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Depopulation of the Great Plains

The Depopulation of the Great Plains consists of migration of people from the rural areas of the Great Plains of the United States to urban areas and to the east and west coasts. This phenomena of rural to urban migration occured in most rural areas of the United States but was especially noticeable in the Great Plains where many counties have lost more than 60 percent of their population. Depopulation began in the early 1900s, accelerated in the Dust Bowl years of the 1930s and has continued until the most recent census of 2010.

Geography
Definitions of what land comprises the Great Plains of the United States differ somewhat, but the Plains consist of all or part of ten states: Colorado, Kansas, Montana, Nebraska, New Mexico, North Dakota, Oklahoma, South Dakota, Texas, and Wyoming. The eastern boundary is about 97 degrees W longitude and the Plains extend westward to the Rocky Mountains and southward from the border with Canada to the approximate latitude of Austin, Texas. A somewhat more restrictive definition by the US Census Bureau gives a total area of the Great Plains in the United States as 533,100 sqmi, 18 percent of the area of the U.S.

The Great Plains are distinguished by generally flat land and a natural vegetation cover consisting mostly of grassland. The eastern part of the Great Plains are often intensely farmed with wheat being the most important crop. The western part is rainfall-deficient and primarily used for grazing cattle and irrigated agriculture.

Population history
Settlement of the Great Plains by farmers and ranchers began after the end of the Civil War in 1865. By the late 1870s the Plains Indians had been defeated militarily and were confined to reservations. Drawn by the free land made available by the Homestead Act, nearly all the land of the Great Plains was in private ownership or on Indian reservations by 1900.

The rush to settle the Great Plains by hundreds of thousands of farmers and ranchers reversed because of several factors. Farm economies shifted from small scale family subsistence farming to larger commercial farms utilizing more equipment and less labor. Many family farms proved to be to small to survive. Farmers also used farming techniques that were unsuited to the dryer windier climate and the frquent droughts of the Great Plains. This began manifest during the Dust Bowl years in the 1930s in which rural flight from the Great Plains accelerated, although the decline in population of some counties on the Great Plains had begun as early as 1900. Better roads and the automobile permitted many farmers to live in larger towns and cities rather than on the farm. While urban areas more than doubled in population on the Great Plains, thousands of small towns and communites disappeared on the Great Plains. Two-thirds of the counties on the plains lost population, and, as the table below demonstrates, many rural counties lost more than 60 percent of their population between the early 1900s and the 2010 census. A few counties lost more than 80 percent of their population. Population density of some counties dipped below two persons per square mile.

Stemming the tide
Governments have tried a variety of methods to stem the outflow of population from rural areas in the Great Plains. Some towns have offered free building lots to prospective residents, but the program has met with only limited success. The fundamental problem appears to be that there are few employment opportunities available in these small and isolated communities.

Great Plains counties losing more than 60 percent of their population between 1900 and 2010
Population losses in rural counties of 60 percent or more during the period 1900 to 2010 have been common on the Great Plains, but uncommon elsewhere in the United States. The following table lists those counties in the Great Plains which have had such losses, plus the 2010 density of population per square mile.

Sources: "County Population Census Counts, 1900-1990" http://www.census.gov/population/www/censusdata/cencounts/index.html, accessed 29 Apr 2013; "USA counties" http://censtats.census.gov/usa/usa.shtml, accessed 29 Apr 2013

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