Great American Desert

[3][4] Today the area is usually referred to as the High Plains, and the original term is sometimes used to describe the arid region of North America, which includes parts of northwestern Mexico and the American southwest.

[7] In 1823, Major Stephen Long, a government surveyor and leader of the next official exploration expedition, produced a map labeling the area as the "Great American Desert.

"[8] In the report that accompanied the map, the party's geographer Edwin James wrote of the region: I do not hesitate in giving the opinion, that it is almost wholly unfit for cultivation, and of course, uninhabitable by a people depending upon agriculture for their subsistence.

Although tracts of fertile land considerably extensive are occasionally to be met with, yet the scarcity of wood and water, almost uniformly prevalent, will prove an insuperable obstacle in the way of settling the country.

[6] While many other travelers reported similar conditions and conclusions, there were problems in the interpretation and the use of the word "desert", as descriptions of the American High Plains almost always included comments about "Innumerable Herds of Buffaloes", which was written on Pike's map just above "not a stick of timber".

By the middle of the 19th century, as settlers migrated across the plains to Oregon and California, the wasteland connotation of "desert" was seen to be false, but the sense of the region as uninhabitable remained until irrigation and railroad transportation made up for the lack of surface water and wood.

The local inhabitants came to realize the area was at the time well suited for farming, due in part to the fact that large portions of the region sit atop one of the world's largest groundwater reservoirs, the Ogallala Aquifer.

[10] In the central portion of the great North American Continent there lies an arid and repulsive desert, which for many a long year served as a barrier against the advance of civilisation.