A look at a detailed map of modern-day northeastern Colorado shows a recurring checkerboard of county roads, spaced one mile by one mile, broken by wide spaces of apparent empty. Dotted lines of blue parallel each other, weaving and intermittent, where water may sometimes flow - in spring or after summer thunderstorms - in otherwise dry gullies, washes and creekbeds.

The empty spaces may be able to remind us of what this land looked like when European-Americans first explored the area. The Stephen Long Expedition traveled and mapped the area around 1820. The maps produced by his expedition labeled a huge swath from Texas into northeastern Colorado "The Great American Desert," so unfamiliar was the aridity that dominates the climate of the area. It was believed to be a vast wasteland incapable of providing the necessities of a "civilized" life. Natives who had lived in the area for centuries might have disagreed.

The 1870s was a period of relative wetness, in the regular climatic cycle. Not to miss out on such a fortuitous time, boosters such as William Gilpin, territorial governor, attempted to ignore and wish away the historical aridity. Various explanations for the climate change were put forth, including the spurious belief that "rain follows the plow," that the turning of the virgin sod released trapped moisture, resulting in increased precipitation. Gilpin declared that there was an underground ocean merely waiting to be mined by settlers (thereby anticipating and inverting the song "Horse With No Name" by some one hundred years). These claims were trumpeted to entice settlers to the area, who were then forced to leave in large numbers as the normal arid pattern of weather reasserted itself.