Louisiana Purchase and Manifest Destiny

      America is and always has been seen by most as land of opportunity, expansion and a place where anything is possible.  People immigrate to this country in hopes to create a better life for themselves and their families, in short reach their American Dream whatever that may be.  Closely tied with the American Dream is the push westward, the idea of Manifest Destiny – that United States was destined by God to expand all the way to the Pacific Ocean.  The Louisiana Purchase of 1803 helped fuel this idea as most of what would later become known as the heartland, the Midwestern states, were bought from the French.  Initiated by President Thomas Jefferson, the Louisiana Purchase was meant to fuel economic expansion through an agrarian society of small farmers (Dust Bowl 80).  The land was thought of as free and open for the taking, any man could own a few acres and have his small piece of the American pie.

Homestead Act of 1862 and Enlarged Act of 1909

     The Homestead Act of 1862 encouraged people to go west – especially beyond Mississippi River - and settle.  This act granted 160 acre section to any man as long as he made an official claim with the government, improved the land, and lived there for five years; it would then be his free and clear.  This combined with promise of lush, rich, fertile soil ready to be cultivated drew many people into the heartland, an area once called the Great American Desert (King 9).  While numerous people came to settle in this area, this was particular attractive to those with very little such as the poor, immigrants, and those being pushed out because of overcrowding on eastern farms. 

     The movement into this land continued into the early twentieth century and was accompanied by a progressive spirit; technology was rapidly evolving allowing once former luxuries to become available to the middle class making life easier.  For rural America, the Progressive Era started off with the passage of the Enlarged Homestead Act of 1909 which allowed more free land to be allotted to homesteaders to accommodate dry-land farming techniques.  This expansion increased acreage to 320 acres per man and eventually changed the proving-up time from five years to three years.  The movement into the West was stirred up again with about 30,000 claims made annually from 1913 into the early twenties (Dust Bowl 87).  Beside the public domain provided by the government, private land was also being put on the market.  Many ranchers were struggling to make a profit off of cattle and sold their land to farmers for cheap prices.  This too drew people and helped spur the movement into the West (Dust Bowl 88).

The "Great Plow Up"

            Many people were poor and uneducated in farming techniques necessary for the plains - eastern farming techniques were not useful for plains farming.  Though a system of crop rotation was trying to be implanted, it was soon forgotten as the “Great Plow Up” begun.  With the onset of World War I, wheat became in high demand as the supply from Russia was cut off.  In turn, Europeans looked towards America to fill the void both during and immediately following the war.  With the demand skyrocketing, farmers in the Great Plains plowed up all the land they could to take part of this opportunity.  In the years 1914 to 1919, the states of Kansas, Colorado, Nebraska, Oklahoma, and Texas plowed up 11 million acres of grassland growing their wheat lands by 13.5 million acres; they would the hardest hit states during the Dust Bowl (Western Skies 98-99).  While this allowed for many people to prosper, almost all the focus was on profit and little attention was paid to the land.  Partly driven by economic expansion in a progressive nation and partly the result of ignorance, they destruction of the majority of the grasslands of the Great Plains was setting the stage for the Dust Bowl.

   The Dust Bowl - 1930s