Great American Desert
The term Great American Desert was used in the 19th century to describe the western part of the Great Plains east of the Rocky Mountains in North America to about the 100th meridian
The Great American Desert was the name given, in the first half of the nineteenth century, to the area west of the Mississippi river.

At the time, the area was only inhabited by tribes of native American Indians. White Americans considered it to be unfit for habitation.

As people moved onto the Great Plains, the area referred to as the Great American Desert became smaller and smaller until only the Utah and Nevada plains bore the name.

When he explored the area that was to become Nebraska and Oklahoma in 1820, Major Stephen H. Long called the region "the Great American Desert." He considered the area "almost wholly unfit for cultivation, and of course uninhabitable by a people depending upon agriculture for their subsistence." It was flat, treeless, and arid.

Half a century later, the "Great American Desert" received a new name, the Great Plains. This region consists of the area east of the Rockies and just west of the 100th meridian: the Dakotas, Nebraska, Kansas, Oklahoma, a significant part of Texas, and New Mexico, Colorado, Wyoming and Montana. Instead of being viewed as an obstacle to America's westward expansion, the plains were quickly transformed into America's breadbasket and the site of many of the country's richest mines.