The 100th Meridian

More, quite a bit more, than a half century ago one of my history professors had me write a paper on the 100th Meridian. What was that? In the library (yes, an actual paper filled library) I found a book called "Beyond The Hundredth Meridian - John Wesley Powell And The Second Opening Of The West". From wondering what I could possibly write about an imaginary line that crossed the center of the USA and through the middle of Nebraska, by the way, I learned more than I’d ever known or imagined about US history -- pretty much before or since.

The 100th Meridian, the degree of west longitude, turns out to be a fairly accurate dividing line between the prairies of Iowa and Illinois to the east and the relatively dry and flat Great Plain that runs west to the foothills of the Rockies. When settlers hit that dividing line, their ability to make a living drastically changed.

Let’s just start with housing. There were basically no trees beyond that line -- just miles upon unending miles (even if you drive a car) of flat waving grasses -- or wheat and soybeans beans now. Few landmarks. No means to build any sort of traditional frame house, and so settlers resorted to sod houses. Sod was a virtually limitless supply of useful building material -- good insulation against the winter bitter cold but prone to some problems with turning into mud in the infrequent but torrential summer storms.

And even with those occasional destructive storms, water was scarce as you moved west. The Great Plains was also known as The Great Desert. As the Nebraska Write Across America website noted, there are lots of Nebraska rivers, but in summer I suspect rivers other than the Missouri and the Platt were more what Easterners would call creeks. The Platt itself only averages 2-3 feet of depth. But in the 1850s Daniel Halladay developed the American windmill. And those tallest structures on the landscape became the signature of farmsteads throughout the Plains. Wind was a steady commodity and allowed farming away from easily accessed above-ground water. I don’t know if the wells went deep enough to tap the Ogallala Aquifer, but deep enough, I guess, to settle the Plains. I remember windmills on nearly every farm when I was a kid in Illinois - more than a hundred years after they were introduced. Now few remain, broken and bent reminders of a much different past -- replaced by a completely different set of windmills churning out electricity instead of water.

Even with windmills providing water, farming remained a challenge. The wooden and cast-iron plows of the East were no match for the deep, thick roots of the short grass Plains. In 1830s John Deere of Illinois patented the steel blade plow. Now farmers had a way to literally turn that Plains soil to farming.

The farmers’ battles weren’t just with water and plowing. Ranchers loved the short grass for their cattle. It was open range so far as they were concerned. Farmers had no stones or rails for fences to dispute that claim. Farmers tried sod fencing but that stood up to the rain worse than sod houses. The sod fences engendered the disparaging midwest quote: “That’s ugly as a mud fence.” Then John Glidden of Dekalb, Illinois invented barbed wire. Not the puny barbed wire we see in fields today (though those are disappearing too), but serious three-inch-long barbs meant to deter Texas longhorns from eating a farmer’s crops. The long barbs weren’t what Glidden patented, however. It was the idea that you took TWO strands of wire and twisted them together with the barbs trapped in between so the barbs remained in place and didn’t just spin harmlessly away when something rubbed against them. The sharp bits stayed where you needed them.

The fencing didn’t keep out all the problems though. If someone felt you were somewhere that belonged to them, mere fencing wouldn’t necessarily keep interlopers from burning down your crops and farmhouse. Enter the six gun. Light to carry on horseback and easily accessible. No need to shoot at distance because you weren’t hunting, you were detering -- multi-shot for multi-adversaries. Job done.

When people ask how the west was won, you’d be forgiven to land on the last one - the six shooter, but the real innovations were the windmill, metal plow, and barbed wire. Not as romantic as gun battles between ranchers and farmers, but closer to the truth.

Disclaimer -- anything written here has pretty much a 50/50 chance of being true and should be verified by multiple sources before quoting.