The Great Plains — History and Geography Reading Comprehension Lesson

Reading Passage

The Great Plains

The Great Plains is a vast, mostly flat region of grassland and prairie in the interior of North America. Stretching from Canada in the north to Texas in the south, and from the Rocky Mountains in the west to the Missouri and Mississippi rivers in the east, the Great Plains covers approximately 500,000 square miles — about one-sixth of the entire United States. The region encompasses parts of ten states: Montana, Wyoming, North Dakota, South Dakota, Nebraska, Kansas, Colorado, Oklahoma, Texas, and New Mexico. The land is characterized by wide, open skies, gently rolling terrain, and the treeless grasslands that once covered most of the region before large-scale farming began.

For thousands of years before European contact, the Great Plains was home to many Native American nations. Among the most well known are the Sioux (Lakota), Cheyenne, Comanche, Arapaho, Crow, Pawnee, and Blackfoot. The economy of Plains Indians revolved around the American bison — commonly called the buffalo — which provided food, clothing, shelter, tools, and spiritual meaning. Before the introduction of the horse by the Spanish in the 1500s, Plains Indians hunted bison on foot, sometimes driving herds over cliffs (a technique called a bison jump). After acquiring horses in the 17th and 18th centuries, Plains Indians became expert equestrian hunters and warriors, following the vast bison herds across the plains.

The 19th century brought catastrophic change to the Great Plains. American settlers began moving westward in large numbers after the Civil War, drawn by the promise of free land under the Homestead Act of 1862, which granted 160 acres to anyone willing to farm it for five years. The transcontinental railroad, completed in 1869, opened the plains to large-scale settlement and the cattle industry. Professional buffalo hunters, working for railroad construction crews and meat markets, slaughtered bison by the tens of millions. By 1890, the estimated 30 to 60 million bison that had once roamed the plains had been reduced to fewer than 1,000. This destruction devastated the Plains Indian nations, who were forced onto reservations as their way of life was systematically destroyed.

Settlement of the Great Plains was a hard and often heartbreaking experience for the pioneer farmers who came — called ‘sodbusters’ because they broke the tough sod of the prairie with their plows. The region received little rainfall, and drought was common. Summers were blazing hot; winters were brutally cold. Grasshopper infestations could destroy entire crops in hours. Despite the hardships, millions of settlers came, building sod houses (dugouts made from prairie turf), planting wheat and corn, and creating the towns, churches, and schools that shaped the rural Midwest. The invention of barbed wire in 1874 and windmill-powered water pumps transformed farming on the plains, but so did tragedy — the Dust Bowl of the 1930s, when drought and over-plowing turned the southern plains into a desert of blowing dust and drove hundreds of thousands of farm families from their homes.

Today the Great Plains remains one of the most important agricultural regions in the world. It is often called ‘America’s breadbasket’ because it produces enormous quantities of wheat, corn, sorghum, and soybeans. Large-scale ranching — cattle and hogs — is also a major industry. The Ogallala Aquifer, a vast underground water source beneath the plains, has made irrigation possible, but it is being depleted at an unsustainable rate, raising serious questions about the future of farming in the region. The Great Plains also produces significant amounts of wind energy. The region’s history — of Indigenous nations, bison, cowboys, homesteaders, and dust storms — remains one of the most vivid and complex chapters in the American story.

Printable Worksheet

More Reading Worksheets

Explore our full library of history and reading comprehension worksheets.