The Great Plains is the Latest New Frontier

by P.J. Hill and Shawn Regan

Nature/Outdoors

High Country News - At the end of the 19th century, historian Frederick Jackson Turner famously announced the closing of the American frontier. The Homestead Act had lured settlers with offers of free land and boosted population density in the West to more than two people per square mile, the metric used to gauge frontier status.

Turner regretted the impact that a closed frontier would have on the character of Americans. The wild edge of the country created freedom by "breaking the bonds of custom, offering new experiences, (and) calling out new institutions and activities," Turner said in 1893. He worried that the American propensity to forge new institutions in the face of new environments was gone.

Now, more than a hundred years later, the Great Plains -- which covers parts of 10 states in the middle of the nation -- is experiencing Manifest Destiny in reverse: People are leaving in droves. Rural counties have lost 20 percent of their population since 1980, continuing a steady downward trend that dates back to the 1930s. The young are leading the exodus as they seek better opportunities elsewhere. Nowadays, the median age in some rural counties pushes 60.

The agricultural base of the Plains provides only half as much employment and income to the region as it did in 1969. It is clearly undergoing change - and change is hard. But where some see the death of a traditional way of life, others see a landscape full of new opportunities...... Continue reading.

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