Review of Land of Bright Promise: Advertising the Texas Panhandle and South Plains 1870-1917

Authors

Douglas Francis, University of Calgary

Date of this Version

1991

Document Type

Article

Comments

Published in GREAT PLAINS QUARTERLY 11:4 (Fall 1991). Copyright © 1991 Center for Great Plains Studies, University of Nebraska–Lincoln.

Abstract

Land of Bright Promise is an account of the promotion propaganda of the Panhandle-South Plains area of Texas, one of the last areas of the American West to be settled. For decades, the region was seen as a desert area, part of the "Great American Desert," which from the early nineteenth century was believed to extend from the Gulf of Mexico north into British territory and eastward from the Mississippi River to the Rocky Mountains. It was also imagined as part of the "Wild West" with hostile Indians and desperados. Thus it took an extra effort on the part of promoters in the region to sell the area to potential settlers.