Stretching unbroken from the Canadian border in the north down to the Oklahoma country in the south, the Great Plains both divide and bind together the North American continent. This part of the country is now known as America's Breadbasket because it grows enough grain collectively to feed the people of the world several times over. Wheat, oats, barley, and corn are grown all over the Great Plains.

And yet most people once called this region the Great American Desert! Before the steel plow was invented, there wasn't any blade strong enough to cut through the prairie sod of the plains, and so Americans viewed the Great Plains as an obstacle to be crossed on their way to places on the West Coast, like California.

The plains states are places of wide skies and broad horizons, of sudden tornadoes and baking hot, cloudless days. They are bordered by huge mountains in the west, and the broad Mississippi in the east. And they are crossed from northwest to southeast by a number of vast river systems of their own.