![]() ![]() In an article in Century Magazine, he vividly portrayed the semi-arid zone flanking the 100th meridian, which saw annual average rainfall drop from 61 centimeters on its eastern edge to 46 centimeters on its western edge. That same year, Powell sought a wider audience, since his original 1878 report to Congress had been largely ignored. Geological Survey, owing to his knowledge of the geological makeup of North America, he did not succeed with his proposal. Although Powell had by then been named second director of the U.S. He proposed that each one be designated a “commonwealth” for the purpose of regulating its water usage, which would remain under federal control without regard to state lines. He created a map that he presented to the House of Representatives in 1890, delineating western watersheds. Powell’s original goal in describing the effective 100th meridian as a dividing line was to persuade the federal government to bear in mind the greater aridity when planning for settlement and development in the western territories, which would be very different than in the moisture-rich east. The line Powell noted as dividing the arid and humid sections of the continent has become known as the “effective” 100th meridian. This amount of rainfall per year is about the minimum that permits farming without irrigation, and it also greatly influences the types of crops that can be grown. In his 1878 “ Report on the Lands of the Arid Region of the United States,” Powell identified the “arid region” as the land west of the 51-centimeter-per-year rainfall line, which closely tracked the 100th meridian. The 100th meridian also corresponds roughly to the 600-meter elevation contour as the land rises from the Great Plains toward the Rockies. states, forming a partial boundary between Oklahoma and Texas. This line, the 100th meridian, runs from pole to pole and cuts through six U.S. In 1878, without benefit of the Landsat program, GPS or Google, and just a decade after the creation of the National Weather Service, John Wesley Powell first advanced the idea that the climatic boundary between the United States' humid East and arid West lay along a line “about midway in the Great Plains” - almost exactly 100 degrees longitude west of the prime meridian in Greenwich, England. The Great Plains are well known for their sweeping grasslands, which, to the east, eventually turn into great farms, and, to the west, give way to deserts and mountains. ![]()
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