kansas

American Agriculture History Minute: Kansas Pioneer Farmers

Dan American Agriculture History Minute, This Land of Ours

kansas
ABANDONED HOUSE AND RUSTED IRON HAND PUMP ON LAND WHICH USED TO BE COVERED BY TALLGRASS PRAIRIE IN JOHNSON COUNTY KANSAS NEAR KANSAS CITY. THE WAVE OF PIONEER FARMERS CLEARED THE NATIVE GRASSES AND PLANTED CROPS IN THE FERTILE SOIL. AS A RESULT ONLY SCATTERED PATCHES OF NATIVE TALLGRASS PRAIRIE SURVIVE.
By Patricia DuBose Duncan, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons

I’m Mark Oppold with an American Agriculture History Minute.

American Agriculture History Minute: Kansas Pioneer Farmers

At the close of the Civil War, the government offered homesteads in Kansas to Union Army veterans and more than 100,000 took advantage. Most were strong young veterans who had left their families to fight for the Union and became really the first real pioneer farmers in Kansas. The majority had been raised on farms in Illinois, Indiana and Ohio and understood what it took to turn the prairie sod into tillable land.

Still, one man with the team of oxen could only clear about one acre of land per day and they couldn’t start until after the 1st of April and the ground thawed.

That’s today’s American Agriculture History Minute. I’m Mark Oppold. Thanks for reading. I’ll see you next time.