Q 01/05

Which aquifer beneath the Great Plains did farmers start pumping after the Dust Bowl?

A) The Edwards

B) The Ogallala

C) The Floridan

D) The Guarani

Answer · why

B) The Ogallala

The Ogallala Aquifer holds water that seeped down after the last Ice Age; when drought came back in the 1950s, farmers stopped watching the sky and pu...

Q 02/05

The Dust Bowl region lies mostly west of which meridian, on the High Plains?

A) The 100th

B) The 105th

C) The 110th

D) The 120th

Answer · why

A) The 100th

The 100th meridian is the line explorer John Wesley Powell drew in 1878 between the humid East and the arid West; the worst-hit Dust Bowl counties lay...

Q 03/05

What real-estate promoters' slogan convinced settlers the plains climate had changed for good?

A) "Wheat is king"

B) "Rain follows the plow"

C) "The desert shall bloom"

D) "Go west, young man"

Answer · why

B) "Rain follows the plow"

The promoters' slogan "Rain follows the plow" claimed cultivation itself brought rain, and an unusually wet spell after the Civil War seemed to confir...

Q 04/05

Which 1862 law gave settlers 160 acres for five years' residence?

A) The Homestead Act

B) The Morrill Act

C) The Pacific Railway Act

D) The Dawes Act

Answer · why

A) The Homestead Act

The Homestead Act asked only a small filing fee and five years of living on and farming the claim; later acts enlarged the plots for the dry Plains an...

Q 05/05

Demand from which war sent wheat prices soaring and pushed Plains farmers to plow up millions of acres of grassland?

A) The Civil War

B) The Spanish-American War

C) World War I

D) World War II

Answer · why

C) World War I

World War I cut Europe's harvests, and Washington told Plains farmers that wheat would win the war; record prices put millions of acres of native gras...