![]() ![]() ![]() Courage and kindness, loyalty, truth, and helpfulness are always the same and always needed.” While Ingalls makes the point that her stories underscore traditional values that remain the same over time, this is not necessarily the only thing that made these books so popular. Wilder wrote of her stories, “As you read my stories of long ago I hope you will remember that the things that are truly worthwhile and that will give you happiness are the same now as they were then. The third, and best known, book in the series, Little House on the Prairie (b), was published just three years later. Laura Ingalls Wilder (a) is the celebrated author of the Little House series, which began in 1932 with the publication of Little House in the Big Woods. A few also began to employ windmill technology to draw water, although both the drilling and construction of windmills became an added expense that few farmers could afford. Prior to that, farmers across the Great Plains relied primarily on dry-farming techniques to grow corn, wheat, and sorghum, a practice that many continued in later years. It was not until 1902 and the passage of the Newlands Reclamation Act that a system finally existed to set aside funds from the sale of public lands to build dams for subsequent irrigation efforts. Irrigation was a requirement, but finding water and building adequate systems proved too difficult and expensive for many farmers. A few unseasonably rainy years had led would-be settlers to believe that the “great desert” was no more, but the region’s typically low rainfall and harsh temperatures made crop cultivation hard. The weather and environment were bleak, and settlers struggled to eke out a living. They settled throughout the land that now makes up the Midwestern states of Wisconsin, Minnesota, Kansas, Nebraska, and the Dakotas. Popularly known as “sodbusters,” these men and women in the Midwest faced a difficult life on the frontier. These pioneers, like the Ingalls family of Little House on the Prairie book and television fame (see inset below), were seeking land and opportunity. Of the hundreds of thousands of settlers who moved west, the vast majority were homesteaders. This map shows the trails (orange) used in westward migration and the development of railroad lines (blue) constructed after the completion of the first transcontinental railroad. Still, small family farms, and the settlers who worked them, were hard-pressed to do more than scrape out a living in an unforgiving environment that comprised arid land, violent weather shifts, and other challenges. Although many farms failed, some survived and grew into large “bonanza” farms that hired additional labor and were able to benefit enough from economies of scale to grow profitable. The prohibitive prices charged by the first railroad lines made it expensive to ship crops to market or have goods sent out. The land was difficult to farm, there were few building materials, and harsh weather, insects, and inexperience led to frequent setbacks. Describe the unique experiences of women who participated in westward migrationĪs settlers and homesteaders moved westward to improve the land given to them through the Homestead Act, they faced a difficult and often insurmountable challenge. ![]() Identify the challenges that farmers faced as they settled west of the Mississippi River.By the end of this section, you will be able to: ![]()
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