Rain Follows the Plow Listen in RealAudio Email Your Comments

Dave Thurlow, Host

 
During the second half of the last century, railroad companies used false advertising and voodoo meteorology to lure settlers to the Great Plains. Hi, I'm Dave Thurlow from the Mount Washington Observatory and this is The Weather Notebook.

Marc Reisner

I spoke recently with Marc Reisner, author of Cadillac Desert. He says this promotional campaign caused settlers to believe that a desert would turn green overnight. Here's part of our conversation:

DT: Why did people go to what was called 'the great American desert' originally back 120, 150 years ago.

MR: Beats me --laughter-- Because of the greatest promotional campaign in the history of the world. The railroads were given huge expanses of land, in fact they didn't buy them, they were given huge expanses of land by the government as a reward for laying the track to the coasts. And they needed to sell that land. And so they launched some of the most mendacious propaganda campaigns in history. I have a whole chapter in my book about the lies that were told to get people out here.

DT: Such as rain follows the plow.

MR: Yeah, they made up theories that rain follows the plow explaining that well, once farmers finally come out and start turning the earth, the rain will actually then come. In the 19th Century all kinds of nonsense was accepted as scientific fact and it was almost like a conspiracy to get people out here. And once they arrived and realized that nothing was the way it was presented, the number one obstacle to wealth, prosperity, security, happiness was lack of water.

And there was nothing that even the best PR campaign could do about it. For information about Marc Reisner's book Cadillac Desert, please check our website at www.mountwashington.org. The Weather Notebook is underwritten by Subaru. Major support is provided by the National Science Foundation.