Nebraska Studies
Nebraska Studies: Homestead Act: Searching for Water: Windmills
A description of how watermills work and how they were used on the Great Plains.
University of Groningen
American History: Outlines: Machines Help Farmers
Read about the advances made in agriculture during the last part of the 19th century which allowed for the increase in production of farm products.
Nebraska Studies
Nebraska Studies: Building a Sod House
Here's great information on building sod houses. You can even watch a video of a famous two-story sod house that stood until 1967.
Texas State Historical Association
Texas State Historical Association: Agriculture
Read about the history of the agricultural industry and how it shaped the great state of Texas throughout the nineteenth and twentieth centuries.
US National Archives
Laura Ingalls Wilder Teaching Unit: Pioneer Life With Laura
A great lesson using the books of Laura Ingalls Wilder to teach about pioneer life on the plains. Filled with before reading and during reading activities and questions.
Smithsonian Institution
National Museum of American History: Our Story: Life in a Sod House
Imagine moving into a house made out of sod that you and your family had to build in the middle of a prairie! Find great information and activities that will help you understand how it felt to live on the prairie.
Other
Postbellum African American Society and Culture: Black Migration
From the Encyclopedia of American Social History. Read about the black migration to the West, primarily Kansas and Oklahoma after the end of Reconstruction and the institution of black codes in the South.