WI the North American drought of 1856-1865 had been averted?

As I understand it, the near ubiquitous die off of vegetation on the open plains ended up starving immense numbers of bison, whose dwindling herds eventually congregated around fertile river valleys in the West. This inevitably forced population movements of the Plains Indians to head towards the river valleys as well, which just so happened to be the ideal homesteading locales for settlers already in the area or newly arrived. Competition for resources in such depleted environs naturally led to widespread conflict at the close of the American Civil War and the so-called Opening of the West.

Now, how do you suppose all this would've played out had the drought not been as severe? Was the drought even a critical enough factor to influence the mid 19th century tragedies that befell the Plains Indian tribes to be worth mentioning?

And I suppose all you agriculture die-hards can eat your hearts out if this POD has any implications on the crop output of Midwestern settler farmsteads and early beef barons (I haven't the faintest notion of how that might work out).

Probably not effect it much at all. The Whites were going to grab all but the most useless land drought or no drought.

Thanks for the quick answer! Case closed, then.

With more bison and the natives spread out it would take longer, and that might have an impact.

Speaking of worthless, is there anything that could get the whites to consider the Great Plains really not worth settling? Just an obstacle to get past on the way to California/Oregon Territory.

Pesterfield said:

With more bison and the natives spread out it would take longer, and that might have an impact.

Speaking of worthless, is there anything that could get the whites to consider the Great Plains really not worth settling? Just an obstacle to get past on the way to California/Oregon Territory.

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The problem isn't getting folks to consider the Great Plains an obstacle to be traversed, the problem is keeping that perception alive and hard wiring it into the American people's consciousness. Through the mid/late 1840s the Great Plains was derisively called the vast American desert. Prairie Schooners (covered wagons), like schooner ships, were designed to transport people and cargo across the empty void between point "A" and point "B", not just into it.

Now, given that eventually American settlers will seek to grab-up all but the most useless G.P. lands, perpetuating that perception would require some sort of grand agreement, embraced by the masses (both Indian and American) and upheld by the full power (military, judicial & bureaucratic) of government (federal and regional US along with all the various tribal), is reached whereby the plains tribes retain sovereignty over the land in return for passage rights and other mutually acceptable details. A cultural POD in the 1760s/70s is needed in order to create an atmosphere whereby such a grand agreement is doable.

One significant butterfly would be the theory of "The rain follows the plow" never developing: because the end of the drought coincided with the opening of the west to settlement and cultivation, it was supposed that the former caused the latter.

Without this theory, settlement patterns are likely to occur with a bit more cognisance of water supply issues, which may mitigate TTL's eventual dust bowl.

Eventually some is going to discover the Ogallala aquifer in the Great Plains. it is the greatest scource of fresh water in the world. The plains are NO desert.

It's not the drought that was the problem, but the unusually rainy years that followed, which happened to coincide with the first major wave of settlement.

Railroad companies were the major sales force, putting out ads that a family could live off of the same acreage of prairie as they could Indiana grassland. Would-be ranchers overgrazed the land, and destroyed the topsoil, so the plains could never support the numbers after as they could before.

It ended with the winter of 1886 which brought arctic conditions that killed at least a third of the livestock. The failure of the rains for the next few years drove out many.

If the rains never came back in the late 1860s, than the area would still be known as the Great American desert. It may evolve to an American tribal zone where Indian tribes are pushed into, as well as various white outcasts. Eventually the Corporations would find the mineral resources and try to develop it like in OTL. The Wild West may last longer.

So taking this the other way, supposing that the rains never returned and American settlement in the Midwest never came to the same level of fruition as IOTL, how would the railways finance their operations in the region? Could they eventually become government subsidized operations? I think it'd be interesting to see a late 19th century dynamic in which the monopolistic railway corporations of Western America come under the managerial thumb of the federal government.

Color-Copycat said:

So taking this the other way, supposing that the rains never returned and American settlement in the Midwest never came to the same level of fruition as IOTL, how would the railways finance their operations in the region? Could they eventually become government subsidized operations? I think it'd be interesting to see a late 19th century dynamic in which the monopolistic railway corporations of Western America come under the managerial thumb of the federal government.

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You mean OTL when the railroads came under the control of the ICC?

I mean from the start, to avoid the period of abuses that occurred between the establishment of the various intercontinental railways in the 1870s and the establishment of the ICC in 1883. And even then, it wasn't until the last decade of the 19th century that some elements of jurisdiction of railway safety were removed from state control and handed over to the ICC.