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<br />'" ~ 4J. "l! ", l . <br />iJ;J,~_..t <br /> <br />PREFACE <br /> <br />The Six-State High Plains-Ogallala Aquifer Regional Resources Study <br />(the High Plains Study) evolved as a regional response to compelling pres- <br />sures from resource depletion and resultant potential economic, social, and <br />envi ronmenta 1 changes. Object i ves and scope of the Study are cons is tent <br />with the geographic similarities among the states. An understanding of the <br />origin and development of these problems is essential to an appreciation of <br />their gravity in terms of the Region, the states and the Nation, and to their <br />possible solutions. <br /> <br />Settlement of the High Plains has become a part of the folklore high- <br />lighting this Nation's expansion. As frontiers were pushed westward, the <br />Plains became an avenue to the undeveloped West. The use of barbed wi re <br />and the windmill made hahitation of the Plains an acceptable alternative to <br />further westward migration. Barbed wire provided a way to establish property <br />lines on the vast prairies and the windmill facilitated the pumping of shal- <br />low ground water from hand dug wells. With horses, plows, and handguns, a <br />ranching and farming culture was established on the Plains reaching a peak <br />of early development in the late 19th century. <br /> <br />Unusually wet years in the 1880's invited large-scale settlement by <br />eastern farmers on the broad, fertile lands. A return to the low-rainfall <br />conditions more characteristic of the Plains led to disaster in the next <br />decades. A.M. Simons wrote in "The American Farmer" (late 19th century): <br /> <br />"From the 98th meridian west to the Rocky Mountains there is a <br />stretch of country whose history is filled with more tragedy and <br />whose future is pregnant with greater promi se than perhaps any <br />other equal expanse of territory within the confines of the <br />Western Hemisphere." <br /> <br />This cycle of boom and bust continued in the Plains in the wake of <br />cycles of rain and drought up to and through the disastrous coincidence of <br />drought and the Great Depression of the 1930's. In the late 30's, the com- <br />bination of drilled wells, which tapped the ground water resources of the <br /> <br />xiii <br />