They call it the high plains, but we always used to just call it the prairie. Plains refered to the Lower wetter greener place. Not quite grasslands, but the plains were the type between the Grasslands and the prairie.
The prairie is the part that is 4000+ ft high, and is a near desert. Snow on the ground 4 months of the year, a bit of green when the late-July-early-August rains come, and the rest of the year just looks exactly like that wikipedia picture. A few scrub brushes, a scragly choke-cherry here and there, most of the creek beds are dry 99.99% of the time and you can see the mountains to the west whether they are 2 or 100 miles away. I grew up around that type of place, and I must have fixed many hundreds of those fence posts for money as a kid.
I though I was going to come in here to say I hadn’t, but turns out eastern New Mexico is prairie, according to Wiki, so I guess I have. Who woulda thunk it?
I forgot to add that I took a bunch of pictures of it, but no one seemed very impressed when I showed them at home. It’s just way too big to fit in the camera!
Unless you count the flat bits of Ohio, I haven’t. I’m afraid I’ve seen nothing of the US between Indianapolis (in January, no less) and western California. I would like to change that one of these days.
I’ve been in some areas of Florida that look like that (without the hills) and some of them are called prairie, though I don’t know that it’s technically correct. But the actual high plains/prairie? Only from an airplane.
I was first exposed as a geology student I suppose. Endless field trips either to or across the area. Spent a few years working out of the Texas Panhandle, logging wells across Oklahoma, Kansas, New Mexico and Colorado. While there I became a bit of a student of the area’s history, the Llano Estacado, and looked upon each job as an opportunity to explore even more of what was a remarkable chapter in this country’s migration west.
I married into a family that ranches extensively across the plains. We’ve a pretty big chunk of it and lease a fair bit more. Getting into the nooks and crannies, the old settlememts, the abandoned homesteads, it just fascinates me endlessly. I can show you Anasazi paintings on our cliff walls and walking down a few miles there are cowboy scratchings, sometimes with pictures, from wanderings in the 1800s and later cattle drives. Some folks are bored by the plains. I think they’re magnificent.
I always heard the opposite–that “prairies” referred to the wet tall-grass prairies that we have here in Illinois, whereas the dry short-grass steppe farther west was the “Great Plains”.
I love the Great Plains (by my definition), but the prairie bores me, because I’m too close to it and see it all the time. Most of it is corn fields anyway.
I’ve never seen it. I grew up in Florida and the farthest west I’ve been in a car is Laredo. I’ve flown to California multiple times but have never seent he in between close-up. I keep meaning to do that one day…
Nope, at least I don’t think so. The only really open land I’ve seen was from Denver to Fort Collins, and Fort Collins to Cheyenne and I don’t think that fits the definition? Also Arizona, but I assume that was desert only.
Born & bred Dutch here. Cool picture of a remarkable landscape, thanks for drawing my attention to it.
The flatness, my Dutch eyes can deal with. The dryness, not so much. The sheer expanse of the nothingness, of the vast, vast emptiness…very hard to take in.
Guessing from the vegetation and fencing, somebody who grazes livestock.
My family is from Nebraska, and I grew up there, and they own lots of land in Nebraska, Colorado, and Kansas. Most of the time, the prarie just looks empty and bare… and then there are days when you look around for miles and look up and the sky just goes on forever.
Sort of the same feeling you can get out in the ocean, really.
Back in '96 we drove from Ontario to Alberta, mostly taking a shortcut along US Highway 2 so that we could get cheaper fuel and not go north of the Great Lakes. I’d never seen the Prairies before; I found it fascinating. Big Sky Country indeed, just like my mother said.
Seen it? I grew up in it. I live in it. That photo link that **Wolfman ** posted? I’ve been there! I don’t mean I’ve been to a spot like that, I mean I have been to that spot! It’s north of I-76, up near the Weld County Line. My brother and I went prairie dog hunting up there (shortly after some guy from Denver sucked a bunch of Boulder County prairie dogs into a big truck and then released 'em just about where that photo was taken.)
Nothing more to add – just wanted to say, “Holy crap! I’ve been there!”
It looks an awful lot like the view out my back door, too.
I’ve driven across parts of it a few times. The view that impressed me the most was approaching from the west, coming over some mountains (the Divide? I don’t know).
Suddenly everything just opened up. There was nothing ahead of us or on either side – just land and sky forever. It felt like flying.
I love it. I love those parts of South Dakota, Colorado, Wyoming, Kansas, Nebraska where you notice a single lonely bush off in the distance because it’s the only vegetation in sight. And those abandoned buildings – little sheds and houses. Awesome, that someone built and used them.
Nope, and I was born and raised in Illinois. I’ve seen some “restored grasslands” within the city of Chicago, and plenty of corn and soybean fields, but never seen either prairie or High Plains, no matter how we define it.