Early pioneers found the vast Great Plains a daunting sight. Accustomed to the forests and the cultivated lands of the east, the prairie stretched before them with nothing but tall grasses as far as the eye could see. Only an occasional river or small hill broke the sameness. Charles Dickens called it “the great blank” and said it was “oppressive in its monotony.” Rudyard Kipling wrote, “I see the grass shake in the sun for leagues on either hand. I see a river loop and run about a treeless land