Center, Great Plains Studies
Great Plains Quarterly (through 2013)
Accessibility Remediation
If you are unable to use this item in its current form due to accessibility barriers, you may request remediation through our remediation request form.
Date of this Version
1986
Document Type
Article
Abstract
The Future of the Great Plains came in the mid- 1930s at the culmination of a great drought and a festering worldwide economic depression as new, ambitious Washington agencies sought to redress the accumulated wounds to people and soil. Following a series of more narrow reports, this comprehensive study presented the prevailing judgments as to what had gone wrong on the Great Plains. And it outlined a widely shared vision of what the future might hold if its social prescriptions were heeded. 1 Sceptics of the time wryly remarked that the animal on its front cover (a large bull, fig. 1) symbolized a certain disposition to talk bigger than the evidence warranted, but by and large the report was a consensus of state and national opinions then held among responsible groups. It summed up the prevailing views of a Federal inter-agency committee on the maladjustments and desirable changes in adjustments to the resources and risks of the Great Plains against the background of the worst climate-related crisis in the history of the region.
Comments
Published in Great Plains Quarterly 6:2 (Spring 1986). Copyright © 1986 Center for Great Plains Studies, University of Nebraska-Lincoln.