Great Plains

American  

noun

1. a semiarid region E of the Rocky Mountains, in the U.S. and Canada.

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Great Plains British  

plural noun

1. a vast region of North America east of the Rocky Mountains, extending from the lowlands of the Mackenzie River (Canada), south to the Big Bend of the Rio Grande

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Great Plains Cultural  

1. Grassland prairie region of North America, extending from Alberta, Saskatchewan, and Manitoba, in Canada, south through the west-central United States into Texas.

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In the 1930s, areas of the Great Plains were known collectively as the Dust Bowl. Poor agricultural practices led to depletion of topsoil, which was blown away in huge dust storms. The area was called the Great American Desert well into the nineteenth century.

Now characterized by huge ranches and farms, the Great Plains were long inhabited by Native Americans.

Example Sentences

See Examples For:

Great Plains

The so-called "Dust Bowl summers" of the 1930s -- especially that of 1936 -- were fueled by drought and extreme heat combining with overplowing across the Great Plains.

From Barron's ● Sep. 9, 2026

For thousands of years, bison roamed the Great Plains of North America and were an essential resource for Indigenous hunters.

From Science Daily ● Jun. 11, 2026

By the early 1990s, duck populations had exceeded the high of the 1950s; by 2015 almost 50 million waterfowl populated the prairie pothole region of the northern Great Plains.

From The Wall Street Journal ● May 1, 2026

“It extends from Southern California all the way to the Great Plains and from Canada to Mexico,” he said.

From Los Angeles Times ● Mar. 20, 2026

That’s because much of the intervening area of Texas and the southern Great Plains was dry and unsuitable for agriculture.

From "Guns, Germs, and Steel: The Fates of Human Societies" by Jared M. Diamond