Allan G. Bogue

Farming in the Prairie Peninsula, 1830-1890

Flaring westward from the upper valley of the Wabash lies the prairie triangle, embracing most of central and northern Illinois and almost all of Iowa. Much of this region today lies in the heart of the corn belt. Its economic history is a story of practical experimentation, adaptation, and change as its restless settlers endeavored after 1820 to unlock its wealth. To do so, the prairie pioneers had to adapt techniques and crops to the novel environment of an almost treeless grassland at a time when both technology and markets were undergoing revolutionary change. In 1830 the farm-makers had hardly begun their task; by the 1890s the land was tamed, the corn belt a fact, its farmers on the threshold of a golden age.