The Last Days of the Rainbelt

4. The Last Days of the Rainbelt

4 The Last Days of the Rainbelt, 1890–1896  F ollowing the dry year of 1890, and the associated population exodus , a very wet year in 1891 and a year of sporadic but generally adequate rainfall in 1892 restored faith in the promise of the Rainbelt. In Julesburg, John G. Abbot remembered “two years of golden harvest” in 1891 and 1892, and similar recollections of halcyon days came from all around the region.1 Local newspapers trumpeted the success: the Akron Pioneer, for example , reporting on December 2, 1892, from “The Garden Spot of the Famous Rain Belt,” claimed universally high soil fertility over all of Washington County and assured prospective settlers that abundant crops could be raised with “half the effort” needed to the east. The dry year of 1890 was declared an aberration.2 Resilient settlers came back to give it another try. George Washington Franklin, having spent two years getting by as a hired hand in western Iowa (but also learning his photography trade, as well as shorthand and telegraphy, and reading such books as Everybody’s Handbook of Electricity —he was a tireless self-improver), harnessed up his mare, Nellie, and “started back to Nebraska.” In Fort Morgan, newspaperman Lute Johnson , who had seen enough to believe that farming would only succeed with irrigation in Morgan County, was incredulous at the Rainbelters’ renewable enthusiasm—at the way “they came, starved, moved out in legions , came again.”3 A host of brand-new settlers also converged on the Rainbelt, llling the lands left by those who had given up for good after the 1890 drought. On New Year’s Day 1892, for example, a special immigration train packed with aspiring settlers from Bloomington, Illinois, pulled into the Madrid station, not far from Franklin’s place. The Keith County News reported approvingly that they were all “well-equipped for farming.” In late February , the Keith County News again reported a “swelling tide of immigration interest.” This was to be expected. The harvests had been so good that the generous citizens of Red Willow and Hitchcock Counties had been able 28. Percentage population change, 1890–1900. 112 The Last Days of the Rainbelt, 1890–1896 to dispatch carloads of surplus corn to “the starving peasants of Russia.”4 The lines on the population graphs again trended upward (lgs. 6 and 7). But the 1890s would turn out to be a microcosm of the boom and bust syndrome that delned Great Plains settlement in the second half of the nineteenth century, and the biggest bust of all came in the dry years from 1893 through 1895. The arid climate of the southwestern United States migrated into the Rainbelt, and other equally exogenous forces pushed the region (and beyond, the nation and a good deal of the world) into deep economic depression. Settlers, still entranced by what John G. Abbot called “the lucinous memories of 1891 and 1892,” tried to hang on, cultivating more land, mainly for wheat, hoping for a turnaround in weather and prices. The Colorado agricultural newspaper, Field and Farm, was not sanguine about their prospects, musing, “It is a strange hallucination that binds the rainbelt settlers to their chosen country.”5 By the end of 1895, after three years of bone-dry weather, the hallucination of the Rainbelt had lost its shape and power. Settlers who could do so, left; those who couldn’t afford to leave survived on charity, state aid, and their resourcefulness. By 1900, many counties in the Rainbelt had lost more than half their populations (lg. 28), and that’s counting those who returned with the rains after 1896.6 Rain and Rainmakers The rainfall maps for 1891, showing percentage departure from average for the growing season (when it was needed most) and for the year (lgs. 29 and 30), indicate that the entire Rainbelt received ample moisture . From Julesburg (37 percent above normal for the year) to Lamar (58 percent above normal), and from Holyoke (24 percent above normal) to Madrid (58 percent above normal), abundant rains washed away the bad memories of 1890. The state meteorologist of Nebraska celebrated the “largest precipitation in 14 years of record.”7 The next year, 1892 (lgs. 31 and 32), followed suit but only after a slow start and a worrying dry period in the summer. On February 24, the Keith County News reported only “a fair rainfall year so far.” But the...