Buffalo Commons - Cause

Cause

The Poppers note that periodic disasters such as the Dust Bowl and continuing significant population loss over the last 80 years show the area is not sustainable for small-scale farming. They note that the rural Plains has lost a third of its population since 1920. Several hundred thousand square miles of the Great Plains have fewer than 6 persons per square mile. This was the population density standard of settlement which historian Frederick Jackson Turner used in his "Frontier Thesis" to declare the American Frontier "closed" in 1893. Large areas have fewer than 2 persons per square mile. The Poppers demonstrated that the number of "frontier counties" increased by 14 between 1980 and 2000, mostly on the Plains, and noted that there are more than 6,000 ghost towns in the State of Kansas alone (according to Kansas historian Daniel Fitzgerald). They claim that the decline in population on the plains is accelerating.