• "Great American Desert," mapped by Stephen H. Long in 1820. Historic photo of the High Plains in Haskell County, Kansas...
  • From the Great Basin Desert to the Mojave Desert, each desert has something unique to offer. In this article, we will take a closer look at the map of American...
  • Early nineteenth-century Army explorers Zebulon Pike and Stephen H. Long thought of the Great Plains east of the Rocky Mountains as the “Great American Desert.”
  • The Great American Desert was the name given, in the first half of the nineteenth century, to the area west of the Mississippi river.
  • Cinema classics like Paris, Texas, Easy Rider and John Ford’s westerns build upon the mythology surrounding the Great American Desert and expose it as a...
  • On his expedition map, he famously labeled the arid Great Plains as a “ Great American Desert ” where agriculture could not thrive.
  • 1) What is the Great American Desert? 2) Why did the United States want a vast swath of largely unexplored and mostly uninhabited territory in the Southwest?
  • Let’s find out more about The Great American Desert! From the 1820s to 1860s, all the area west of the Mississippi River was called the Great American Desert.
  • You won’t find it on any map, at least not anymore, but the Great American Desert played a pivotal role in the shaping of the history, geography and myth of the...