Towns on the Plains: An Introduction, part 1

Prior to the mid-1830s a few people, mostly fur trappers and traders began crossing the Great Plains, headed for the beaver streams in and beyond the Rocky Mountains. Then, as the mid-1830s moved closer to 1840, folks started crossing the Plains westward. At first it was just a trickle of white people and covered wagons. Some carried families, while others consisted of missionaries headed for Oregon Country. By the mid-1840s, the white travelers moving westward had increased some but the greatest influx of pioneers was yet to come. When the push was on for westward expansion most of these people were migrating from the eastern portion of the United States. However, there were many Southern folks heading west as well, looking for new land to farm, away from the vast plantations of the south that were owned by the rich minority.

When the big gold strike came in California, in 1848, a whole new crop of folks started on the move, heading for the sunny shores on the Pacific. A little later on a special breed of fellows came up from Texas, driving great herds of wild longhorns to the railheads now that the rails were working their way across the Plains. But this historic episode was just a brief period compared to the continuing event of people who came to the big open lands of the Great Plains to plow the earth, build their homes, and raise their families.

Most of the folks that settled on the Great Plains were good, upstanding, church-going and hardworking people. But not all were of this sort, not by a long shot. Mixed in with the good folks were outlaws and lawmen, the latter often becoming the former, and the other way around just as often. There were gunslingers, gamblers and prostitutes mixed up in this variety of humankind as well. But there were also preachers, schoolteachers, and those who wanted to see towns built. Occasionally you might come across some good people who had gone through considerable hard times and suffering. They'd be so down on their luck but still trying to get by. Sometimes these hardscrabble folks convinced themselves that the only way to dig themselves out of their poverty was to turn to a life of crime.

For the most part, people came to the Plains after the enactment of the Kansas-Nebraska Act that was followed by the Homestead Act. The Kansas-Nebraska Act was passed by Congress on May 30, 1854, and opened Indian Territory to settlement. It also caused considerable strife concerning the slavery question, but in spite of this it did create land for settlement. The Homestead Act, passed in 1862, granted 160 acres of public land to a settler after they had lived on the property for five years and had completed certain improvements.

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