Great American Desert

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Historic name for the Great Plains region of the USA, lying between the Mississippi River in the east and the Rocky Mountains in the west. Named by US government-appointed explorer Major Stephen Long in 1823, the term was used on 19th-century maps and deterred settlers of the 1840s and 1850s, who assumed that the region was infertile. The mislabelling contributed to the delayed settlement of the Great Plains, the last major area of the USA to be settled during the era of westward expansion. When land ran out in California and Oregon, the Homestead Act (1862) encouraged homesteaders into the Plains, a process accelerated by the opening of the Transcontinental Railroad in 1869.

Red, yellow, and green are the pan-African colours. Effective date: 24 September 1973. >>