USA Guide
The Great Plains
Stretching west of the Mississippi through Oklahoma, Missouri, Kansas, Iowa, Nebraska, South Dakota, and North Dakota, The Great Plains are lumped together in the popular imagination as an unappealing expanse of unvarying flatness and conservative "Middle American" values. Once, however, this was the West, an empty canvas on which outlaws, fur trappers, buffalo hunters, and cowboys painted their dreams. In the 1870s, the wide-open range of the lone prairie, which had originally been known as the Great American Desert, promoted as a bountiful Garden of Eden, inspired such fascination that General Custer was moved to call it "the fairest and richest portion of the national domain."
Defining the geographical limits of the Plains is difficult, and the term itself is almost a misnomer – there are vast flat expanses and long uninterrupted roads, but there are also canyons, forests, and splashes of unexpected colour, as well as two of the nation's mightiest rivers: the Missouri, which weaves its course southeast from North Dakota, and the Mississippi, which it joins at St Louis.
The woods, caves, and springs of the Ozarks, the lunar landscapes of South Dakota's Badlands, and stately Mount Rushmore are the region's most visited areas. Drama comes in the form of such unpredictable weather as freak blizzards, dust storms, lightning storms, and the notorious "twister" tornadoes. Images of the devastating Thirties' dustbowl Depression (when topsoil was whisked as far away as Washington DC) remain as potent as the fantasy of Dorothy and Toto being swept up from Kansas by a tornado to the land of Oz.
Highlights
1 Woolaroc Ranch, Bartlesville, OK Fascinating museum of Western art and history.
2 Hannibal, MO This delightful Mississippi River town is still recognizable as the setting for Mark Twain's epic tales of boyhood.
3 Live music in Kansas City, MO Choose from a host of venues, from down-home blues joints to slick jazz clubs.
4 Dodge City Days and Rodeo, KS A good old time with some good old boys in late July and early August.
5 Carhenge, Alliance, NE America's crazy vehicular Stonehenge, planted in a Nebraska wheat field.
6 The Badlands, SD This spooky moonscape offers great camping and hiking – and a monument to the Ghost Dancers at Wounded Knee.
7 The Black Hills, SD Superb camping, the overblown monuments of Mount Rushmore and Crazy Horse, and wandering bison: the all-American destination.
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