Great American Desert

Examples of Great American Desert in the following topics:

• The Transcontinental Railroads

  • Begun right before the American Civil War, its construction was considered to be one of the greatest American technological feats of the nineteenth century.
  • Known as the "Pacific Railroad" when it opened, it served as a vital link for trade, commerce, and travel and opened up vast regions of the North American heartland for settlement.
  • The railroad also led to a great decline of traffic on the Oregon and California Trail, which had helped populate much of the West.
  • The sale of land grants and the transport provided for timber and crops led to the rapid settling of the "Great American Desert."
  • Most of these Chinese workers were represented by a Chinese "boss" who acted as a translator, collected salaries for his crew, enforced discipline, and relayed orders from an American general supervisor.

• Subtropical Deserts and Chaparral

  • There are several types of deserts including high-pressure deserts, mid-continent deserts, rain-shadow deserts, and upwelling deserts.
  • High-pressure deserts include the Sahara, Arabian, Thar, and Kalahari deserts, and the desert regions within the Arctic and Antarctic circles.
  • Modern examples of mid-continent deserts are the Turkmenistan, Gobi, and Great Australian deserts.
  • Examples of rain-shadow deserts include the Mojave desert in the rain-shadow of the Sierra Nevada, the Patagonian desert in the rain-shadow of the Andes, and the Iranian desert in the rain-shadow of the Zagros mountains.
  • Examples include the Atacama desert, the Western Sahara, and the Namib desert.

• Harassment by Britain

  • In addition, the British in Canada supported American Indians in their fight against further U.S. expansion in the Great Lakes region.
  • The crew of the HMS Leopard pursued, attacked, and boarded the American frigate looking to impress deserters from the Royal Navy.
  • Of the four crew members removed from the American vessel and tried for desertion, one was subsequently hanged.
  • The Chesapeake-Leopard Affair created an uproar among Americans and strident calls for war with Great Britain, but these quickly subsided.
  • A British naval officer looks for deserters among a surly American crew in this 1884 drawing.

• Great Basin Culture

  • Between 10,500 BCE and 9,500 BCE (11,500 - 12,500 years ago), the broad-spectrum, big game hunters of the Great Plains began to focus on a single animal species: the bison, an early cousin of the American Bison.
  • These bison-oriented indigenous peoples mostly inhabited a portion of the North American continent known as the "cultural region" of the Great Basin.
  • As a result of these similarities, anthropologists use the terms "Desert Archaic" or more simply "The Desert Culture" to refer collectively to the Great Basin tribes.
  • Desert Archaic peoples required great mobility to follow seasonally available food supplies.
  • Because Great Basin peoples did not come into contact with European-Americans or African Americans until comparatively later in North American history, many groups were able to maintain their traditional tribal religions.

• Slavery During the Revolution

  • African Americans—slave and free—served on both sides during the Revolutionary War.
  • Many African Americans viewed the American Revolution as an opportunity to fight for their own liberty and freedom from slavery.
  • George Washington issued an order to recruiters in July 1775, ordering them not to enroll “any deserter from the Ministerial army, nor any stroller, negro or vagabond.”
  • Others traveled to Great Britain.
  • Many African Americans who left with Loyalists for Jamaica or St.

• The Nile River

  • The northern section of the river flows almost entirely through desert, from Sudan into Egypt, a country whose civilization has depended on the "Great River" since ancient times .
  • High-quality building stones were abundant: the ancient Egyptians quarried limestone all along the Nile valley, granite from Aswan, and basalt and sandstone from the wadis (valleys) of the eastern desert.
  • Deposits of decorative stones such as porphyry, greywacke, alabaster, and carnelian dotted the eastern desert and were collected even before the First Dynasty.
  • In the ancient Egyptian language, the Nile is called Ḥ'pī or Iteru, meaning "great river," represented by these hieroglyphs.
  • This map of ancient Egypt shows the path of the great Nile River, along with major cities and sites of the Dynastic period (c. 3150 BCE to 30 BCE).

• The North Africa Campaign

  • It included campaigns fought in the Libyan and Egyptian deserts (Western Desert Campaign or Desert War), in Morocco and Algeria (Operation Torch), and Tunisia (Tunisia Campaign).
  • The Western Desert Campaign, also known as the Desert War, was the initial stage of the North African Campaign.
  • While the American commanders favored Operation Sledgehammer, landing in Occupied Europe as soon as possible, the British commanders believed that such a course would end in disaster.
  • During Operation Torch, American, Vichy French and German navy vessels fought the Naval Battle of Casablanca, ending in a decisive American victory.
  • Identify the effectiveness of the Western Desert Campaign, Operation Torch, and the Tunisia Campaign.

• The North African Front

  • It included campaigns fought in the Libyan and Egyptian deserts (Western Desert Campaign, also known as the Desert War) and in Morocco and Algeria (Operation Torch) and Tunisia (Tunisia Campaign).
  • The Western Desert Campaign or the Desert War, took place in the Western Desert of Egypt and Libya and was a theatre in the North African Campaign during the Second World War.
  • After the British defeats in the Balkan Campaign, the Western Desert Campaign had become more important to British strategy.
  • Operation Torch was the British-American invasion of French North Africa during the North African Campaign of the Second World War which started on 8 November 1942.
  • During Operation Torch, American, Vichy French and German navy vessels fought the Naval Battle of Casablanca, ending in an American victory.

• Earthworks

  • Many of the first works created in the deserts of Nevada, New Mexico, Utah or Arizona were ephemeral in nature and now only exist as video recordings or photographic documents.
  • Perhaps the most well-known artist who worked in the genre of Land Art was the American artist Robert Smithson, whose 1968 essay "The Sedimentation of the Mind: Earth Projects" provided a critical framework for the movement as a reaction to the disengagement of Modernism from social issues as represented by the critic Clement Greenberg.
  • Smithson arranged rock, earth, salt crystals, mud and algae to form a 1500 ft counterclockwise coil protruding into Great Salt Lake in northern Utah, U.S. .
  • The sculpture is sometimes visible and sometimes submerged, depending upon the water level of the Great Salt Lake.

• The End of the Open Range

  • The prairie and desert lands of what is today Mexico and the western United States, were well-suited to "open range" grazing.
  • For example, American bison had been a mainstay of the diet for the Native Americans in the Great Plains for centuries.
  • There was some reduction of land on the Great Plains open to grazing.
  • As the United States government acquired western territories, land not yet placed into private ownership was publicly-owned and freely available for grazing cattle; although, conflicting land claims and periodic warfare with Native Americans of the Great Plains placed some practical limits on grazing areas at various times.
  • Thus, after this time, ranchers also began to fence off their land and negotiated individual grazing leases with the American government so that they could keep better control of the pasture land available to their own animals.