Centennial by James A. Michener

any farmer knows that to produce even miserly corn or wheat requires twenty-one. The extremes of temperature can be unbearable, from one hundred and nine in August to thirty-eight below in February.
    It is a land subject to wild whims of nature. Sometimes a score of years will pass with almost no rain, so that crops perish and organized society stands in peril. At sixty- or seventy-year intervals unpredictable winds whip over the prairies, exhausting the land and everything that grows upon it. Duststorms greater than hurricanes and more persistent can sweep the region for months on end, filling all openings with grit. And as if this were not enough, at unexpected times and for unexplained reasons gigantic swarms of locusts can suddenly emerge from the west and darken the sky for three or four days running. They swarm in the air, more extensive than storm clouds, and capriciously they alight, eating every green thing that stands in their path. Then they rise and fly mysteriously on, landing and eating a few more times, then vanishing as inexplicably as they appeared.
    But there is one thing about this land. Theoretically, it can be farmed. It is rich in minerals. It is the inheritor of two great mountain ranges; over several hundred million years it conserved deposits sent down by the mountains and is entitled to the richness it possesses. The growing season is adequate for most crops: late frost on May 10, first frost on September 27, with an average 139 frost-free days in between for the prudent farmer. The governing rule is simple.
    “If you can lead water onto this land, you can grow anything.”
    “Well, you wouldn’t try apples or oranges, would you?”
    “No, but only because they can be grown better somewhere else.”
    Corn and wheat? Magnificent. Sorghum? The best. Garden vegetables? None better.
    “Like I said, you can grow anything. But two things grow better here than anywhere else on earth.”
    “Such as?”
    “Melons of any kind. You name it. And great big juicy sugar beets.”
    The land cries for water. The bleakest desert, even the forbidding land about the two pillars, will flourish like a garden if only water can be got to it. Consequently, the crucial problem of this area will be the attempt of man to lead water onto his intractable land. If he can do that, if only he can do that, he will have at his disposal a paradise.
    And finally there is the river, a sad, bewildered nothing of a river. It carries no great amount of water, and when it has some it is uncertain where it wants to take it. No ship can navigate it, nor even a canoe, with reasonable assurance. It is the butt of more jokes than any other river on earth, and the greatest joke is to call it a river at all. It’s a sand bottom, a wandering afterthought, a useless irritation, a frustration, and when you’ve said all that, it suddenly rises up, spreads out to a mile wide, engulfs your crops and lays waste your farms.
    Its name is as flat as its appearance, the South Platte, yet for a while it was the highway of empire. It was the course of stirring adventure and the means whereby the adventurers lived. Once mighty enough to help build a continent, it is now a mean, pestiferous bother.
    “I swear to God, sometimes you can tell where that damned river is only by spotting cottonwoods that line its bank.”
    “You’re right, and those useless trees drink far more of the water than they’re entitled to.”
    CAUTION TO US EDITORS. Last April, when we started this project, I half warned you on the telephone that my investigations might wander somewhat far afield. But “I could not imagine how provocative the history of this little town would prove to be, how involved I would become with the land, the animals, the people. And certainly I did not anticipate that to report to you properly, I would need to start with the origin of the earth.
    When you face the problem of dating that origin, you will have to bite the bullet. What I have given you