There is a piece in the National Geographic for January 2008 (for more about the high prairie search "prairie" at www.ngm.com) about North Dakota and the High Plains between the Rocky Mountains and the area in eastern North Dakota about 200 miles west of the Minnesota line. The High Prairie is the prairie east of the Rockies running from Oklahoma to Edmonton, Canada. The story and pictures were of North Dakota.
The story was sad from the human perspective. The northern tier railroad owners and the United States government tried to turn the area into farms -- about a quarter section each, 160 acres, give or take. The farmers came from Norway, Sweden, Germany, Austria, Switzerland, the Ukraine. They built homes and barns and broke the ground. They created towns with schools, creameries, churches, stores, granaries, stores, dance halls, libraries. And then economics and weather began to confront the dreams of these resiliant and hopeful people.
The rains did not come, the wind blew most of the time,the area was vast and lonely and worse yet, unforgiving. Human life began to leave and to die off. The towns began to die. But, the death has been slow. Slow because the economics of the area and climate is such that crops can be grown on large acreages, it is possible to live on the High Plains. But, economics causes the acreages to become larger and larger. As a result, human habitation will not leave the area but the numbers of inhabitants will become less and less. Only those who find the vastness of sky and the extremes of the elements will be able to live there. (I wish I were younger and more knowing of my self. I think I could find a home in the High Plains.)
The fate of the mining towns in the Rockies was the same but their deaths happened much more rapidly. Here is a site dedicated to ghost towns of the United States West. The towns were quickly created in confined spaces and survuved as long as the local mine, mines or sluicing operations were profitable. Once they were not, the towns began to die. Some came alive again when skiing became popular and the wealthy wanted a third or fourth home in the Rocky Mountains. See Park City, Utah, Aspen, Kellogg and more. The West and the High Plains are alive again, but not in the way first imagined. And some of the area is returnining to what it once was. See here and here.
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Long ago, and it may be continuing today, there was a movement afoot pushing the idea of renaming and reforming the High Plains area, at least that part residing within the borders of the U.S., into something called "Buffalo Commons".
Most of the folks living there didn't think much of it. I don't think they appreciated the idea that the area they called home was being described as "economically dwindling". I doubt that they think any more of the description today.
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