| Book Review | The American Historical Review, 109.5

You have not been recognized as a subscriber to the AHR online. About 615 words from this article are provided below; about 541 words remain.

If you are a individual member of the American Historical Association, you may:: • login here if you have already registered for online access.; • Or if you're already logged in register your subscription.
• Set up your online account for the first time. AHA members can go to the AHA individual membership section to locate their member numbers.
If you are not a member of the American Historical Association, you can:: • Join the AHA and receive many member benefits including print and electronic issues of the American Historical Review.
• Purchase a research pass to gain two hour access to the entire History Cooperative web site. You will have full access to current issues of the American Historical Review (104.3-present). Note: the Research Pass does not provide access to JSTOR's holdings of the American Historical Review.
Instititutions can:: • Subscribe to this journal and receive print and electronic issues.
• Activate your existing subscription so that we recognize your IP number ranges.

| Book Review | The American Historical Review, 109.5 | The History Cooperative

Book Review

Canada and the United States

Sherry L. Smith, editor. The Future of the Southern Plains. Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, in association with the William P. Clements Center for Southwest Studies, Southern Methodist University, Dallas. 2003. Pp. xii, 275. $29.95.
The eight essays that comprise this interdisciplinary collection offer cautious predictions about what residents might expect of the Southern Plains in the twenty-first century. Over the past hundred years, its natural landscape has been altered drastically and its water supply, the famous Ogallala Aquifer, substantially depleted. Small farms and rural communities declined as a matter of course, and at the same time, major oil companies abandoned the Permian Basin, leaving its future indeterminate as independents jockey for position. The Southern Plains represents "the cutting edge of the modernist experiment with the exploitation of North America," Dan Flores observes. "This is the place that is going to show us the outcome first" (p. 9). The contributors seek to define the consequences of human occupation and have written a nuanced account of the region's complex history, culture, and politics that provides the basis for charting a course of action for the remainder of the twenty-first century.	1
The rubric that the past is the key to the future informs most of the articles in the anthology. Elliott West notes the persistence of two closely related historical patterns: the region has always been a "land of transience and a land of resources sent elsewhere" (p. 20). Indigenous people, Spanish explorers and traders, comancheros and ciboleros, and American buffalo hunters traversed its ground. It also has been the source of "needful things," from buffalo robes in the nineteenth century to oil in the twentieth—commodities that reveal the region's response to economic and technological changes. West notes that Plains residents have succeeded by adapting to changing circumstances, and he suggests that some combination of old trends and future developments will sustain the region in the future. Similarly, geographer John Morris defines Plains agriculture within a historical context; his lengthy essay at times reads like a paean to the family farmers who maintained their way of life against large-scale agribusiness. "Theory and moral geography," he writes, "suggest one key advantage of the family farms": namely that continuous family ownership promotes long-term subsistence rather than the exhaustion of land, water, plant, and animal resources (pp. 47–48). He concedes that postindustrial farming will likely displace traditional farms, but policy makers in the twenty-first century will still confront a familiar dilemma: the need to balance regional growth and technological development against challenging environmental constraints.	2
The Southern Plains is the hottest and driest part of the Great Plains, and its history has developed against the backdrop of drought. The lack of available moisture has been a common feature here for 10,000 years, and droughts in the future may well be more severe than those of the Dust Bowl or the 1950s. The regional landscape has been characterized by sand dunes and sand sheets in the past, paleoclimatologist Connie Woodhouse reminds us, and it may look that way again at some point in the future (p. 108). Despite such historical conditions, Plains farmers often have resisted water management, but today most acknowledge that the golden age of irrigation between 1960 and 1990 ended prematurely because of wasteful practices. Irrigators eventually supported water management districts based on grass-roots democracy, technological alternatives, and new agricultural science. Some programs fostered efficient use of the aquifer, while others promoted zero depletion and water banking. Whatever success has ensued, John Opie warns that continued heavy consumption of irreplaceable Ogallala water will make the future of the Southern Plains different from the past.	. . .

There are about 541 more words in this article. Please log in (or, if you are not yet an authorized user, please go to the User Setup page) to gain full access rights. Or if you're already logged in register your subscription.