No. 1 Hard

At one time, the semiarid central portion of the United States, reaching all the way down into Texas—first dubbed the Great American Desert and then the Great Plains—was left to natural thrivers like bison, prairie dogs, and prairie grasses. But, as society marched forward, the buffalo were killed by hunters, their habitat divided up and replanted to make farms and cattle ranches. New York native Theodore Roosevelt was one such rancher, who thought western North Dakota, especially the Badlands, touched by a “curious, fantastic beauty.” At least that was his impression until 1886, when the weather turned especially hot, grasshoppers ate all the grass, and a fall fire destroyed much of what was left. That winter, North Dakota’s blizzards came early, and so did the attending bitter cold and deep snow. Cattle starved by the tens of thousands—it’s estimated that three-quarters of those in the northwestern part of the state died. It was a downer for the gentleman Roosevelt, who complained that “for the first time I have been utterly unable to enjoy a visit to my ranch.”

There are those who would like to return parts of North Dakota, along with the rest of the central grasslands, to the bison, to wipe away the billboards and silos and virtually all other signs of human inhabitation. The proposal, called “Buffalo Commons,” was floated in 1987 by a professor and a graduate student from Rutgers University, Frank and Deborah Popper. They suggested that the federal government buy land unsuitable for agriculture and turn it into an enormous national park. “We believe that over the next generation the Plains will, as a result of the largest, longest-running agricultural and environmental miscalculation in American history, become almost totally depopulated,” they wrote. “We are suggesting that the region be returned to its original pre-white state, that it be, in effect, deprivatized.” The two branded federal programs such as the Homestead Act as failures, and described the resulting abandoned landscape as “an austere monument to American self-delusion.” They also predicted that matters would get worse, as global warming would eventually raise temperatures in the region.

More recently, the Poppers have suggested that their plan is coming about naturally, without the proposed push by the federal government. Not only are there fewer people living on the plains, but “the total number of buffalo on U.S. and Canadian private and public lands approaches four hundred thousand,” they wrote in 2004, “a remarkable figure for a large species that nearly went extinct less than a century ago.” According to a 2003 survey conducted by the North Dakota Buffalo Association, there were more than twenty-six thousand buffalo in the state, a ten percent increase from just four years earlier.

Contrarily, U.S. Senator Byron L. Dorgan of North Dakota, a Democrat, is committed to saving rural American towns and farms. Dorgan’s great-grandmother packed up six kids after her husband’s death, got on a train, and settled in a tent in Hettinger County, on a piece of land she’d acquired through the Homestead Act. “You’ll find that same story with most people in North Dakota, and Minnesota, and other Plains states,” he said. “Exactly the same story.” Dorgan has introduced for several years running a bill that would enact a new version of the Homestead Act. There wouldn’t be free land this time, but the program would offer other benefits to those willing to put down roots in underpopulated counties: partial payment of student loans, help with home financing, and even matching funds for savings accounts.

When it was suggested that the depopulation of many rural areas may be inevitable—the natural order of things as the nation becomes less oriented to farming in general and small family farms in particular—Dorgan turned fiery. “Seventy percent of the rural counties in the Great Plains have seen their population shrink by at least one-third,” he said. “That’s the heartland of America, the seat of family values, where independence is nurtured. We lose something when we lose that part of our country, our economy, and our culture.

“When America’s cities were suffering from blight and decay, this country worried about the death of American cities. It rallied around with urban renewal and other programs that pumped money in and it made a big difference. We saved American cities. Are we going to save the heartland?”