza whose price has been high (287)."
Westerners were unhappy when they found that reclamation and conservation were joined in the minds of most people, conservation was popular nationwide, and presidents and congresses began to refuse to allow the exploitation of lands in their states. On the other hand, Professor Athearn points out that these were lands that the frontiersmen did not take up.
TR was especially vigorous in reserving forest lands, setting them aside by the millions of acres. Most people in the West did not and do not resent the setting aside of lands for National Parks and welcome the tourist dollars. However, national forests bring few tourists and in these states relatively little of the forests are in private hands. Defenders of conservation note the sharing of lease revenue with local counties (forests 25%, mineral lands 37.5%, and grazing districts 12.5%). [Regarding the latter, the permits are given at low rates to ranchers, in my opinion.]
"Another category of land withheld from the pioneer plowmen was that reserved to the Indians. During the Eighties and Nineties the extent of Indian lands shrank considerably but after about 1910 reservations remained nearly the same in size (292)." In the seven states of the high plains, Indians possess 15,000,000 acres, the reservations in varying in size. South Dakota reservations amount to 5.5 million acres.
Writing during the DDE administration, Dr. Athearn concludes "the contest is by no means over (296)."
Chapter 13 Empire of Dust pp. 297-327 + Bibliographic essay pp. 347-352
WWI saw decent harvests and good prices, leading many farmers to buy more land and machinery with little concern for the frequent problems on the plains with inadequate prices and rainfall.
Professor Athearn notes the weak prices of the 1920s and attributes the problems to some people abandoning the meat and potato cuisine, recovered European productivity, and farmers fighting low prices by planting more.
There were many failures of country banks and Athearn reports that the Federal Reserve was squeezing them for holding farm and ranch mortgages by demanding additional collateral on existing mortgages and almost closing the rediscount window with a 7% rate. [He does not mention that many RRs were in receivership.]
Dr. Athearn sets the stage to discuss the Depression by noting that past hard times had been labeled 'panics' and were of short duration. Congress made efforts to back the mortgages so foreclosures were delayed and the Agricultural Adjustment Act attempted to improve commodity prices. "The immediate relief granted farmers by this means was a lifesaver to thousands of them (305)." The AAA never did solve the problem of surplus production and low prices.
There were many farmers who did learn to conserve the moisture in their fields with contours and fallow seasons. There had been no trees in much of the plains because of insufficient rainfall but windbreaks could be planted along ditches that would sometimes have more water than the nearby field.
WWII brought improved demand and higher prices. "The new bonanza had old results. The plainsmen became intoxicated by high prices and good crops. Once again they played agricultural poker with the same reckless abandon they had known in World War I (311)." Much of the work of the New Deal was undone as marginal lands were planted, speculators found buyers for unsustainable farms, and conservation arrangements abandoned. There was not a postwar crash despite some problems with drought because many farmers did utilize new methods to avoid loss of moisture and the Marshall Plan extended the market.
The DDE administration continued policies of the FDR administration to aid farmers in various ways.
