With the buffalo gone and the Indians removed to the reservations, the Great Plains were open for settlers. Congress wanted to encourage farming in the western states, and in 1862 it passed the Homestead Act. This law provided a family with 160 acres of public land if they stayed for five years. The government offered further assistance with the Timber Culture Act of 1873. It provided that a settler could claim an additional 160 acres of public land if he planted forty acres in trees and raised them for eight years. Because of these laws, more American land was put in cultivation between 1870 and 1890 than the entire 250 years since the landing at Jamestown in 1607.

The Great Plains had been considered a desert and unsuitable for farming. The area was largely passed over for the Pacific coast by the great migrations of the 1840s and 1850s. When this land was claimed...