History
The plant-anchored dunes of the Sandhills were long considered an irreclaimable desert. In the 1870s, cattlemen began to discover their potential as rangeland for longhorn cattle.
The fragility of the sandy soil makes the area unsuitable for cultivation of crops. Unsuccessful attempts at farming were made in the region in the late 1870s and again around 1890. Some development of cropland agriculture in the modern era has occurred through the use of center-pivot irrigation systems.
The 1904 Kinkaid Act allowed homesteaders to claim 640 acres (2.6 km²) of land, rather than the 160 acres (0.6 km²) allowed by the 1862 Homestead Act. Nearly nine million acres (36,000 km²) were successfully claimed by "Kinkaiders" between 1910 and 1917. Some of the Kinkaiders attempted to farm, but these attempts generally failed. This included Nebraska's largest black settlement, DeWitty, which was located in southeast Cherry County until the 1930s. Many of the largest ranches broke up about the same time due to regulations against fencing federal range lands.
Today, the Sandhills are a productive cattle ranching area, supporting over 530,000 beef cattle. The population of the region continues to decline as older generations die out and as younger generations move to the cities. However, a number of small towns remain in the region.
Read more about this topic: Sand Hills (Nebraska)
Famous quotes containing the word history:
“Three million of such stones would be needed before the work was done. Three million stones of an average weight of 5,000 pounds, every stone cut precisely to fit into its destined place in the great pyramid. From the quarries they pulled the stones across the desert to the banks of the Nile. Never in the history of the world had so great a task been performed. Their faith gave them strength, and their joy gave them song.”
—William Faulkner (1897–1962)
“History has neither the venerableness of antiquity, nor the freshness of the modern. It does as if it would go to the beginning of things, which natural history might with reason assume to do; but consider the Universal History, and then tell us,—when did burdock and plantain sprout first?”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)
“To care for the quarrels of the past, to identify oneself passionately with a cause that became, politically speaking, a losing cause with the birth of the modern world, is to experience a kind of straining against reality, a rebellious nonconformity that, again, is rare in America, where children are instructed in the virtues of the system they live under, as though history had achieved a happy ending in American civics.”
—Mary McCarthy (1912–1989)