The "Five Midwests" Series, Part 6: The Plains
A view of the State Capitol and the Missouri River in Pierre, SD. I view this area as where Midwest meets West.
The series to date:
Part 1: Overview
Part 2: The North Woods
Part 4: The Heartland
Part 5: The Midland Valley
A funny thing about Midwesterners. Wherever they live, they tend to think they reside at the center of the region. People in Cleveland, for example, might believe that the western banks of the Mississippi River is the start of our nation's vast western frontier. Meanwhile, someone from Omaha, NE might believe that Cleveland has far more with East Coast cities like Philadelphia and Baltimore than it does with their perception of the Midwest. People in Cincinnati will probably tell you they have little in common with Minneapolis residents, who would likely agree. You can put me in the same boat. Having lived almost exclusively within 50 miles of one of the Great Lakes, I tend to define the Midwest with where I've lived.
But there is a broad expanse, north of most of Missour and west of Des Moines, stretching to the Missouri River to include the Dakotas, Nebraska and Kansas, that lays a strong claim to the Midwest. It's sparsely populated but punctuated with some moderately sized cities, and begins near the line where farmers stop growing corn and soybeans and start growing wheat. I've often viewed the Plains as more west than Midwest, but here I'll endeavor to show the characteristics of this region and its connections to the other four.
Numerous Native American nations were located in the Plains subregion through the early 19th Century. Many like the Dakota, Iowa, Sioux and Osage were encountered by settlers moving westward on the Oregon Trail in the 1840's, but actual American settlement of the Plains didn't take off until about 20 years later. When that happened it catalyzed a 50-year conflict between federal and Native American military forces over control of the subregion.
The Plains may have been the last of the five Midwest subregions to have been settled and tamed, but it had been a part of American imaginations for generations before its settlement. The subregion's western reaches were once defined in the 19th Century as part of the Great American Desert, the semi-arid and virtually treeless lands that extend eastward from the Rocky Mountains for nearly 1,000 miles. However, as California became settled, and developers, ranchers and politicians grew to understand the subregion's geographic importance as a connecting site between east and west, it grew.
Chunks of Iowa, Missouri and Minnesota can be considered part of the Plains subregion, but in my mind the area gets its definition through the establishment of Kansas and Nebraska as states (Kansas in 1861, Nebraska in 1867). Their establishment was largely due to two factors -- the race to legitimize political territories that would emerge as free states in the runup to the Civil War, and the need for controlled territory that would develop railroads connecting the Pacific coast to the rest of the nation. I think this led to two oddities for Kansas and Nebraska. Both had small populations at the time of statehood (about 100,000 each, clustered, even today, in the eastern quarter of each state), and vastly elongated shapes that help minimize the number of political jurisdictions railroads would have to traverse.
I see the development of the Plains as similar to the development of the Heartland, about 50 years on and with federal impetus instead of individual pursuit. In the Heartland, early settlers and political leaders in Ohio, Indiana and Illinois, who mostly came to those states from Appalachia, rushed to put their stamp on their respective states by putting state capitals in virtually unsettled areas in each state's center. The same can be said for the Plains. Despite being the most sparsely populated subregion in the Midwest, the Plains has four state capitals -- giving it a regional (and national) prominence far above its weight.
Kansas City is (by my definition) the largest metro area in the Plains. I see Kansas City as growing to a prominent metro area by virtue of its location at several subregion boundaries, like the Twin Cities (North Woods/Heartland/Plains) and Pittsburgh (Lower Lakes/Midland Valley/Heartland). Kansas City seem to sit astride the Plains and Midland Valley subregions and touches on the Appalachian South as well, drawing residents from each and using each as economic hinterlands. Kansas City, as well as Omaha, became critical rail links that brought beef and grain from the Plains to all parts of the nation.
Service and government-based economies seem to be thriving in the state capitals that dot the subregion. But the metro economies of Bismarck, Pierre, Lincoln and Topeka are taking a backseat to the booming fracking industry, which have some of the most productive oil fields in the world located in the northern Plains. Fracking has had a huge impact on the economies of states in the Plains, but fracking's long-term economic and environmental impacts are open questions.
I'll plead some ignorance regarding the Plains. I've viewed it as settled mostly by other Midwesterners seeking more land than they could have in, say, Illinois or Missouri, and also by Southerners seeking the same -- with a slavery presence ( see Bleeding Kansas). I've viewed it as a subregion with an economy that evolved around large scale agriculture and ranching, and has struggled to find its economic foundation as those industries require fewer and fewer people. As a result it's earned a reputation as a subregion that is hollowing out.
But more than anything, I've viewed the subregion as transitional -- a necessary bridge and waystation to the more populous destinations at the foot of the Rockies and on the Pacific coast.