From the 1950s, on, many areas of the Great Plains have become productive crop-growing areas because of extensive irrigation.
The Great Plains contribute substantially to wind power in the United States.
The Great Plains are the broad expanse of prairie and steppe that lie east of the Rocky Mountains in the United States and Canada.
At those places, which are all in the northern and southern parts of the Great Plains, the sedimentary layers were warped up and locally broken by the rise of hot molten rock from the depths.
Any animal that lives on the Great Plains must be adapted for the grassland ecosystem and extremes of climate.
Weather systems typically move fast on the Great Plains, stirring up the atmosphere.
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.
Seven of the ten poorest counties in the United States are in the Great Plains.
The first recorded history of Europeans in the Great Plains happened in Texas, Kansas, and Nebraska from 1540-1542 with the arrival of Francisco Vбsquez de Coronado, a Spanish conquistador.
People of the Great Plains were molded by their Plains experiences, expressed through a dynamic respect for the land and acknowledgment of cultural change and retention.
Historically, the Great Plains were the range of the bison and of the Native American tribes of the Blackfeet, Crow, Sioux, Cheyenne, Arapaho, Comanche, and others.
The Spanish thought the Great Plains were the location of the mythological Quivira and Cнbola, a place rich in gold.
Much of the Great Plains became open range, hosting ranching operations where anyone was theoretically free to run cattle.
Several hundred thousand square miles of the Great Plains have fewer than six persons per square mile—the density standard historian Frederick Jackson Turner used to declare the American frontier "closed" in 1893.
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.
The drought, combined with the effects of the Great Depression, forced many farmers off the land throughout the Great Plains.
The Great Plains are the westernmost portion of the vast North American Interior Plains, which extend east to the Appalachian Plateau.
To describe the Great Plains—both the land and the people—one must use the term "wide open space."
Many areas of the Great Plains have become productive crop-growing areas due in part to extensive irrigation.
Vegetation continued to flourish, especially in the northern part of the Great Plains, and was buried to form the thick coal beds of the Fort Union Formation.
Eastern portions of the Great Plains were inhabited by tribes that lived in semipermanent villages of earth lodges, such as the Arikara, Mandan, Pawnee, and Wichita.
Migrating shorebirds need areas for resting and feeding, and several of these areas are found within the Great Plains.
The Great Plains contribute substantially to wind power in the United States.
After the Louisiana Purchase in 1803 and subsequent Lewis and Clark Expedition in 1804, the Great Plains became more accessible.