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Strategies & Market Trends : 2026 TeoTwawKi ... 2032 Darkest Interregnum -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Cogito Ergo Sum who wrote (54770)	9/10/2009 12:41:37 AM
From: Snowshoe	1 Recommendation Respond to of 217764

Major John Wesley Powell was an American explorer who led the first expedition down the Colorado River through the Grand Canyon in 1869. He issued a famous report in which he prophetically warned against dense settlement of the arid west... John Wesley Powell en.wikipedia.org Powell' s expeditions led to his belief that the arid west was not suitable for agricultural development, except for about 2% of the lands that were near water sources. His "Report on the Lands of the Arid Regions of the United States" proposed irrigation systems and state boundaries based on watershed areas (to avoid squabbles). For the remaining lands he proposed conservation and low density open grazing. The railroad companies, who owned vast tracts of lands (183,000,000 acres) granted in return for building RR lines, did not agree with his opinion. They aggressively lobbied congress to reject Powell's policy proposals and to encourage farming instead. The politicians agreed and developed policies that encouraged pioneer settlement based on agriculture. The basis was the scientifically proven theory* developed by Professor Cyrus Thomas and promoted by Horace Greeley that agricultural development of land causes arid lands to generate higher amounts of rain ("rain follows the plow"). Powell's recommendations for development of the West were largely ignored until the 1900s, resulting in untold suffering associated with failed pioneer farms resulting from insufficient rain. Rain follows the plow en.wikipedia.org Rain follows the plow is the conventional name for a now-discredited theory of climatology that was popular throughout the American West and Australia during the late 19th century.*