I had a best friend that lived out there, in Deighton, KS. I asked why he chose to live there. no restaurants. no hardware stores. just large cow/calf feedlots. He loved it out there. I visited every year. Now I go back out there on my own. The austere silent beauty is something you cannot understand until you GET IT. A dust devil kicks up from a corn field. A coyote crosses the road. hardly no one around. I love it out there. I would never live there, but I go back on purpose to be alone, quiet and contemplate my life.
I went to school in Scott City. Grew up in Friend it's gone now. Dighton was one of our rivals. Did you ever make to Scott Park north of Scott City appx 10 miles. Such a lovely park or Cedar Bluffs Great for skiing and fishing?
The early Christians have monasteries in the desert for the exact same reason. The environment helps people contemplate. I think st Anthony's Monastery in the Egyptian desert is one example.
One of the best features of this area is the lack of light pollution at night. On a cloudless night you get a real appreciation of how many stars are visible with the naked eye that you don’t get living in/near population centers. It can be humbling at times.
I’m 30 years old and most of the stars I have seen are from movies and video games. Lighting up empty parking lots is more important to the human race I guess…. Cool beans. Metaverse is the future I suppose.
I was near Artesia, NM when I was in the oilfield, away from the rig which was always lit up like Times Square, and the stars were shockingly bright. Unnerving how dark it was.
Isolated, and we love it. Clean air, no traffic jams unless you count herds of antelope crossing the road. Friendly people, and open spaces. The weather…there is no bad weather, just bad clothes. Thanks for the video from rural Wyoming.
@@rachelmartin3574 not to mention the lack of anything to do. I was born and raised on Kodiak Island Alaska with less than 50 people in my village... and I thought wyoming was so ugly and boring I fell asleep while my wife drove... did I mention it was 1 pm?
I grew up in Lubbock and was surprised frankly to see it mentioned as the largest city in the area (it's so rare for Lubbock to be the largest anything). One thing you didn't mention that is also weather related. While the weather fronts may drop all their moisture west of the Rockies, they continue on east bringing their cold with them. This cold air moving east collides with the hot, moist air coming up from the Gulf to create huge thunderstorms that often contain tornadoes. Thus this underpopulated area is the beginning of Tornado Alley. And BTW, when that cold air from Canada moves south and causes the temperature to drop 20 or 30 degrees in a few hours, we call it a "Blue Norther" because the northern sky turns a deep blue as the cold front starts getting closer.
Harsh winter to many, is like water to a witch in Wizard of OZ . We need longer and harder winters to drive out those who have moved there recently and convince them to move out of the area in Dakotas, Wyoming and Montana.
I've driven OTR through these states. Being from Philadelphia, I never experienced the sky like it is out there. One night I had to pull over to check the trailer. I looked up and was just shocked at the actual amount of everything you can see out there. It's truly amazing, especially if you grew up in a city.
It is my favorite part of the country to drive through with exception of the texas part. Basically nobody around for hundreds of miles, no traffic, and the truck stop parking is pretty easy to find even late at night. I did something similar when I parked out on the I70 in one of those parking cut outs in the rockies between Grand Junction and Vale. It is absolutely amazing.
Hi!! I'm also from Philadelphia. I drove from Philly to Colorado one time and loved how quiet and serene the middle was. Absolutely amazing. I loved it.
I live in Illinois and bush fly to this area every chance I get. The solitude, silence, gentle wind, warm sun, dry air and, in towns, friendly people cannot be beat. On summer nights, the full moon is as large as a house, and the temperature thermostat-perfect. It is difficult to explain how inspiring and internally settling the experience of nature without noise can be - such a welcome respite from the fanatical bustle, noise, crime and bad manners of Chicago. When I retire (soon), I will buy an old dog and some of the area's abundant and inexpensive land; build myself a cabin with a little grass landing strip; and then enjoy this experience for the remaining days of my life.
I grew up on the South Side of Chicago and went to school at the University of Wyoming and never made a better choice in my life. We retired to Laramie, WY a few years ago and love it. When you are looking for a place to retire look at Wyoming. One thing among other advantages, no state income tax.
@@shaneanderson1229 Yes there is wind in Wyoming but that just means shorter takeoff and landing runs. There is plenty of general aviation here. I'm not sure that there is any more wind,, year around, here than in much of the Great Plains. That said, there may be more days per year, depending on your aircraft, that you'd choose to stay on the ground. IMO that is only one variable in the decision along with others like hanger costs, availability of maintenance and fuel, etc. as well as the other livability variables like availability of medical care, whatever kind of recreation you enjoy, cost of living, taxes, etc..
Top notch, dude. This video not only covers geography but touches on meteorology, history and sociology. I'm sending this to my 16 year-old British nephews who I do my best to educate on their American roots without overwhelming them. This video covers a lot of bases in under 10 min. Well done.
You said you were going to go into why so many of those larger population centers are in Texas. Well, I live in Texas and I know why. 1 little word, 3 little letters... o i l
Oil explains most of the current, rapid growth in the Midland/Odessa area, but the biggest population center of Lubbock mostly grew from the influence of their major public university, Texas Tech. No other city in this entire region possesses an academic institution even close to the size of Texas Tech, which is why Lubbock has seen steady population and economic growth through the decades that's paralleled the university's growth, with Tech today being considered one of the best research institutes in the US for studies like agriculture, weather, chemical engineering, and animal/food science. It's quite interesting too, and no coincidence either, that the largest university in a region known for its extreme weather, agriculture, oil, and ranching would end up with world-class education into these fields today. Thanks for highlighting this massive, yet relatively unknown US region, and shout-out to Texas Tech for being the underrated, higher education backbone of this area, but I might just be a little biased to them as an alum 😉
@@christophercjc2 Yes, you may be. I am NOT a 'fan' of the uni I graduated from. Didn't hate it, didn't dream it was hell (that was a community college I went to my first year of college 1971-1972) but didn't like it that much. About that community college, BTW, I met a lady in the 1980s who worked on a different part, and on campus. I told her that I dreamed I died and went to hell and it was CTC. She loved it and agreed 100%. My roommate's step-daughter-in-law graduated from Tech last spring, I have no problem with Tech like I do with the giant, monster uni in my home town.
Some of the other big shale oil plays in the US like the Niobrara and the Bakken are also in this region, which has led to a population increase in some of the other states in the area.
If you ever spend time in that area you’ll notice how quite it is in some places. I stopped by chimney rock in Nebraska one time and it was unbelievable how quiet it was walking out of the visitor center. No car engine, no wind, no plane, no voices, just absolute silence. Years later I went to badlands national park and stayed late after everyone left, same thing, super quiet. It’s a weird part of the country.
I live in Nebraska. That is one of the reasons it's such a cool place. It's quiet and you can be alone with your thoughts. You can get that stunning photo of the sunset because you don't have a dozen people crowding each other. All we have to do is convince the rest of the country that it is flat and boring. Bwahahaha.
I'm interested in this chimney rock. I live in the blue ridge Mt s. In North Carolina. We have a chimney rock about 3 miles away. It's a large granite formation hanging off a sheer Rockface. You can take the stairs or sometimes an elevator to the top. The funny thing is more than a chimney it looks like a giant phallic structure. Lots of girth and well defined mushroom tip
Sounds like a epic arbitrary road trip... Chimney Rock NC, to Chimney Rock NB... but I bet NC is better anyway. Yalls is just the Rock, meanwhile mine also has a river that flows into a lake, lake Lure, thats nestled between the mountains. It's where they shot a few scenes form Dirty Dancing. Sure yours looks bigger but mine looks more like a Peni#q
Hi Geoff; I was born, raised, and went to college in the band you are covering. Your reasons for the sparse density at the end of the video are not incorrect, but you missed the single most important reason these lands have so few people. Simple put, these tend to be grasslands or low yielding dry farm land. Because they were historically dominated by ranching, really large tracts of land were required for people to make a viable living. For example, if you had lived in eastern Nebraska in the early 20th century, 160 acres (1/4 of a square mile) would have been a viable farm. But 160 acres in western Nebraska would not have been a viable cattle grazing operation. It is likely you would have needed at least 10 times that to survive. Additionally, with the exception of oil in west Texas and southeastern New Mexico (Permian Basin), natural gas and success with oil production came to this land area much later in the 20th century. So there wasn't a lot of opportunity for the area to be more densely populated. Otherwise though, this was a good piece of geographic history.
This. TX panhandle area is known to have the XIT ranch. When reading about it, it was insane just how much land was granted to one ranch (price of building the state capital). I'm not even sure if that is the biggest ranch of all time. Today its just a name for a bbq/event which I recommend if on a trip and it happens to be held for that time. Particularly if traveling from Denver, CO to DFW, TX (Dalhart is the town to stop by; a lot of us especially for electronics and medical make trips to calibrate equipment, shout out to Colorado Springs as well).
I lived in the Black Hills area (Sturgis and Rapid City) for over a year and I can confirm the weather is extremely bipolar. In addition, there are a lot of cases where we don't trust the weather forcasts because there are so many variables which makes weather predictions very difficult. One day you'll expect sunny days and then there's a blizzard.
Another reason why it's so sparsely populated is that agricultural practices have changed, particularly in the past 30 years. When great grandparents migrated to Canada in 1871 they were given a 1/4 section of land (160 acres) and it was a daunting task. It took him 11 years to get to the point where he was able to farm 100 of those acres. My grandfather homesteaded a mile south of him and it took him 3 years to 120 acres and the rest was for grazing his cattle and farm yard. My cousin who was the last in our family to farm full-time and retired 7 or 8 years ago farmed 3500 acres (about 5 1/2 sections =5 1/2 square miles) and he would have had to increase his acres and machinery and infrastructure to make it profitable. His daughters are working in large cities and his son is working for the railroad and none had an interest in taking over the farm. He rents his land and infrastructure and moved to a small city and lives off the rent from the farm. In 1970 the average farm size in the prairie provinces was 386 acres and in 2020 it was 870 acres. Also relevant is the average farm family in 1970 was 8 (mother, father and 6 children), now it is 4.5. Thanks for the video, I found it really interesting!!!
Less family want to take over farms. The lure of living in a toxic city is insane. Brain washing, laziness and financial greed. I am from Toronto and moved to Edmonton in 2012. In 2017 I moved 1 hr west to a village by 3 decent bodies of water. Country living is great 👍. I commute to Edm for work. Sunrise ride in the A.M. and sunsets on the way home 🏡 I have great respect for farmers.
I think farming would once again be more profitable to mom and pop operations if the US would actually subsidize crops and livestock appropriately. We don’t need a diet of primarily high fructose corn syrup and soybean oil…. Those subsidies should go to families raising organic meat
City living has nothing to do with laziness or greed. It has to do with career choice. You get absolutely nothing out of living in the country side unless you just wanna be a truck driver the rest of your life.
I live in this area, WY specifically. I love it, the lack of people is one of the main reasons I love it. Your absolutely right about the temperatures though, during Christmas this year it went from -40 degrees with a wind chill to 50 degrees within 24 hours
I moved to this area 2 years ago, in central Kansas. The quiet is priceless. I was born and raised out in the country southwest of Houston in a small town area that is slowly being consumed by Houston as a suburban hub. The population in Texas has just passed 30 million mark. Bought a house that needed minimal work at an amazing price in a small town of like 125 people. No store in town. Closest town with gas is 20 miles away. Closest Walmart is 39 miles away. I absolutely love it.
My closest gas station & post office is 16 miles away and Walmart and grocery stores are 32 miles away. I'm in the mountains with no neighbors for several miles. It's pure nirvana.
Two points of overlay… one, this region has some of the most prolific and abundant petroleum resources; and two, the region can also be extended further north into Canada. Excellent video, keep them coming. 👏🏻
With all due resect, I believe that what you called " the eastern united states", is actually 'the east half'. Which is not the same. I don't think geographers include part of the Midwest as Eastern. Furthermore, "the west coast" would only include coastal states.
This "Belt" was historically known as "the Great American Desert" due to the arid, non-arable land that dominates the strip. (Note when it was named, Desert just meant anywhere you couldn't farm, not just the dusty, sandy environment typically associated with the word today)
@@TheKeksadler "Desert" is about annual precipitation. It's widely accepted, for instance, that the largest desert in the world is in Antarctica, where its cold temperature freezes the water vapor, eliminating the possibility of rain or snow for most of the year.
That was my first thought when I saw the picture... It's either hot arid or cold arid. Either way, I don't want to grow there and neither do the plants!
I'm surprised that you didn't mention the depopulation effects of the dust bowl. There were agricultural activities in the area prior to the 30's. There are still ghost towns on the plains in my home state of Colorado from that era.
I was surprised he didn't mention that either. The Dust Bowl and the Great Depression hit that region of the country hard. Between 1930 and 1940, 3.5 million people moved out of the Plains states.
@@FlintIronstag23 Yes, as interesting as the Native American situation was in the 1800's the Dust Bowl is what really set the area back. It was the realization that the farming methods in the eastern US (with considerably more rainfall) would not work year in and year out. When drought set in the farmers broke out even more grass to try to make up the shortfall in grain production and when the wind inevitably kicked up much of the topsoil got blown away. This caused lots of folks to pack up the old car or truck and move to California.
I agree! People think of the dust bowl in Oklahoma but I know families from South Dakota that it drove to move away. I think the dust bowl afflicted most of the area and drove away many settlers. This was likely much more important than Native American resistance.
Fun fact about the Texas portion of this region. It produces about thirty percent of the nation's beef. I live in Canyon which is just south of Amarillo and we have several feedlots along with with many, many ranches. That may contribute to why the Texas portion of this region is better populated. Something to be said about ag business.
You also have the Permian Basin, which holds some of the largest oil fields in the country, in the southernmost part of this region, which is why Midland, Odessa, and San Angelo are some of the biggest towns here.
@@ryanjardee9235 yup, I didnt mention Oil even though its the bigger money maker in the region. TX Panhandle has a few oil/Natural gas plants north of Amarillo mainly in Dumas, Borger, and Pampa.
@@lowbudgethost8046 I lived in Borger in the late 1950s. Not only did we have dust, but we also had carbon black. A nearby plant would belch out that stuff on a windy day and blanket the entire area. My mother would hang out the clothes white and bring them in black.
I lived in San Angelo TX for 15 years and traveled through much of that area from Texas all the way to Wyoming and South Dakota. In the bigger cities it feels like any other medium to large sized towns, but once you get out of the city and it's tiny town after tiny town dotted among ranchland or just plain wilderness, you definitely feel the emptiness.
Another factor was the Dust Bowl. Prior to that the area of W. Kansas, and the Oklahoma/Texas Panhandles saw a boom period due to a period of wetter years and the advent of sod-busting plows creating an agricultural boom. Around 2.5 million people moved out of the area between 1930-36. The Worst Hard Time: The Untold Story of Those Who Survived the Great American Dust Bowl by Timothy Egan is a fantastic account
Super interesting! In France we also have a whole area across the country called the “empty diagonal”, and the reasons for it are quite similar. It crosses France from North-East to South-West, and some of the “states” on that section have under 25 inhabitants per square kilometer, and it’s pretty much due to the harsh conditions (no oceanic or Mediterranean influence) and rougher terrain.
I just drove through this part of the country and in some parts I’d say there are zero people per sq km. I say a sign that said no gas stations for 89 miles. North of El Paso, Texas up to Carlsbad New Mexico is barren of people like nowhere I’ve been
@@pfranks75 please let me say, “Most people just don’t want to live within such extremes”. For me, this area is just fine, because most people don’t want to live here.
I come from England and this seems amazing. Here's some stats: Area of US central belt = 350,000 sq miles. Area of England = 50,350 sq miles (a little less than that of Alabama). Population of US central belt = 3.1 million Population of England = 56 million This might explain why there have been so many English explorers - we just needed to get away and clear our heads a little! Hello to everyone in the gigantic and beautiful country of the United States.
I really liked this young mans presentment in this vid but I just wanted to say Thank You as well for your contribution in this comment. It really helped to put things into perspective concerning England. Cheers and Hello right back at you.
Thank you for the info. I had no idea England was that densely populated. The castles and English rock musicans influence are very facinating tho. It's coincidental to your comment that I met a very polite English lady this past summer in the northern tier of this belt (where I'm from). She was commenting about the fresh air and similar things you mentioned about the great vastness of this area, while we were poolside in the Badlands on a warm day with open country almost all around us. Something I'll never forget her kindness and appreciation, to remind myself not to take for granted living here all my life.
Thanks for sharing the cool perspective. Not to dampen your friendly and informative response, but the real reason England had so many "explorers" (ie, colonizers, ie, occupiers) is rather complicated but can be oversimplified to white supremacy. I just want to mention this because it is something that my country - the USA - still struggles with significantly. Cheers.
@@lukasalihein You are a system brainwashed, unappreciative and victimized soul my man. You should realize the poor folks who settled in this region before any of the modern luxuries we are accustomed to. Some of those oppressed people are my white ancestors, who only had the last pick of this unsettled territory in the US. Why was it not yet settled? ??. For exactly the reasons in this vid. My ancestors along with many others, including diverse races of darker skin, slaved their way on farmsteads through everything from extreme drought and poverty of the great depression to floods and total crop loss due to nature's wrath. They sacrificed their health and life, many lived a short life to feed this nation and others from here still put food on the table to this day , even for an entitled victimized false data entry person as yourself on UA-cam. It's a sad disgrace you've been raised to believe all the garbage that is intentionally brought on by your influencers in life. I don't see anyone by skin color, only their will in life, and you should try opening your eyes sometime to other's hardships and how they overcame them, instead of wasting your time pouting on a YT comment section about a politically directed race narrative only intended to divide people in this country.
I spent part of my youth in this area. It's freezing cold in winter, -30F below zero is not unusual and it's blazing hot in summer, 110F is not unusual. The cold jet stream from Canada frequently collides with the warm, moist weather from the Gulf of Mexico plus the Rocky Mountains acting as a wind tunnel and you get tornadoes (this area is part of Tornado Alley). We used to see funnel clouds and dust devils all the time during spring, summer and fall. Because of the sparse population you hardly hear about tornadoes touching down but talk to a farmer or rancher and yes tornadoes hit the ground in this area all the time.
The 3 percent are the most brutally tough people, they deal with the toughest abstracts of weather all year around, and I give a lot of respect to them.
Moisture in the air helps regulate temperature. It’s why temperatures stay steady on coastlines but central deserts have greater extremes. Like you said, craters of the moon National park in the Idaho desert is over 100 degrees in the summer and freezes solid during the winter
@@owenbrasseaux9917 we had -30°already before Christmas, for almost 2 weeks, water froze 4 times one day but we got it going before it really froze. So hate the winters but love Montana so much that I put up with them. I was pleasently surprised that my electric bill stayed under $400.00. Our REA (YVEC) is the best one in Montana. Our pastureb(at our previous res) used to butt up to service center and I would know when they went out in the middle of a freezing, stormy and/or nasty night. Always prayed til they were home. Had many friends that lost legs, arms and their lives making sure we had electricity. Bless those linemen that put there lives on the line daily for all of their members. And yep wouldn't live anywhere else. Oh yeah and we always have fires in the summer. But now Washington and Montana are red well be able to get that rectified also.
For some people this is like a promotional video for the area, few or no people sound pretty good to me. Not having to worry about bothering your neighbours or having your neighbour bothering you 🔊🎵🎶🥁 sounds great.
If that's your main concern you can also live in the forests of Montana. But as always in sparesly inhabited areas, you have problems with infrastructure, such as health services, doctors and others services too. If you don't need that it may be great for you to live there.
@@hoodyniszwangsjacke3190 A lot of the people who want to live free of society and commotion caused by other people are generally self sustaining and don’t need services from other people like that. People learn to avoid being injured in such a way that you won’t need to go to the ER, and the active lifestyle of maintaining your homestead keeps you healthy enough to avoid being sick. It’s truly a liberating way of life, and allows you to connect with Mother Nature and live a wholesome life, something cities and urban environments just can’t provide
very true. living in the southern part of the belt myself, my biggest complaint is the weather. there is plenty of space but it is incredibly dry and hot for most of the year. not my favorite combination of weather, but a lot of people enjoy it.
It cool I got my own house here at 19. Having lots of space is nice but I don't think many people would actually like living here its kinda tough sometimes
I'm from Tennessee, and lived in this belt (western Nebraska) for a couple years. I've recently moved back to Tennessee, and I miss the Nebraska Sandhills so much. The stars were amazing. The people were extremely kind (as long as you made an effort to fit in. They like their way of life.) Different breed of people for sure.
Im from inbetween Lincoln and Grand Island, and it ain’t a far drive to get to pure emptiness. Last time I was really in the Sandhills was summer of 2020, and I remember being on this empty road with pastures and an abandoned church with a cow skull on the fence. It was like 95° and we could only get PBS for radio. The whole area is amazing to visit
The weather aspect is pretty interesting. I live in the Texas Panhandle and one of the main things I hate about it is the wind. The fall and spring sees 40-50 mph winds pretty often. With a dry climate, it causes a lot of dirt to be blown around in the air. After watching this, the cool thing is I guess I can consider myself part of the 1%.
In Nebraska Wind is our mountains to climb. One morning I walked out of the house, and I fell over, the wind was not blowing. Nothing like a day -20 below and the wind iat 40 with gusts to 60. And two days later no wind and 40 above. A land where a person needs a different coat for every day of the week.
My mom and dad lived in Pampa Texas during World War II.... at the end of the war my mom said take me back to eastern Oklahoma, I can't stand this wind any longer.
I used to visit Amarillo quite a bit for work. It was an aircraft manufacturer and there are strict controls in place to make sure random debris didn't get sucked up into engine intakes and such, therefore we were required to keep a list of everything we had on our person to be accountable for everything, including the list. Wouldn't you know on one of them dang windy days my list blew away from me when walking between buildings 🤦♂This poor inspector was stuck out there with me until 10pm before we found it. I sent that man case of beer for his troubles and I don't think it was near enough to make up for it.
That empty belt coincides with the outlaw trail of the old West that stretched along the same path from Mexico to the Canada border. Also it coincides with the great cattle drive trails. It was also the Southern route of the great buffalo herds that migrated there.
Good description of the Area some called the Dirt Meridian. In the 1890's there was a migration of German Speaking Russians who moved from the Steppes of Rusia to the Belt on both sides of the USA Canada border. They knew how to thrive in a land where you could reliably depend on one bumper crop every five years. They understood how to live on a short grass prairie. It is a land where social resources are few and far between. Driving 100 miles to the nearest hospital The nearest school is 40 miles away, the Internet is dial up. Road sign saying the next town is 80 miles down the road. A teenager living 40 miles west of the high school driving 40 east of town to pick up his date. Driving 100 mile with friends for a restaurant dinner and then a stop at a nice bar for and after dinner drink 50 mile away. A rancher's wife flying 150 miles in their plane to take her weekly piano lesson in Rappid City. A mother and daughter returning from a shopping trip to NY, driving from the Cheyenne airport to their ranch in their new clothes stopping in a pasture to help a ranch hand pull a calf. Five bed hospitals with no birthing room,. An seriously injured farmer taken by helicopter 200 miles to the nearest trauma center. Hopping in your airplane to go to town to pick up parts for their combine and then having to return to town a few hours later because the new part was defective. Snow drifts across country roads that remain impassable until May. Making three trips to town, 40 miles away in one day. The unlocked "Pool Hall" with a microwave, packaged fast food, freezer with ice cream bars, refrig with pop and a Jar on the counter to pay. Your neighbors at the next ranch over live down a narrow a road of sand. the USS truck is a pickup with a big square box in the truck bed with wide oversized tires to travel on road of sand. School districts were kids board in town during the winter. Ranchers who keep a home in town so the kids can take part in school activities.
In the late 19th and early 20th centuries the Great Western Sugar Company sent immigration agents to Russia to recuit Volga Germans to come to this area because they knew how to grow and harvest sugar beets. Many of the Germans from Russia families in this area originated in this way. Sugar beets, irrigated, are still a large crop in this area.
The Volga Germans came through our town in SW Nebraska during that time but left shortly thereafter because the areas was too harsh. Imagine that. So many of them settled in the panhandle or in other Western states.
I’m from southern lower Michigan and had a friend who lived around 75-80 miles approximately due NNE of me growing up. Eventually, upon moving out, instead of sticking to a nearby area, she first tried Los Angeles before moving to a small town called Mandan, just west of Bismarck, ND. The two are separated by the Missouri River and Mandan is considered the first town in the west as far as that region of the country goes.
I live in the Front Range of Colorado, Loveland/Ft. Collins area, population corridor. I can attest that east of I-25, and especially in SE Colorado, there is virtually NOTHING. The same goes for south of Rapid City, S.D., western Nebraska and Kansas, the Oklahoma panhandle and down into Texas, west of Amarillo. There is nothing.
What's nuts is I actually have a product from the OK Panhandle for sale at my store: "No Man's Land Beef Jerky," from Boise City. I think the 'city' deserves scare quotes too, since the population is apparently under 1,500. That's _tiny._
Driving from Amarillo to Denver is still something of a moderately seriously journey that shouldn't be undertaken in unreliable or old cars. Either you go straight up I25, but you have to go through a pretty serious mountain pass, or you take 287 through the plains where one wrong trun and you're on a road with literally no towns or gas stations.
I live between the Loveland/Ft Collins, and the unpopulated belt. I can literally drive half an hour west and have everything a big city offers or drive 30 minutes east and be in the middle of nowhere. I love it because of this.
@@dankelly5150 It is a good choice, if the winters don't bother you. Spearfish, Deadwood, Custer and Custer State Park, are all close-by. Wind Cave and Badlands National Parks are right around the corner.
I absolutely LOVE the fact that there are still parts of the country that aren't overpopulated!!! We rode our cycles up through NW Nebraska 2 summers ago on our way to the Black Hills (Hwy 2). Rolling sandhills, bluffs, canyons, for as FAR as your eyes could see. I had NO CLUE how beautiful NW Nebraska is...just assumed it was a State of all corn...VERY suprised. It's now in my top 10 favorite places that I've rode through...Southern Utah is #1 for me.
Oh my golly , I am from there and it is beautiful. It is so quiet and peaceful and safe and serene. Me and my siblings had the most perfect childhood growing up on a farm/ranch in those rolling Sandhills. I feel I hit the jackpot in growing up. I am blessing
The great plains region used to be called "The Great American Desert." I grew up right on the buckle of this belt. I still go out there frequently to see my family. I can see the milky way while standing in my backyard and can see thunderstorms 30 miles away. As a kid, I used to scratch seashells out of embankments in short-grass pastures (this region used to lie at the bottom of the Great Inland Sea). The quietude, sunsets, and sky are amazing. The rural blight, lack of resources, and drought are not so amazing. I appreciate your attention to the overlooked expanse I call home. Cities get too much attention. There is just as much wonder and history to be found in the country.
I grew up in Liberal Ks and we lived on the south side of town. We could watch traffic head west on Hwy 54 easily. I’ve seen two dust storms move thru, countless thunderstorms with the best lightning shows. In the early 80’s we had sandstorm and thunderstorm at the same time. It rained mud. I live in Topeka now and there’s a difference in weather from West Ks and East Ks.
I worked as a federal meat inspector at National Beef there in Liberal, I can attest to how brutal the weather is when you're standing on the catwalk inspecting steers as they come into the plant.
I've lived in the Black Hills of SD my entire life (76 years) and I don't see our "underpopulated" state as a liability but a blessing. Our harsh winters are a god send because they've prevented the area from becoming more trampled than it already is.
I lived in this area 1971-1972, while a junior in High School. I played tennis and really loved the weather in Hobbs NM. It rarely rained and temps were moderate all year long. The wind was always blowing from the west. the land there is flat as a pancake. I would love to visit again!
I moved to SW Nebraska a year and a half ago from Ohio. I live in a small (dying) town of abut 200 people, and it is the calmest and healthiest I have ever been in my life. Distances are far, health care is sometimes difficult, and the nearest city is 3.5 hours away... all of the things that can make life inconvenient. But I still love it. I can sit in my yard at night and listen to Luciano Pavarotti (loud) and enjoy the sunset. Or I can wait and actually remember how many stars we can see here that are impossible to see in the city. I can listen to cows giving birth in the fields, watch migrating geese over head, spot a white tail deer, turkey or pheasant, or listen to a pack of coyotes run through town. Everyone has a gun and yet there is no violence. Everyone waves, even strangers. My dogs and I take walks along the train tracks (they love the passing trains!) and we wave to the engineers taking lumber, oil, concrete and other goods to places far, far away from here. After 5pm, the sidewalks (at least the ones we have...lol) are rolled up and it is a ghost town. I left behind the Hood, the crime, mask mandates, locked doors, and progressive insanity and never want to go back. This part of the country is certainly not for everybody, but that is a good thing.
Welcome. Born and raised in West Central Nebraska. Lived in Denver in the 80's, moved back to the home town. We welcome people who want peace and behave themselves. Am so very glad you found peace and solitude here.
Thank you fo this information. I’m so happy to hear of this underpopulated area, may it always stay that way! We are so very blessed to have these open lands!!
My father spent some years of his childhood growing up in Sheridan Wyoming. He said you could ride a dirt bikes gas tank half way down in any direction and never see another person. During this time there were maybe 1600 pop in the town.
I live in Lubbock (interestingly the most populated city you mentioned), & had no idea we were in an "underpopulated belt!" This was very interesting, & yeah, wild 30-40 degree temperature changes in a 24 hour period are not uncommon here, especially in the fall, & winter months.
The sheer emptiness breaks most people's spirits. The next town's elevator can be see thirty miles away. Virtually treeless. Hauntingly beautiful. I feel a deep sadness when thinking about the small towns. Would like to live there, but not sure I could stand the isolation.
There was an actual phenomenon called "prairie madness". The combination of isolation, wind, prairie fires, violent weather drove some people insane. The movie "The Homesman" tells this story. "The Wind" is another movie about it.
I grew up in the area in a tiny town population of 200 total in the high desert plains of New Mexico. The weather there is indeed intense. It's either hot and dry or violent storms there is no in between lol
I worked in this area back in the 1980s, doing the wheat harvest. started near Dallas then to Kansas, Nebraska and on up to Montana. There are people there, you just have to find them. There were missile silos out there too. And there was a whole lot of wheat. I was astonished by the number of non english speaking people, German, Norwegian. Our work summer was cut short because Mt St Helens erupted that year and affected the wheat crop.
St Helens. Uff da. That's Americanize Scandanavian for 'oh no.' The language thing was entirely from the pre WW2 generations of Scandanavian / German immigrants that help settle the area.
Were these non-English-speaking Europeans first-generation immigrants, non-resident aliens on work visas, or long-established American citizens who simply hadn't assimilated?
They speak German and Norwegian? I live in this belt of the country , I have NEVER met anyone that speaks Norwegian or German except a very old person.
@@maggietaskila8606 it is mostly ND that has those settlers and it was the grandparents of the boomers population, most people don’t know the language now :)
You missed the greater reason for the dramatic temperatures on the high plains. The fohn winds or interior Chinook. The polar dives do play a part but in general the cold masses that form in the Rockies will have a greater affect than an arctic vortex. One day in the 90's I remember driving in southwest Kansas and it got into the 80's by noon and by evening it was a blizzard with 80mph winds. Speaking of wind, it's the windiest continental points on the continent not counting mountains. Which along with a record drought in the 1920's led to the dustbowl and massive population drops, that is still happening to this day. So really that's why the area north of Texas in your strip is low in population. There are sites that show that many counties in your strip whose modern population is negative 70-80% from its peak from before the dust bowl. Honestly I'm really surprised you missed such a monumental part of American history when talking about this. Now the biggest threat to much of the area, particularly western Kansas and eastern Colorado, is the depletion of the Ogallala aquifer.
Why did the dust bowl occur? What was the US government's response to the dust bowl? Tree planting from Mexico to Canada. Jim Lee on Climate Watcher channel explains the history of all of this back over 100 years ago. It's documented and archived on his website. What's going on today? Most of that area where millions of trees were planted has been cleared for crop production, a significant amount of that is used for Ethanol. Man learns nothing. Probably heading back to dust bowl 2.0.
@@exothermal.sprocket most of that area was already crop land. That's why the dust bowl occurred. It was very good crop land at the time because the high plains had record rainy seasons for the past few decades. When the rains went and the tilled land was left exposed it cause the dust bowl. The Ogallala aquifer was discovered shortly after and with center pivot irrigation farming continued. The trees were planted in rows, not large acreage of forests, to protect crop land from erosion. Most ethanol production is not done on the high plains, it is most feed grains and wheat. Ethanol production is big in Eastern Kansas, Eastern Nebraska and Iowa where there is plenty of water. Not to say there isn't any ethanol production but it's not very big.
Texas calls it Hill Country and High Plains, Oklahoma calls it Gypsum Hills and High Plains, Kansas calls it just High Plains, Nebraska calls it Sand Hills and High Plains, and the Dakotas call it "West River" because they're west of the Missouri River where their culture is entirely different from the east. It's all roughly the same with minor variations that stretches for hundreds of miles which is honestly quite fascinating.
@@rylencason4420 West River/East River is really only a South Dakota thing as the Missouri River cuts the state in two. In North Dakota it’s pretty much the Red River Valley in the East and then the rest of the state. I’m from the western half of North Dakota and I would just say I’m from western North Dakota. Regardless, the western half of these states as well as states like Nebraska and Kansas, I would say, are closer to being “Western” than “Midwestern.”
@@iboKirby Moved to Rapid City from Ohio can confirm it's a different type of Midwestern culture. Not that it's bad but different. I do like the climate here though compared to Ohio and apparently the Eastern Side of the state. It's not as humid for starters and other then being slightly colder than what I'm used to it hasn't been too horrible on that front either. Then again Rapid has the Black Hills to the west that helps shield it from the worst of it. I know Sturgis and Spearfish got hammered with snow the last 2 storms that came through where Rapid was basically untouched.
No, Southwest has 25000/75000 meatpackers in three cities of Dodge City, Garden City, Liberal. Northwest has major hog farms, and 9 county area near Salina interstate has a major wind farm. Northeast Colorado and Texas Panhandle with NW KS & SW KS make the 300 miles within the 100th meridian West line #1 meatpacking.
@@iboKirby From Bill Bryson's book, "Lost Continent": "Somewhere during the seventy miles between Great Bend and Dodge City you leave the Midwest and enter the West. The people in the towns along the way stop wearing baseball caps and shuffling along with that amiable dopeyness characteristic of the Midwest and instead start wearing cowboy hats and cowboy boots, walking with a lope and looking vaguely suspicious and squinty, as if they think they might have to shoot you in a minute."
I'm from Oklahoma and I've traveled to some of the cities and towns within that region. Places like Dodge City KS, Garden City KS, Guymon OK, Lamar CO and Amarillo TX. When you drive through that area, you don't see many houses or trees just rolling grasslands. It's a nice view to see especially on a sunny afternoon and everything is so peaceful and quiet. It's definitely one of my favorite areas to travel to only behind Florida.
What is interesting is if you extend this area north you reach two of Canada's largest cities, Calgary and Edmonton. I grew up in Edmonton and always found it odd when we headed into the US for shopping the US 'cities' were so small.
Calgary is too close to the mountains to be part of this strip of land. It lines up roughly with SK. Which actually still has more than in that strip in the US outside of Texas. I grew up in Saskatoon, I can definitely relate to your experience having no US cities to shop at. We got our US network tv from Detroit for crying out loud, which is 1 or 2 time zones away (depending on DST).
@@brentj.peterson6070 Most places in Canada face extremely cold weather in the winter. The exception is the southern west coast of British Columbia. Unfortunately the most expensive place to live and fully taken over by the virtue signaling, child abusing, evil woke, much like Seattle and Portland. One man ended up in jail because he did not want chemical and physical experiments on his daughter. A horrible place to live. The most woke place in Canada. Toronto and Montreal are not far behind. What was a warm paradise is now an expensive, dangerous, hell on earth place to live. Way back in the 70s and 80s it was lovely. Those days are long gone. Now the province of Alberta is amongst the least woke, and dispite the cold, more Canadians are moving there every day. Especially young people who wish to marry and raise a family.
You failed to mention the extensive grasslands that were plowed-up for wheat in the southern part of this area and how it lead to almost a full decade of the dust bowl.
It wasn't because of the wheat they believed the rain followed the plow so they kept going and going that's why we have So much conservation in the great plains
We reclaimed about a million acres here in Colorado by letting the land go back to grasslands. Pawnee National Grasslands just south of the Nebraska border, and Comanche National Grasslands in the south by the Oklahoma border. Comanche National Grasslands has over 450,000 acres of land in it. Has ancient petro glyphs, dinosaur tracks in rock and a river with lots of hiking trails. It is in Los Animas county that is the states biggest county with almost 5000 square miles of territory. Bigger than two states back east.
We live in this area in Eastern Colorado. In the past, I've lived in small town Georgia and Colorado Springs, and the plains are way different. We had a polar vortex last year and it dropped like 70° in two hours. We had another storm that "paused" over our town for several hours instead of moving on as forcasted; it was a surprise foot of snow when only supposed to be a few inches. 😂
I can say my experiences driving across this belt have been surreal. Western Nebraska, Wyoming, eastern Colorado... These places are empty, kinda scary, beautiful, and weird. They are meant to be nature.
I travelled by train from New York to Oakland California, on AMTRAK. It was an amazing journey, one which I highly recommend. However, during this journey, I was witness to vast uninhabited stretches of land, as we left the "Midwest Corn Belt" our train entered into a long stretch of flat land, we passed through Nebraska, and Colorado, finally ending in Denver, for a brief pause. Starting in Aspen, the journey though the Rocky Mountains, was absolutely breathtaking! But the we soon ended up in Utah. Once again, a landscape seemingly devoid of human development. Even Nevada seemed empty, and desolate until we finally arrived at Reno, and lake Tahoe. Suddenly a great green wall of life appeared before us. From this point forward, it was thick green forests, fancy highways, and stunningly beautiful towns, and cities, (all in California, of course!). But, the picture never left my head, of vast stretches of land, which looked ugly, desolate, and downright uninhabitable!
You sound like it's a bad thing for a landscape to be seemingly devoid of human development. Henrik, please stay out of these beautiful uninhabited areas and out of the West! It's people like you that cause these empty treasures to be ruin. Please stay out!
Beauty and ugliness is often in the eye of the perceiver and the beholder. 20 years on the often grey skied, rain soaked and water-logged Pacific NW make these dry, barren and sunny regions very attractive to me.
Yeah the eastern half of Colorado and the western half of Nebraska are the worst. Virtually no greenery at all. Even Denver is kind of depressing, because when you fly into it and look down, it looks like the set of Mad Max, all drab and brown.
A huge issue hitting that entire region is the Ogallala Aquifer, which lies underneath it. Water is being pumped out faster than it's being replenished. Within a few decades, irrigation of crops in the region may no longer be possible.
I agree...in fact so many are moving to the POA I live in that water pumping just might go dry in the next ten years. Can''t pump the amount we used to be able to per day. And not just Ogallala either...and then there is the fracking....
I live on the western edge of the empty zone. My water well is 238 feet deep, and has over 150 feet of water in the bottom. The water level hasn’t gone down since I had the well drilled 10 years ago.
I lived in this belt for most of my life in West Texas. Very much true about weather fluctuations, it snowed at about 25 degrees one day and day and half later it got to 75 degrees in February
Also you didn't mention, the Dust Bowl. When you hear the term Dust Bowl this is where it happened by and large. Huge tracks of totally depopulated, this is why we have so many national grasslands out there. From what I understand it was abandoned land. Combined with mechanization, nearly all of the smaller counties (not Amarillo) have 50 to 80 percent pop drop since 1930.
We live in a small town an hour NE of Abilene, TX. In the 20's this town's population was abt 30,000, now it's barely over 5,000. The last few years, people from Coastal states have been flooding into Texas' biggest cities. It's surprising so many settle in, in spite of the miserable weather. They're changing the housing industry and property taxes, even in this tiny town.
It's a similar story in Australia, it started in the east, one main city of the west but most of the west is sparce, and so it the inland, the mountain range is closer to the coast here tho, so popular doesn't reach as far inland
I live in Brisbane personally. And even here it feels so deserted. Drive a couple kilometres outside of Ipswich and it feels like you're deep in the country sides
Australias remoteness and population density (or lack there of) is on another level that the continental USA is not even close too.. you could drive 10 hours north west south and east and still be in a complete empty desert with no sign of life
The craziest fact is the comparison of areas of Australia and the contiguous US. They are basically the same area! Yes check the numbers, they come to within 2% of each other. Australia's even more harsher climate is only able to sustain about 26mil people whereas the continuous US has over 328mil. So effectively if you had to make Australia out of the contiguous US, just keep a hand full of eastern US metropolitan areas and a couple on the west coast of US and that is it! That will make up all of Australia. Just the New York metro area (~20mil) and the Los Angeles metro area (~13mil) together have more population than all of Australia. I love Australian and US geography.
Your assessment is pretty accurate. Population centers around areas that are fertile and where goods can be easily transported to market. The area gets little rainfall. No rivers run thru it. And, as you said, the climate fluctuates greatly. All said, it's a great place to live!
It's inaccurate to say that no rivers flow through there. The Arkansas, Missouri and Platte Rivers come to mind. Perhaps you mean there's fewer bodies of water here than in other regions.
@@nathanbrandli6827 I have driven trucks through 48 states and the places I have crossed the Platte, and the Arkansas, wouldn't be considered rivers in the rest of the country.
wrong the Platte, Republican both run through this area and that is just in Nebraska and Colorado. The Niobrara, Missouri are also major rivers. Nebraska has 80,000 miles of rivers.
I love travelling through this area. I live in the Albuquerque area and drive back east once or twice a year to see family. A couple of years ago we drove all the way to Kansas City avoiding the interstates. From Tucumcari we went through Dalhart Texas, Guymon Oklahoma, Liberal Kansas where we stopped and had a fantastic pancake breakfast at the Original Pancake House. Drove north and stopped in Dodge City which has a lot of cool history. Continued east and visited a museum in Kinsey Kansas and then on to Hutchinson. Was an awesome trip!
BUT, in Albuquerque we worry about tornadoes, floods, humidity, An abundance of rain, etc. oh wait, I was talking about the 80% east of us. We keep our population centers quiet because we don’t want you to move here!
Bruh I was born in this belt. It’s not that bad in west Texas just not much to do. There are three main things about the Lubbock economy. 1. Oil 2. Texas Tech 3. Cotton due to the aquifer down below Lubbock. I can confirm most of your video is very accurate. Lubbock has LOTS of dust storms and when the occasional rain comes by and rains over dust storm we get mud rain. We call these haboobs.
And Lubbock loves to share their dust with the other population centers to the south in the region!! We always joke that Lubbock is sending dust our way!, 😀😀
I'm from south texas but explored that whole area recently. Honestly it's under rated. Cool places to see like palo duro canyon and such. Pretty cool towns like Lubbock and amarillo. It was waaaay better than I thought it was gonna be and what everyone from where im from views it.
Plus, the few people who did try to settle were driven out by the 1930's Dustbowl. Drive through there, there are numerous homesteads abandoned during that time.
My grand dad stayed and never took anything from the govt, so dad tells me. In fact most stayed like Dan Blockers parents who our family traded with for groceries. They ate a lot of sand, but toughed it out.
I live in this belt and the openness is is the best thing. I recently traveled to the east coast and it just seemed like a foreign world to me. The continuous community to community. It all seemed like one large city but in reality we traveled the same distance as it would take me to get to 3 to 4 towns over. The amount of development and how the roads were not on a grid system like here in Nebraska was just mind boggling!
I grew up in SW Nebraska, and I am familiar with looking towards the horizon, and seeing for a long way without anything blocking the view. I took a trip back east to Pennsylvania on Amtrack and got to Pennsylvania in a small town called Titusville. What really made an impression were all the trees blocking my view towards the horizon, and it was sort of building on me after a few days, to the point of making me vaguely uneasy. In my area you look to the horizon to see the approach of bad weather,and being blocked by trees my line of sight was really limited. This was tornado season when I went, and no one in town had ever seen one in real life, and I had grown up in tornado alley with lots of dangerous thunder storms and tornadoes. Growing up we spent more than a few afternoons huddled in the storm shelter listening to NOAA radio announcements tracking thunder storms and the tornadoes that were spawned from them.
@@wilhelm090 is the county you're from close to Colorado boarder? If so we are fairly close! I live in Kit Carson County Colorado. But I sure do love going into SW Nebraska to go camp at Rock Creek Reservoir.
I live in that region. I love it. It does get hot in the summer and cold in the winter. And has sudden temperature changes. it is dry most of the time but gets severe thunderstorms. In the old west days it was called the great American desert. It is not a desert but much like the steps of Russia or Mongolia. Cattle country. Lots of very large ranches where much of the beef in your supermarket comes from.
I live in this belt South of San Angelo, Texas. The weather is extreme. We really only have 2 seasons here: summer and winter. It’s nice being in an area that isn’t overpopulated. I don’t spend time in traffic or waiting in lines. Instead, I spend time outside in nature.
Love this topic. Being extremely familiar with these areas, you will note these areas of Wyoming and Texas are very windy year around. These areas of Montana, North Dakota and Wyoming have brutal winters.
Also, that part of Texas is know for ice storms and dust storms, which ruin crops and do other damage. Then there's the lack of water. Many people have tried it there and have moved on. Oil, natural gas, cattle, Russian wheat and a few other crops, seem to be the basis of the economy in the area.
I’m from northeast Wyoming and thought I knew what “cold” and “winter” meant, but then I went to college in North Dakota and really learned 🤣. It’s all relative, but yeah the winters in this region aren’t for the faint of heart.
I was born and raised in southern CA. After 23 years, I moved to North Dakota because my husband is from there. I love it here, everything is cheaper, beautiful stars at night, the sun on summer nights sets around 11pm, no traffic, not a lot of people, white Christmases, and genuinely nice people. It is small town America where your name (particularly your last name) is attached with your reputation. The rolling hills spans miles and miles of nothing but GREEN! The sky is so big with the lack of skyscrapers and mountains so the sunsets are beautiful. You can still go fishing, golfing, lake days on boats and jet skis, beautiful nature trails, horseback riding, ice fishing in winter, sledding, skiing, and snow mobiling to name a few. Our closest stoplights and Walmarts are either an hour north or an hour south, get to enjoy the scenic drives to either major city. Great place to live and I wouldn’t trade it for California ever
That's so cool so I imagine that all the people that are moving from California then would not vote for the policies of California if they left that state because of the situation
@@harrybarnes3539 that too. I left because my now husband is from North Dakota. I know many people who left CA before and after me to get closer to family and/or because of the politics. Finding a cheaper, simpler, and more practical place to live/raise a family in
I would imagine the population of the region has decreased even more over recent years. My family is from the TX panhandle and most of the small agricultural communities in the area today have lost population by an order of magnitude over the past century or so
Changing from route 66 to I40 changed a lot of the panhandle population. Then you had boom and bust towns like Pampa and Borger which at one time was huge and lawless for a long time.. I feel as though some of the small towns are finding some life again. Specifically because the ev cars need to charge.. Places like the u drop inn at shamrock offering a unique tourist stop and charging point.. Some towns are starting to catch on and adapt to this.. And there is good history in the areas and actually some cool hidden gems like the Palo duro canyon
We lived in Eastern WY., where we saw several declining towns east of the Rockies essentially ceased to exist when the State could no longer support schools. So kids had to be bussed or sent to boarding schools in larger towns. Unless you are willing to home school your kids, it can be difficult to raise a family in this part of the country. Wyoming was wonderfully helpful for our home school, no hassles, no onerous demands just help if we wanted. Weather is challenging, but neighbors help each other. My first school was a two room school house, but that was in the 1950’s. Teachers aren’t likely to want to work in such schools today.
This is hilarious! I'm only 30 secs in and I already know that I live in this belt. Far SE Colorado, and I live there BECAUSE it's empty... I didn't want neighbors. 😉
I have Neighbors in the suburbs but you would never know it because our properties are large, surrounded by fence and tons of tree & bush. You could sunbathe nude & bbq or have a campfire with Malls & restaurants 10m away.
I've spent the last decade or so living and working in Western ND, Eastern MT, and Eastern CO. I've traveled to West Texas, and Eastern New Mexico. Its just dry prairie grasslands North/South for 1,000 miles. Rattlesnakes are common, Pronghorn Antelope are somewhat scarcer but can be found. Oil is found everywhere in this narrow belt from the borders of Canada to Mexico.
We have mainly prairie rattlers where I live although I've been told that we have some diamondbacks as well. The prairie rattlers are usually fairly non-aggressive as long as you don't get too close to them. I even fell on one once, back first, and it didn't strike me. But do be careful if you have to go pick up a portable stock tank. If you stick your fingers under and there are any there, they might just think that your fingers look like tasty and nutritious mice.
Reminds me of Geography King's video "Top 15 Emptiest parts of the U.S.". You could make an entire series talking about vast empty spots within the U.S.
I lived in Rapid City, SD from the age of 3 to 11. Loved it as a child. I remember the air was crisp and you could see the Milky Way galaxy clearly in the night sky.
I grew up in this belt and I can vouch for the wild temperature swings. I have witnessed the temperature going from 70 DegF to 20 DegF in a few minutes. Also I have hunted White Tail, pheasant, and quail in this zone and it was amazing, totally wild and free. It is truly one of the last truly wild places in the US outside Alaska.
My grand parents farm was North of Lamesa/ O Donald TX. My dad tells me a dust bowl storm raged for a couple of days. The sand covered most of the fence. He went to dig it out to find a strip of snow six inches thick which had fallen during the black out.
Indeed I live on the edge of it at foothills of rockies here in Wyoming.. The last cold snap we had around christmas, The temperature went from 54F to "with windchill added AKA Real Feel" -55F in a span of 27 hours
@Justin Williams farmers, wind techs, road crews, and electricians. A lot of people are leaving because of the drought and the aquifer drying up at least in ks.
@the proof is out there somewhere there is only one wolf pack left. They are in yellowstone so technically yes. There are a ton of coyotes out and about
I grew up literally in the middle of this zone. Nearest mall was 60 miles, nearest airport 3hrs away. Nearest Walmart 20 miles away. My graduating class was 11 people in 2011 and it was great. I miss it and go back twice a year. I now live in SF Bay Area and it’s a whole different world and not for the better.
The most important reason is that that belt contains the most severe weather in the Americas on a consistent basis. Shipping is also another criterion still to this day. It’s very hard to get commodities in and out.
Great video! However, that is still a lot of people considering the beginning of your video states, “almost nobody lives there”, and “why ‘nobody’ lives in the belt”…(head scratching). P.S. Is this broadcasted from someone’s basement ?
Same story going up into Canada, until you hit the Boreal Forest up north. SE Alberta and SW Saskatchewan are barren deserts of grass aside from the Cypress Hills. Used for ranching basically. The rest of Sask and West Manitoba have a lot of farm land. I'm from Regina and the only reason the city exists where it does is because the governor of the old NW territories owned the land so that's where he built his capital. Freezing cold winters and hot dry summers. Usually the day time highs and lows swing widely too.
Yep - I used to live right across the border in north-central Montana. A dry, treeless plain with unpredictable rainfall. The amount of agricultural output is just not enough to eceonomically support a large population.
Saskatchewan has one of the widest temperature ranges in the world. Up to low +40C’s in summer and to below -40 in the winter not counting the windchill. Absolutely crazy
Growing up in the eastern plains of Colorado, many of us referred to it as middle of nowhere BFE. And my hometown Sterling as the "coffin corner" being roughly equidistant from BFE Wyoming, BFE Nebraska, and BFE Kansas.
I also live in this region (foothills of the Black Hills) and having moved from MN, the winters are vastly different. There is less depth of snow and it melts quickly, more wind, and more mild temperatures than the rest of the upper midwest (20-40s). The dryness is the biggest factor as there is less rain, no natural lakes in the Black Hills (all reservoirs), no major rivers in my area and only a series of smaller creeks/streams. Biggest plus: Significantly less mosquitos.
@@exothermal.sprocket If you say so, dude. I would respond further, but first I have to get out of the Stalinist re-education camp that Newsom put me in, then evade those pesky Khmer Rouge death squads in Long Beach, and slay Hugo Chavez's ghost in Fresno... California, rough place
I was born and raised and still live in this zone so this was interesting to me. Although I live in the most populated city in the zone, I understand how unpopulated it is in general. Drive just outside of my city and it is wide open with miles and miles between towns. I have no issue with that but it does mean we drive a looong way or need to fly to almost anywhere you might want to vacation. As someone else commented, water is an more expensive and harder to get with the aquifer depleting quickly. Drought is an issue here just as it is in California. Climate change may force even more people to move out of the area if we can't get water in the years to come.
I live on the Eastern edge of Mitchell County just South of interstate 20.. all of the small towns [that I know of] have steadily declined in population over the last 100 years. Interstate Highways have been the death of them all. There are more people aboard one aircraft Carrier than live in this entire county.. and Mitchell is one of the lucky ones. There are counties North and South (with no Interstate access) that have dwindled to almost nothing. When I was younger, this bothered me terribly. At one time, Big Spring, Texas would've made that short list of population centers and even had an indoor shopping mall. No more. On account of having grown up in the area (and outside of town), I am extremely socially awkward. I don't mind anymore. I love it here. My best friend is a cow. People are overrated :'D
Your analogy to aircraft carriers tickled me. I grew up in this unpopulated belt as well. I noted the same thing when I joined the navy after high school, and I was assigned to serve on an aircraft carrier: there were more people on the crew of the aircraft carrier than the entire population of my home county in Wyoming.
The weather thing is real! Here in Denver we can have a 75 degree day on January 20th…12 hours later it’s 28 degrees and 6 inches of snow!! Then a day or two later, it’s 60 degrees and all melts away!! Happens all winter long here from October to mid May…we’ve even had heavy snow as late as May 26-June 2nd-ish crazy weather here…summer is pretty consistent though 80’s-90’s all summer
I grew up in SW Nebraska, right in the middle of the belt. It was a crossroads of the country, but not a lot of travelers stuck around very long before they were moving on again.
To walk across the entire country and see how vast and different it is speaks volumes but most people won't even walk to a nearby store these days. I did this after being inan auto/pedestrian accident back in the early 1980s. I have seen things many never can nor will. Imagine knowing that you are able to survive without modernized things,alone and without having to take things from others. The greatest thing about life is learning how to do things that are different and unique.
As a black man that was born and raised in the Midwest this is only a dream a non black person can attempt due to its a lot of racist areas in "the belt"
I grew up in Hays, Kansas, which is right on the eastern boundary of the belt. Hays itself isn't a very large town (roughly 20 - 25 thousand people, last I checked) though it's a significant population area compared to any place west of the line. It's funny, we used to always joke that Hays was an "oasis" in western Ks -- though there's really an element of truth to that. Driving west from Hays on I-70, it gets seriously sparse all the way to Denver. Sure, there are some small, isolated towns here and there; but speaking from experience... that region which spans western Kansas into eastern Colorado is eerily barren!
I recently broke down in Hays, Kansas while driving back to Denver. I was towing a Geo Metro with a Jeep Wrangler I also just bought and fortunately found an O’Rielly and Auto Zone to get Jeep parts. Also ate at Bricks BBQ. Not a bad little town!
Hi, My Dad was born in Hayes, Kansas in 1930. He & his family moved to Indianapolis, Indiana in 1942 so my Grandfather had more steady work. His parents were Vulga Russia Germans immigrants & my Grandmother's parents from Southwest Germany. My Dad always talked about growing up in Hayes Kansas. My sister & I took a trip with Dad in 2000 to Hayes. We flew into Kansas City & drove to Hayes. I loved how the sky & horizon opened up in a bit more west in Kansas. We stayed in a Bed & Breakfast right across the street from the Catholic Church where he was baptized & went to grade school. It was a wonderful trip together. He was happy to see Hayes again which made us happy. Six weeks later our Dad passed away suddenly. So our trip to Hayes Kansas was much more meaningful than we had ever imagined.
@Mary W wow thanks for sharing! There is still a large Volga-German population in Hays -- many of my friends in grade school even had parents and grandparents with residual accents, and the old family names still in tact, of course. & Yes, the sky over Hays & western Kansas is beautiful! I live in Colorado now, but I still visit Hays on occasion and will always consider it my hometown. The old limestone churches are still standing, some well over a century old. The community in Hays seems to truly value them as staples of town's identity, so I have no doubt they will be cared for and remain standing well into the future. Very glad to hear your father had the chance to return to Hays before he passed; it was his hometown too. What a wonderful thing!
As someone who was born and raised in “the belt”, it was fun to hear the reasons I loved living there listed as reasons to avoid living there. Great video!
Had a friend visit me in central Kansas who was originally from Africa. He loved everything about Kansas and especially how peaceful and non chaotic it was he even said he would move here in a heartbeat.
I’ve notice a lot of the new immigrants from Africa are settling in the Midwest and westerly regions that are less populated than previous generations who came to the US.
You taught me something new my question however is why eastern new mexico not part of the belt? That side of the state is fairly empty with mostly native villages along Hwy. 54
I live in this area! West Texas to be exact. It's not for everybody but I absolutely love it. Beautiful sunrises/sunsets, amazing starry nights, warm, dry, and wide open spaces. I'm pretty sure you are off on the Midland/Odessa populations though. Midland is definitely not 295k and I'm pretty sure Odessa is a bit larger than Midland.
My husband is from the South Plains area of Texas. Some great things about this area are cotton producers, peanut farms, oilfield, chili pepper farms, watermelon farms and cattle ranches. Housing cost is lower in some of the smaller towns. The climate is dry and arid. It’s all about perspective.
I had a best friend that lived out there, in Deighton, KS. I asked why he chose to live there. no restaurants. no hardware stores. just large cow/calf feedlots. He loved it out there. I visited every year. Now I go back out there on my own. The austere silent beauty is something you cannot understand until you GET IT. A dust devil kicks up from a corn field. A coyote crosses the road. hardly no one around. I love it out there. I would never live there, but I go back on purpose to be alone, quiet and contemplate my life.
My dream is just to buy a good 50-100 acres of land in the middle of nowhere just to shoot guns and blow shit up in peace.
Dighton *
Is he from the hills have eyes?
I went to school in Scott City. Grew up in Friend it's gone now. Dighton was one of our rivals. Did you ever make to Scott Park north of Scott City appx 10 miles. Such a lovely park or Cedar Bluffs Great for skiing and fishing?
The early Christians have monasteries in the desert for the exact same reason. The environment helps people contemplate. I think st Anthony's Monastery in the Egyptian desert is one example.
One of the best features of this area is the lack of light pollution at night. On a cloudless night you get a real appreciation of how many stars are visible with the naked eye that you don’t get living in/near population centers. It can be humbling at times.
I’m 30 years old and most of the stars I have seen are from movies and video games. Lighting up empty parking lots is more important to the human race I guess…. Cool beans. Metaverse is the future I suppose.
Not in the northwestern portion (due to oil field)
Caprock canyons in the Texas panhandle one of the best places to view the galaxy... I live close to Amarillo but stars very visible here
I was near Artesia, NM when I was in the oilfield, away from the rig which was always lit up like Times Square, and the stars were shockingly bright. Unnerving how dark it was.
Exactly. On a cold winter evening, it feels almost the stars are floating above your head. It's a 3d effect that is surreal.
Isolated, and we love it. Clean air, no traffic jams unless you count herds of antelope crossing the road. Friendly people, and open spaces.
The weather…there is no bad weather, just bad clothes.
Thanks for the video from rural Wyoming.
Lol, you forgot the wind....and in the north, the drought heavy and intense ice
@@rachelmartin3574 not to mention the lack of anything to do. I was born and raised on Kodiak Island Alaska with less than 50 people in my village... and I thought wyoming was so ugly and boring I fell asleep while my wife drove... did I mention it was 1 pm?
@@AlemmyAlemmyALemmy Hunting, fishing, camping, ATV riding, gardening, raising livestock. I guess it depends on what your interests are.
"JUST BAD CLOTHES" great quote
Very high altitude in Wyoming. 7200 feet above sea level, thin air you say!?
I grew up in Lubbock and was surprised frankly to see it mentioned as the largest city in the area (it's so rare for Lubbock to be the largest anything). One thing you didn't mention that is also weather related. While the weather fronts may drop all their moisture west of the Rockies, they continue on east bringing their cold with them. This cold air moving east collides with the hot, moist air coming up from the Gulf to create huge thunderstorms that often contain tornadoes. Thus this underpopulated area is the beginning of Tornado Alley.
And BTW, when that cold air from Canada moves south and causes the temperature to drop 20 or 30 degrees in a few hours, we call it a "Blue Norther" because the northern sky turns a deep blue as the cold front starts getting closer.
"Happiness is Lubbock in your rearview mirror" :) GO TECH
As a resident of the northern part of this belt, I’m always surprised by how crowded it feels any time I travel elsewhere. We like it here!
This video will make everyone move there now. Sorry.
@@curtis7599 hopefully not
If it’s North Dakota, not likely. Few can handle our winters
@@curtis7599 when they get out here they will see why people don’t live here. unless you got grit, you wont last
Harsh winter to many, is like water to a witch in Wizard of OZ . We need longer and harder winters to drive out those who have moved there recently and convince them to move out of the area in Dakotas, Wyoming and Montana.
I've driven OTR through these states. Being from Philadelphia, I never experienced the sky like it is out there. One night I had to pull over to check the trailer. I looked up and was just shocked at the actual amount of everything you can see out there. It's truly amazing, especially if you grew up in a city.
It is my favorite part of the country to drive through with exception of the texas part. Basically nobody around for hundreds of miles, no traffic, and the truck stop parking is pretty easy to find even late at night.
I did something similar when I parked out on the I70 in one of those parking cut outs in the rockies between Grand Junction and Vale. It is absolutely amazing.
Hi!! I'm also from Philadelphia. I drove from Philly to Colorado one time and loved how quiet and serene the middle was. Absolutely amazing. I loved it.
In eastern CO I was unable to find the big dipper one night because the rest of the milky way was so bright. Tried for about 5 minutes. Couldn't.
Shhh.
Let's just keep it our little secret.
West and South west is like that. Sometimes you feel like the sky and the ground are touching. Big sky country
I live in Illinois and bush fly to this area every chance I get. The solitude, silence, gentle wind, warm sun, dry air and, in towns, friendly people cannot be beat. On summer nights, the full moon is as large as a house, and the temperature thermostat-perfect. It is difficult to explain how inspiring and internally settling the experience of nature without noise can be - such a welcome respite from the fanatical bustle, noise, crime and bad manners of Chicago. When I retire (soon), I will buy an old dog and some of the area's abundant and inexpensive land; build myself a cabin with a little grass landing strip; and then enjoy this experience for the remaining days of my life.
I grew up on the South Side of Chicago and went to school at the University of Wyoming and never made a better choice in my life. We retired to Laramie, WY a few years ago and love it. When you are looking for a place to retire look at Wyoming. One thing among other advantages, no state income tax.
@@georgem7965 not the best pick for a pilot. Wyoming wind never quits
@@joem7062 no one asked! get out of my way, i’m packing a gun and i’m on three kinds of drugs!
yes, i am from chicago; how could you tell?
@@shaneanderson1229 Yes there is wind in Wyoming but that just means shorter takeoff and landing runs. There is plenty of general aviation here. I'm not sure that there is any more wind,, year around, here than in much of the Great Plains. That said, there may be more days per year, depending on your aircraft, that you'd choose to stay on the ground. IMO that is only one variable in the decision along with others like hanger costs, availability of maintenance and fuel, etc. as well as the other livability variables like availability of medical care, whatever kind of recreation you enjoy, cost of living, taxes, etc..
@@georgem7965 providing that you can avoid freezing to death in the winter
Top notch, dude. This video not only covers geography but touches on meteorology, history and sociology. I'm sending this to my 16 year-old British nephews who I do my best to educate on their American roots without overwhelming them. This video covers a lot of bases in under 10 min. Well done.
You said you were going to go into why so many of those larger population centers are in Texas. Well, I live in Texas and I know why. 1 little word, 3 little letters... o i l
Exactly. All about money. Like everything on this earth when it comes to us humans.
Roger that.
Oil explains most of the current, rapid growth in the Midland/Odessa area, but the biggest population center of Lubbock mostly grew from the influence of their major public university, Texas Tech. No other city in this entire region possesses an academic institution even close to the size of Texas Tech, which is why Lubbock has seen steady population and economic growth through the decades that's paralleled the university's growth, with Tech today being considered one of the best research institutes in the US for studies like agriculture, weather, chemical engineering, and animal/food science.
It's quite interesting too, and no coincidence either, that the largest university in a region known for its extreme weather, agriculture, oil, and ranching would end up with world-class education into these fields today. Thanks for highlighting this massive, yet relatively unknown US region, and shout-out to Texas Tech for being the underrated, higher education backbone of this area, but I might just be a little biased to them as an alum 😉
@@christophercjc2 Yes, you may be. I am NOT a 'fan' of the uni I graduated from. Didn't hate it, didn't dream it was hell (that was a community college I went to my first year of college 1971-1972) but didn't like it that much. About that community college, BTW, I met a lady in the 1980s who worked on a different part, and on campus. I told her that I dreamed I died and went to hell and it was CTC. She loved it and agreed 100%. My roommate's step-daughter-in-law graduated from Tech last spring, I have no problem with Tech like I do with the giant, monster uni in my home town.
Some of the other big shale oil plays in the US like the Niobrara and the Bakken are also in this region, which has led to a population increase in some of the other states in the area.
If you ever spend time in that area you’ll notice how quite it is in some places. I stopped by chimney rock in Nebraska one time and it was unbelievable how quiet it was walking out of the visitor center. No car engine, no wind, no plane, no voices, just absolute silence. Years later I went to badlands national park and stayed late after everyone left, same thing, super quiet. It’s a weird part of the country.
I live in Nebraska. That is one of the reasons it's such a cool place. It's quiet and you can be alone with your thoughts. You can get that stunning photo of the sunset because you don't have a dozen people crowding each other. All we have to do is convince the rest of the country that it is flat and boring. Bwahahaha.
I'm interested in this chimney rock. I live in the blue ridge Mt s. In North Carolina. We have a chimney rock about 3 miles away. It's a large granite formation hanging off a sheer Rockface. You can take the stairs or sometimes an elevator to the top. The funny thing is more than a chimney it looks like a giant phallic structure. Lots of girth and well defined mushroom tip
@@charlesvaughan3517 chimney rock in Nebraska is famous as a way point on the Oregon trail.
You must have visited on the only non windy days of the year. Usually you can't hear anything over the whooshing of 30 mph winds
Sounds like a epic arbitrary road trip... Chimney Rock NC, to Chimney Rock NB... but I bet NC is better anyway. Yalls is just the Rock, meanwhile mine also has a river that flows into a lake, lake Lure, thats nestled between the mountains. It's where they shot a few scenes form Dirty Dancing. Sure yours looks bigger but mine looks more like a Peni#q
Hi Geoff; I was born, raised, and went to college in the band you are covering. Your reasons for the sparse density at the end of the video are not incorrect, but you missed the single most important reason these lands have so few people. Simple put, these tend to be grasslands or low yielding dry farm land. Because they were historically dominated by ranching, really large tracts of land were required for people to make a viable living. For example, if you had lived in eastern Nebraska in the early 20th century, 160 acres (1/4 of a square mile) would have been a viable farm. But 160 acres in western Nebraska would not have been a viable cattle grazing operation. It is likely you would have needed at least 10 times that to survive. Additionally, with the exception of oil in west Texas and southeastern New Mexico (Permian Basin), natural gas and success with oil production came to this land area much later in the 20th century. So there wasn't a lot of opportunity for the area to be more densely populated. Otherwise though, this was a good piece of geographic history.
Central Colorado is my home town
You know more about this area that the guy making a the video does.
"low yielding dry farm land"
From the video: "This creates an area that is arid [...]"
🤷♂
This. TX panhandle area is known to have the XIT ranch. When reading about it, it was insane just how much land was granted to one ranch (price of building the state capital). I'm not even sure if that is the biggest ranch of all time. Today its just a name for a bbq/event which I recommend if on a trip and it happens to be held for that time. Particularly if traveling from Denver, CO to DFW, TX (Dalhart is the town to stop by; a lot of us especially for electronics and medical make trips to calibrate equipment, shout out to Colorado Springs as well).
😴 Zzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz
I lived in the Black Hills area (Sturgis and Rapid City) for over a year and I can confirm the weather is extremely bipolar. In addition, there are a lot of cases where we don't trust the weather forcasts because there are so many variables which makes weather predictions very difficult. One day you'll expect sunny days and then there's a blizzard.
Another reason why it's so sparsely populated is that agricultural practices have changed, particularly in the past 30 years. When great grandparents migrated to Canada in 1871 they were given a 1/4 section of land (160 acres) and it was a daunting task. It took him 11 years to get to the point where he was able to farm 100 of those acres. My grandfather homesteaded a mile south of him and it took him 3 years to 120 acres and the rest was for grazing his cattle and farm yard. My cousin who was the last in our family to farm full-time and retired 7 or 8 years ago farmed 3500 acres (about 5 1/2 sections =5 1/2 square miles) and he would have had to increase his acres and machinery and infrastructure to make it profitable. His daughters are working in large cities and his son is working for the railroad and none had an interest in taking over the farm. He rents his land and infrastructure and moved to a small city and lives off the rent from the farm. In 1970 the average farm size in the prairie provinces was 386 acres and in 2020 it was 870 acres. Also relevant is the average farm family in 1970 was 8 (mother, father and 6 children), now it is 4.5.
Thanks for the video, I found it really interesting!!!
Wow So much info!
870 acres of farm land? damn that's a size of a village!
Less family want to take over farms. The lure of living in a toxic city is insane. Brain washing, laziness and financial greed. I am from Toronto and moved to Edmonton in 2012. In 2017 I moved 1 hr west to a village by 3 decent bodies of water. Country living is great 👍. I commute to Edm for work. Sunrise ride in the A.M. and sunsets on the way home 🏡 I have great respect for farmers.
I think farming would once again be more profitable to mom and pop operations if the US would actually subsidize crops and livestock appropriately. We don’t need a diet of primarily high fructose corn syrup and soybean oil…. Those subsidies should go to families raising organic meat
City living has nothing to do with laziness or greed. It has to do with career choice. You get absolutely nothing out of living in the country side unless you just wanna be a truck driver the rest of your life.
I live in this area, WY specifically. I love it, the lack of people is one of the main reasons I love it. Your absolutely right about the temperatures though, during Christmas this year it went from -40 degrees with a wind chill to 50 degrees within 24 hours
Agreed!
It won’t be empty for long. It will be filled with Californians
@@agy234 unfortunately you’re correct
@@agy234 OH NO!!!
My first thought was I want to move there. No people. Lol I live in Idaho and we are getting inundated with coastal people 😳
I moved to this area 2 years ago, in central Kansas. The quiet is priceless. I was born and raised out in the country southwest of Houston in a small town area that is slowly being consumed by Houston as a suburban hub. The population in Texas has just passed 30 million mark. Bought a house that needed minimal work at an amazing price in a small town of like 125 people. No store in town. Closest town with gas is 20 miles away. Closest Walmart is 39 miles away. I absolutely love it.
Whats the town you live in?
Lemme guess. Ft Bend County
My closest gas station & post office is 16 miles away and Walmart and grocery stores are 32 miles away. I'm in the mountains with no neighbors for several miles. It's pure nirvana.
@@johnonofrey1907 Most definitely.
Central Kansas is so under appricated. Wal marts a 40 min drive and we just have small town basics like a DG.
Two points of overlay… one, this region has some of the most prolific and abundant petroleum resources; and two, the region can also be extended further north into Canada. Excellent video, keep them coming. 👏🏻
With all due resect, I believe that what you called " the eastern united states", is actually 'the east half'. Which is not the same. I don't think geographers include part of the Midwest as Eastern. Furthermore, "the west coast" would only include coastal states.
No it can't be expanded into Canada, Unless you decide to draw it right in between Calgary and Regina.
This "Belt" was historically known as "the Great American Desert" due to the arid, non-arable land that dominates the strip. (Note when it was named, Desert just meant anywhere you couldn't farm, not just the dusty, sandy environment typically associated with the word today)
No desert meant anywhere that lacked trees and inhabitants in any great quantity back then. It's considered semi-arid steppe grasslands.
@@MrMackievelli that is technically true, however it was also believed concurrently that treeless locations were not able to be farmed
@@TheKeksadler "Desert" is about annual precipitation. It's widely accepted, for instance, that the largest desert in the world is in Antarctica, where its cold temperature freezes the water vapor, eliminating the possibility of rain or snow for most of the year.
@@lijay1 It is NOW. However, I'm referring to the definition around the early 19th century. Words do not have static meanings.
That was my first thought when I saw the picture... It's either hot arid or cold arid. Either way, I don't want to grow there and neither do the plants!
I'm surprised that you didn't mention the depopulation effects of the dust bowl. There were agricultural activities in the area prior to the 30's. There are still ghost towns on the plains in my home state of Colorado from that era.
I was surprised he didn't mention that either. The Dust Bowl and the Great Depression hit that region of the country hard. Between 1930 and 1940, 3.5 million people moved out of the Plains states.
@@FlintIronstag23 Yes, as interesting as the Native American situation was in the 1800's the Dust Bowl is what really set the area back. It was the realization that the farming methods in the eastern US (with considerably more rainfall) would not work year in and year out. When drought set in the farmers broke out even more grass to try to make up the shortfall in grain production and when the wind inevitably kicked up much of the topsoil got blown away. This caused lots of folks to pack up the old car or truck and move to California.
I agree! People think of the dust bowl in Oklahoma but I know families from South Dakota that it drove to move away. I think the dust bowl afflicted most of the area and drove away many settlers. This was likely much more important than Native American resistance.
Grapes of Wrath! My heritage.
@@MMA4CMT What do you mean "my heritage?"
Fun fact about the Texas portion of this region. It produces about thirty percent of the nation's beef. I live in Canyon which is just south of Amarillo and we have several feedlots along with with many, many ranches. That may contribute to why the Texas portion of this region is better populated. Something to be said about ag business.
Also all the military basses... Dyess Shepherd and Goodfellow all appear to be in there. And that is just the air force.
You also have the Permian Basin, which holds some of the largest oil fields in the country, in the southernmost part of this region, which is why Midland, Odessa, and San Angelo are some of the biggest towns here.
@@thekeytoairpower Yup, can't forget about those plus, Canon AFB in Clovis NM.
@@ryanjardee9235 yup, I didnt mention Oil even though its the bigger money maker in the region. TX Panhandle has a few oil/Natural gas plants north of Amarillo mainly in Dumas, Borger, and Pampa.
@@lowbudgethost8046 I lived in Borger in the late 1950s. Not only did we have dust, but we also had carbon black. A nearby plant would belch out that stuff on a windy day and blanket the entire area. My mother would hang out the clothes white and bring them in black.
I lived in San Angelo TX for 15 years and traveled through much of that area from Texas all the way to Wyoming and South Dakota. In the bigger cities it feels like any other medium to large sized towns, but once you get out of the city and it's tiny town after tiny town dotted among ranchland or just plain wilderness, you definitely feel the emptiness.
I live In Angelo now and have lived in west Texas most my life most towns are normal but once you get out it’s vast I personally love it
Another factor was the Dust Bowl. Prior to that the area of W. Kansas, and the Oklahoma/Texas Panhandles saw a boom period due to a period of wetter years and the advent of sod-busting plows creating an agricultural boom. Around 2.5 million people moved out of the area between 1930-36. The Worst Hard Time: The Untold Story of Those Who Survived the Great American Dust Bowl by Timothy Egan is a fantastic account
Super interesting! In France we also have a whole area across the country called the “empty diagonal”, and the reasons for it are quite similar. It crosses France from North-East to South-West, and some of the “states” on that section have under 25 inhabitants per square kilometer, and it’s pretty much due to the harsh conditions (no oceanic or Mediterranean influence) and rougher terrain.
I just drove through this part of the country and in some parts I’d say there are zero people per sq km. I say a sign that said no gas stations for 89 miles. North of El Paso, Texas up to Carlsbad New Mexico is barren of people like nowhere I’ve been
The weather for one thing and the lack of water. People just don’t want to live within such extremes.
Spain also has a large empty area
I watched a video recently about that part of France and was amazed that I never knew that
@@pfranks75 please let me say, “Most people just don’t want to live within such extremes”. For me, this area is just fine, because most people don’t want to live here.
I come from England and this seems amazing. Here's some stats:
Area of US central belt = 350,000 sq miles.
Area of England = 50,350 sq miles (a little less than that of Alabama).
Population of US central belt = 3.1 million
Population of England = 56 million
This might explain why there have been so many English explorers - we just needed to get away and clear our heads a little!
Hello to everyone in the gigantic and beautiful country of the United States.
Hello
I really liked this young mans presentment in this vid but I just wanted to say Thank You as well for your contribution in this comment. It really helped to put things into perspective concerning England. Cheers and Hello right back at you.
Thank you for the info. I had no idea England was that densely populated. The castles and English rock musicans influence are very facinating tho. It's coincidental to your comment that I met a very polite English lady this past summer in the northern tier of this belt (where I'm from). She was commenting about the fresh air and similar things you mentioned about the great vastness of this area, while we were poolside in the Badlands on a warm day with open country almost all around us. Something I'll never forget her kindness and appreciation, to remind myself not to take for granted living here all my life.
Thanks for sharing the cool perspective. Not to dampen your friendly and informative response, but the real reason England had so many "explorers" (ie, colonizers, ie, occupiers) is rather complicated but can be oversimplified to white supremacy. I just want to mention this because it is something that my country - the USA - still struggles with significantly. Cheers.
@@lukasalihein You are a system brainwashed, unappreciative and victimized soul my man. You should realize the poor folks who settled in this region before any of the modern luxuries we are accustomed to. Some of those oppressed people are my white ancestors, who only had the last pick of this unsettled territory in the US. Why was it not yet settled? ??. For exactly the reasons in this vid. My ancestors along with many others, including diverse races of darker skin, slaved their way on farmsteads through everything from extreme drought and poverty of the great depression to floods and total crop loss due to nature's wrath. They sacrificed their health and life, many lived a short life to feed this nation and others from here still put food on the table to this day , even for an entitled victimized false data entry person as yourself on UA-cam. It's a sad disgrace you've been raised to believe all the garbage that is intentionally brought on by your influencers in life. I don't see anyone by skin color, only their will in life, and you should try opening your eyes sometime to other's hardships and how they overcame them, instead of wasting your time pouting on a YT comment section about a politically directed race narrative only intended to divide people in this country.
So glad to be a part of the 1% that live there! Love the space, endless skies, and peace and quiet ❤
I'm jealous! I've seen pics, looks really beautiful out there. I love rolling hills and perfect sunsets. 😊❤️
@@danamichelle1290 It is amazing!!!
better than living here in overcrowded megacities of pakistan india and bangladesh
I spent part of my youth in this area. It's freezing cold in winter, -30F below zero is not unusual and it's blazing hot in summer, 110F is not unusual. The cold jet stream from Canada frequently collides with the warm, moist weather from the Gulf of Mexico plus the Rocky Mountains acting as a wind tunnel and you get tornadoes (this area is part of Tornado Alley). We used to see funnel clouds and dust devils all the time during spring, summer and fall. Because of the sparse population you hardly hear about tornadoes touching down but talk to a farmer or rancher and yes tornadoes hit the ground in this area all the time.
The 3 percent are the most brutally tough people, they deal with the toughest abstracts of weather all year around, and I give a lot of respect to them.
Moisture in the air helps regulate temperature. It’s why temperatures stay steady on coastlines but central deserts have greater extremes. Like you said, craters of the moon National park in the Idaho desert is over 100 degrees in the summer and freezes solid during the winter
@@owenbrasseaux9917 we had -30°already before Christmas, for almost 2 weeks, water froze 4 times one day but we got it going before it really froze. So hate the winters but love Montana so much that I put up with them. I was pleasently surprised that my electric bill stayed under $400.00. Our REA (YVEC) is the best one in Montana. Our pastureb(at our previous res) used to butt up to service center and I would know when they went out in the middle of a freezing, stormy and/or nasty night. Always prayed til they were home. Had many friends that lost legs, arms and their lives making sure we had electricity. Bless those linemen that put there lives on the line daily for all of their members. And yep wouldn't live anywhere else. Oh yeah and we always have fires in the summer. But now Washington and Montana are red well be able to get that rectified also.
sounds like tough land to make a living on.
@@GcOGc01981 Sorry Sir, what do you mean by a REA?
For some people this is like a promotional video for the area, few or no people sound pretty good to me. Not having to worry about bothering your neighbours or having your neighbour bothering you 🔊🎵🎶🥁 sounds great.
If that's your main concern you can also live in the forests of Montana. But as always in sparesly inhabited areas, you have problems with infrastructure, such as health services, doctors and others services too. If you don't need that it may be great for you to live there.
@@hoodyniszwangsjacke3190 A lot of the people who want to live free of society and commotion caused by other people are generally self sustaining and don’t need services from other people like that. People learn to avoid being injured in such a way that you won’t need to go to the ER, and the active lifestyle of maintaining your homestead keeps you healthy enough to avoid being sick. It’s truly a liberating way of life, and allows you to connect with Mother Nature and live a wholesome life, something cities and urban environments just can’t provide
very true. living in the southern part of the belt myself, my biggest complaint is the weather. there is plenty of space but it is incredibly dry and hot for most of the year. not my favorite combination of weather, but a lot of people enjoy it.
It cool I got my own house here at 19. Having lots of space is nice but I don't think many people would actually like living here its kinda tough sometimes
I appreciate you mentioning weather, and the recent cold snap, knowing that you really only made this in the last week or so. Thanks for your content!
I'm from Tennessee, and lived in this belt (western Nebraska) for a couple years. I've recently moved back to Tennessee, and I miss the Nebraska Sandhills so much. The stars were amazing. The people were extremely kind (as long as you made an effort to fit in. They like their way of life.) Different breed of people for sure.
Im from inbetween Lincoln and Grand Island, and it ain’t a far drive to get to pure emptiness. Last time I was really in the Sandhills was summer of 2020, and I remember being on this empty road with pastures and an abandoned church with a cow skull on the fence. It was like 95° and we could only get PBS for radio. The whole area is amazing to visit
The weather aspect is pretty interesting. I live in the Texas Panhandle and one of the main things I hate about it is the wind. The fall and spring sees 40-50 mph winds pretty often. With a dry climate, it causes a lot of dirt to be blown around in the air. After watching this, the cool thing is I guess I can consider myself part of the 1%.
I live in Oklahoma. I lived in Borger and Amarillo in the 1950s. I still have dust and carbon black in my veins from those days.
I miss that unique smell of the air before a thunderstorm.
In Nebraska Wind is our mountains to climb. One morning I walked out of the house, and I fell over, the wind was not blowing. Nothing like a day -20 below and the wind iat 40 with gusts to 60. And two days later no wind and 40 above. A land where a person needs a different coat for every day of the week.
My mom and dad lived in Pampa Texas during World War II.... at the end of the war my mom said take me back to eastern Oklahoma, I can't stand this wind any longer.
I used to visit Amarillo quite a bit for work. It was an aircraft manufacturer and there are strict controls in place to make sure random debris didn't get sucked up into engine intakes and such, therefore we were required to keep a list of everything we had on our person to be accountable for everything, including the list. Wouldn't you know on one of them dang windy days my list blew away from me when walking between buildings 🤦♂This poor inspector was stuck out there with me until 10pm before we found it. I sent that man case of beer for his troubles and I don't think it was near enough to make up for it.
That empty belt coincides with the outlaw trail of the old West that stretched along the same path from Mexico to the Canada border. Also it coincides with the great cattle drive trails. It was also the Southern route of the great buffalo herds that migrated there.
Good description of the Area some called the Dirt Meridian. In the 1890's there was a migration of German Speaking Russians who moved from the Steppes of Rusia to the Belt on both sides of the USA Canada border. They knew how to thrive in a land where you could reliably depend on one bumper crop every five years. They understood how to live on a short grass prairie. It is a land where social resources are few and far between. Driving 100 miles to the nearest hospital The nearest school is 40 miles away, the Internet is dial up. Road sign saying the next town is 80 miles down the road. A teenager living 40 miles west of the high school driving 40 east of town to pick up his date. Driving 100 mile with friends for a restaurant dinner and then a stop at a nice bar for and after dinner drink 50 mile away. A rancher's wife flying 150 miles in their plane to take her weekly piano lesson in Rappid City. A mother and daughter returning from a shopping trip to NY, driving from the Cheyenne airport to their ranch in their new clothes stopping in a pasture to help a ranch hand pull a calf. Five bed hospitals with no birthing room,. An seriously injured farmer taken by helicopter 200 miles to the nearest trauma center. Hopping in your airplane to go to town to pick up parts for their combine and then having to return to town a few hours later because the new part was defective. Snow drifts across country roads that remain impassable until May. Making three trips to town, 40 miles away in one day. The unlocked "Pool Hall" with a microwave, packaged fast food, freezer with ice cream bars, refrig with pop and a Jar on the counter to pay. Your neighbors at the next ranch over live down a narrow a road of sand. the USS truck is a pickup with a big square box in the truck bed with wide oversized tires to travel on road of sand. School districts were kids board in town during the winter. Ranchers who keep a home in town so the kids can take part in school activities.
In the late 19th and early 20th centuries the Great Western Sugar Company sent immigration agents to Russia to recuit Volga Germans to come to this area because they knew how to grow and harvest sugar beets. Many of the Germans from Russia families in this area originated in this way. Sugar beets, irrigated, are still a large crop in this area.
The Volga Germans came through our town in SW Nebraska during that time but left shortly thereafter because the areas was too harsh. Imagine that. So many of them settled in the panhandle or in other Western states.
Very interesting commentary; thank-you.
Your descriptive comment greatly enhanced my understanding. Thank you.
@@georgem7965 Sugar Beets ARE NOT grown in this area in significant numbers. They are grown primarily east of this outlined region.
I’m from southern lower Michigan and had a friend who lived around 75-80 miles approximately due NNE of me growing up. Eventually, upon moving out, instead of sticking to a nearby area, she first tried Los Angeles before moving to a small town called Mandan, just west of Bismarck, ND. The two are separated by the Missouri River and Mandan is considered the first town in the west as far as that region of the country goes.
What are you saying?
I live in the Front Range of Colorado, Loveland/Ft. Collins area, population corridor. I can attest that east of I-25, and especially in SE Colorado, there is virtually NOTHING. The same goes for south of Rapid City, S.D., western Nebraska and Kansas, the Oklahoma panhandle and down into Texas, west of Amarillo. There is nothing.
What's nuts is I actually have a product from the OK Panhandle for sale at my store: "No Man's Land Beef Jerky," from Boise City.
I think the 'city' deserves scare quotes too, since the population is apparently under 1,500. That's _tiny._
Think I’ll retire to Rapid City 😜
Driving from Amarillo to Denver is still something of a moderately seriously journey that shouldn't be undertaken in unreliable or old cars. Either you go straight up I25, but you have to go through a pretty serious mountain pass, or you take 287 through the plains where one wrong trun and you're on a road with literally no towns or gas stations.
I live between the Loveland/Ft Collins, and the unpopulated belt. I can literally drive half an hour west and have everything a big city offers or drive 30 minutes east and be in the middle of nowhere. I love it because of this.
@@dankelly5150 It is a good choice, if the winters don't bother you. Spearfish, Deadwood, Custer and Custer State Park, are all close-by. Wind Cave and Badlands National Parks are right around the corner.
I absolutely LOVE the fact that there are still parts of the country that aren't overpopulated!!! We rode our cycles up through NW Nebraska 2 summers ago on our way to the Black Hills (Hwy 2). Rolling sandhills, bluffs, canyons, for as FAR as your eyes could see. I had NO CLUE how beautiful NW Nebraska is...just assumed it was a State of all corn...VERY suprised. It's now in my top 10 favorite places that I've rode through...Southern Utah is #1 for me.
Oh my golly , I am from there and it is beautiful. It is so quiet and peaceful and safe and serene. Me and my siblings had the most perfect childhood growing up on a farm/ranch in those rolling Sandhills. I feel I hit the jackpot in growing up. I am blessing
@@jeanbrozek3046 - yes, absolutely beautiful!!! I LOVE the fact that most people don't know about it...best for your state to keep it a secret!
I live in the heart of the Sandhills, and I wouldn't want to live anywhere else.
@@justinwiens2478 - I don't blame you. Beautiful and untouched country!!
@@b-man1232 There's a reason our tourism slogan is "It's not for everyone" 😂
The great plains region used to be called "The Great American Desert." I grew up right on the buckle of this belt. I still go out there frequently to see my family. I can see the milky way while standing in my backyard and can see thunderstorms 30 miles away. As a kid, I used to scratch seashells out of embankments in short-grass pastures (this region used to lie at the bottom of the Great Inland Sea).
The quietude, sunsets, and sky are amazing. The rural blight, lack of resources, and drought are not so amazing.
I appreciate your attention to the overlooked expanse I call home. Cities get too much attention. There is just as much wonder and history to be found in the country.
Also. "wild temperature variations" got me hard. I've seen go from -20°F in February to 118°F in August. You're welcome.
I grew up in Liberal Ks and we lived on the south side of town. We could watch traffic head west on Hwy 54 easily. I’ve seen two dust storms move thru, countless thunderstorms with the best lightning shows. In the early 80’s we had sandstorm and thunderstorm at the same time. It rained mud. I live in Topeka now and there’s a difference in weather from West Ks and East Ks.
Yes!! I grew up in Tyrone Oklahoma. Right by you!! Always windy haha❤
I grew up in Laverne, OK , about 70 miles from you….I remember the dust storms of the late 70’s and early ‘80’s.
I worked as a federal meat inspector at National Beef there in Liberal, I can attest to how brutal the weather is when you're standing on the catwalk inspecting steers as they come into the plant.
I've lived in the Black Hills of SD my entire life (76 years) and I don't see our "underpopulated" state as a liability but a blessing. Our harsh winters are a god send because they've prevented the area from becoming more trampled than it already is.
I showed a TX friend of mine photos of the snowdrifts in Deadwood & Keystone from earlier this season, he was quite frightened. haha
Mother nature: keeping out those with velvety gloves and unsavory characters since the dawn of time. Amen.
We love our low population! Rural is best! Western SD for me!
Keeps the riffraff out.
@May it please the court That's right, Little Trotsky, .1% of the population is going to kick 99.9% out. How?
I lived in this area 1971-1972, while a junior in High School. I played tennis and really loved the weather in Hobbs NM. It rarely rained and temps were moderate all year long. The wind was always blowing from the west. the land there is flat as a pancake. I would love to visit again!
Hobbs is terrible now
I moved to SW Nebraska a year and a half ago from Ohio. I live in a small (dying) town of abut 200 people, and it is the calmest and healthiest I have ever been in my life. Distances are far, health care is sometimes difficult, and the nearest city is 3.5 hours away... all of the things that can make life inconvenient. But I still love it. I can sit in my yard at night and listen to Luciano Pavarotti (loud) and enjoy the sunset. Or I can wait and actually remember how many stars we can see here that are impossible to see in the city. I can listen to cows giving birth in the fields, watch migrating geese over head, spot a white tail deer, turkey or pheasant, or listen to a pack of coyotes run through town. Everyone has a gun and yet there is no violence. Everyone waves, even strangers. My dogs and I take walks along the train tracks (they love the passing trains!) and we wave to the engineers taking lumber, oil, concrete and other goods to places far, far away from here. After 5pm, the sidewalks (at least the ones we have...lol) are rolled up and it is a ghost town. I left behind the Hood, the crime, mask mandates, locked doors, and progressive insanity and never want to go back. This part of the country is certainly not for everybody, but that is a good thing.
Welcome. Born and raised in West Central Nebraska. Lived in Denver in the 80's, moved back to the home town. We welcome people who want peace and behave themselves. Am so very glad you found peace and solitude here.
Exactly! Everyone has a gun yet there’s a low crime rate. Give me that over NYC, Chicago, or LA any day.
Alaska and Texas
That's awesome. I'd love it.
Great if you’re white!
Thank you fo this information. I’m so happy to hear of this underpopulated area, may it always stay that way! We are so very blessed to have these open lands!!
My father spent some years of his childhood growing up in Sheridan Wyoming. He said you could ride a dirt bikes gas tank half way down in any direction and never see another person. During this time there were maybe 1600 pop in the town.
I live in Lubbock (interestingly the most populated city you mentioned), & had no idea we were in an "underpopulated belt!" This was very interesting, & yeah, wild 30-40 degree temperature changes in a 24 hour period are not uncommon here, especially in the fall, & winter months.
He talked about the temperature changes in the video so that much we do know.
Go Tech
Van horn for us
Hey how’s the cold weather in Lubbock rn?
Sup from Amarillo lol
The sheer emptiness breaks most people's spirits. The next town's elevator can be see thirty miles away. Virtually treeless. Hauntingly beautiful. I feel a deep sadness when thinking about the small towns. Would like to live there, but not sure I could stand the isolation.
There was an actual phenomenon called "prairie madness". The combination of isolation, wind, prairie fires, violent weather drove some people insane. The movie "The Homesman" tells this story. "The Wind" is another movie about it.
@@bradleymosman8325 Also in the book "Giants in the Earth."
@@bradleymosman8325
Where can you watch those movies?
@@hectorcardenas2171 You can watch "The Wind" on Prime Video. I saw it a couple of years ago and enjoyed the movie.
@@bradleymosman8325 the wind out here is no joke. you have to build for it. it will tear down manufactured cabins like a gingerbread house.
I grew up in the area in a tiny town population of 200 total in the high desert plains of New Mexico. The weather there is indeed intense. It's either hot and dry or violent storms there is no in between lol
I worked in this area back in the 1980s, doing the wheat harvest. started near Dallas then to Kansas, Nebraska and on up to Montana. There are people there, you just have to find them. There were missile silos out there too. And there was a whole lot of wheat. I was astonished by the number of non english speaking people, German, Norwegian. Our work summer was cut short because Mt St Helens erupted that year and affected the wheat crop.
St Helens. Uff da. That's Americanize Scandanavian for 'oh no.' The language thing was entirely from the pre WW2 generations of Scandanavian / German immigrants that help settle the area.
Were these non-English-speaking Europeans first-generation immigrants, non-resident aliens on work visas, or long-established American citizens who simply hadn't assimilated?
They speak German and Norwegian?
I live in this belt of the country , I have NEVER met anyone that speaks Norwegian or German except a very old person.
@@keenannorris3309 It was all pre-ww2 generations in there golden years. Other then that is all colloquial phrases that the kids and grand kids heard.
@@maggietaskila8606 it is mostly ND that has those settlers and it was the grandparents of the boomers population, most people don’t know the language now :)
You missed the greater reason for the dramatic temperatures on the high plains. The fohn winds or interior Chinook. The polar dives do play a part but in general the cold masses that form in the Rockies will have a greater affect than an arctic vortex. One day in the 90's I remember driving in southwest Kansas and it got into the 80's by noon and by evening it was a blizzard with 80mph winds.
Speaking of wind, it's the windiest continental points on the continent not counting mountains. Which along with a record drought in the 1920's led to the dustbowl and massive population drops, that is still happening to this day. So really that's why the area north of Texas in your strip is low in population. There are sites that show that many counties in your strip whose modern population is negative 70-80% from its peak from before the dust bowl.
Honestly I'm really surprised you missed such a monumental part of American history when talking about this. Now the biggest threat to much of the area, particularly western Kansas and eastern Colorado, is the depletion of the Ogallala aquifer.
Your comment is better than the video.
@@charlesrb3898 Supplemental stuff, and bang-on.
Absolutely correct about the ground water depletion !
Why did the dust bowl occur? What was the US government's response to the dust bowl? Tree planting from Mexico to Canada. Jim Lee on Climate Watcher channel explains the history of all of this back over 100 years ago. It's documented and archived on his website.
What's going on today? Most of that area where millions of trees were planted has been cleared for crop production, a significant amount of that is used for Ethanol.
Man learns nothing. Probably heading back to dust bowl 2.0.
@@exothermal.sprocket most of that area was already crop land. That's why the dust bowl occurred. It was very good crop land at the time because the high plains had record rainy seasons for the past few decades. When the rains went and the tilled land was left exposed it cause the dust bowl. The Ogallala aquifer was discovered shortly after and with center pivot irrigation farming continued. The trees were planted in rows, not large acreage of forests, to protect crop land from erosion. Most ethanol production is not done on the high plains, it is most feed grains and wheat. Ethanol production is big in Eastern Kansas, Eastern Nebraska and Iowa where there is plenty of water. Not to say there isn't any ethanol production but it's not very big.
In Kansas, we mainly refer to our stretch of it as just "Western Kansas". Nobody lives there.
Texas calls it Hill Country and High Plains, Oklahoma calls it Gypsum Hills and High Plains, Kansas calls it just High Plains, Nebraska calls it Sand Hills and High Plains, and the Dakotas call it "West River" because they're west of the Missouri River where their culture is entirely different from the east. It's all roughly the same with minor variations that stretches for hundreds of miles which is honestly quite fascinating.
@@rylencason4420 West River/East River is really only a South Dakota thing as the Missouri River cuts the state in two. In North Dakota it’s pretty much the Red River Valley in the East and then the rest of the state. I’m from the western half of North Dakota and I would just say I’m from western North Dakota. Regardless, the western half of these states as well as states like Nebraska and Kansas, I would say, are closer to being “Western” than “Midwestern.”
@@iboKirby Moved to Rapid City from Ohio can confirm it's a different type of Midwestern culture. Not that it's bad but different. I do like the climate here though compared to Ohio and apparently the Eastern Side of the state. It's not as humid for starters and other then being slightly colder than what I'm used to it hasn't been too horrible on that front either. Then again Rapid has the Black Hills to the west that helps shield it from the worst of it. I know Sturgis and Spearfish got hammered with snow the last 2 storms that came through where Rapid was basically untouched.
No, Southwest has 25000/75000 meatpackers in three cities of Dodge City, Garden City, Liberal.
Northwest has major hog farms, and 9 county area near Salina interstate has a major wind farm.
Northeast Colorado and Texas Panhandle with NW KS & SW KS make the 300 miles within the 100th meridian West line #1 meatpacking.
@@iboKirby From Bill Bryson's book, "Lost Continent":
"Somewhere during the seventy miles between Great Bend and Dodge City you leave the Midwest and enter the West. The people in the towns along the way stop wearing baseball caps and shuffling along with that amiable dopeyness characteristic of the Midwest and instead start wearing cowboy hats and cowboy boots, walking with a lope and looking vaguely suspicious and squinty, as if they think they might have to shoot you in a minute."
I live in this belt in Colorado and we get 70mile per hour winds 4 months out of the year.
I'm from Oklahoma and I've traveled to some of the cities and towns within that region. Places like Dodge City KS, Garden City KS, Guymon OK, Lamar CO and Amarillo TX. When you drive through that area, you don't see many houses or trees just rolling grasslands. It's a nice view to see especially on a sunny afternoon and everything is so peaceful and quiet. It's definitely one of my favorite areas to travel to only behind Florida.
Agrees
Frz, from clovis NM and it’s dry as hell it’s close to Amarillo and Lubbock
Guymon, Lamar, Dodge and Garden are pretty cool. I'm from NE Colorado but went to school at Goodwell down at Panhandle State
What is interesting is if you extend this area north you reach two of Canada's largest cities, Calgary and Edmonton. I grew up in Edmonton and always found it odd when we headed into the US for shopping the US 'cities' were so small.
Calgary is too close to the mountains to be part of this strip of land. It lines up roughly with SK. Which actually still has more than in that strip in the US outside of Texas. I grew up in Saskatoon, I can definitely relate to your experience having no US cities to shop at. We got our US network tv from Detroit for crying out loud, which is 1 or 2 time zones away (depending on DST).
Cold weather isn't stopping people from living in those big Canadian cities.
@@brentj.peterson6070 Most places in Canada face extremely cold weather in the winter. The exception is the southern west coast of British Columbia. Unfortunately the most expensive place to live and fully taken over by the virtue signaling, child abusing, evil woke, much like Seattle and Portland. One man ended up in jail because he did not want chemical and physical experiments on his daughter. A horrible place to live.
The most woke place in Canada. Toronto and Montreal are not far behind. What was a warm paradise is now an expensive, dangerous, hell on earth place to live.
Way back in the 70s and 80s it was lovely. Those days are long gone.
Now the province of Alberta is amongst the least woke, and dispite the cold, more Canadians are moving there every day. Especially young people who wish to marry and raise a family.
@@dawnelder9046 I concur. Great assessment. People are going off grid in droves here. Including myself.
Underrated comment
You failed to mention the extensive grasslands that were plowed-up for wheat in the southern part of this area and how it lead to almost a full decade of the dust bowl.
this, destroyed top soil
It wasn't because of the wheat they believed the rain followed the plow so they kept going and going that's why we have So much conservation in the great plains
If a post-season football game were played in Tulsa or Oklahoma City, would calling it the Dust Bowl be acceptable to the Okies? 😜
We reclaimed about a million acres here in Colorado by letting the land go back to grasslands. Pawnee National Grasslands just south of the Nebraska border, and Comanche National Grasslands in the south by the Oklahoma border. Comanche National Grasslands has over 450,000 acres of land in it. Has ancient petro glyphs, dinosaur tracks in rock and a river with lots of hiking trails. It is in Los Animas county that is the states biggest county with almost 5000 square miles of territory. Bigger than two states back east.
We live in this area in Eastern Colorado. In the past, I've lived in small town Georgia and Colorado Springs, and the plains are way different.
We had a polar vortex last year and it dropped like 70° in two hours. We had another storm that "paused" over our town for several hours instead of moving on as forcasted; it was a surprise foot of snow when only supposed to be a few inches. 😂
I can say my experiences driving across this belt have been surreal. Western Nebraska, Wyoming, eastern Colorado... These places are empty, kinda scary, beautiful, and weird. They are meant to be nature.
I travelled by train from New York to Oakland California, on AMTRAK. It was an amazing journey, one which I highly recommend. However, during this journey, I was witness to vast uninhabited stretches of land, as we left the "Midwest Corn Belt" our train entered into a long stretch of flat land, we passed through Nebraska, and Colorado, finally ending in Denver, for a brief pause. Starting in Aspen, the journey though the Rocky Mountains, was absolutely breathtaking! But the we soon ended up in Utah. Once again, a landscape seemingly devoid of human development. Even Nevada seemed empty, and desolate until we finally arrived at Reno, and lake Tahoe. Suddenly a great green wall of life appeared before us. From this point forward, it was thick green forests, fancy highways, and stunningly beautiful towns, and cities, (all in California, of course!). But, the picture never left my head, of vast stretches of land, which looked ugly, desolate, and downright uninhabitable!
Epic travels dude
You sound like it's a bad thing for a landscape to be seemingly devoid of human development. Henrik, please stay out of these beautiful uninhabited areas and out of the West! It's people like you that cause these empty treasures to be ruin. Please stay out!
Beauty and ugliness is often in the eye of the perceiver and the beholder. 20 years on the often grey skied, rain soaked and water-logged Pacific NW make these dry, barren and sunny regions very attractive to me.
Well, not unpalatable but will mot sustain large populations. I love the emptiness of this land. It speaks to my heart!!
Yeah the eastern half of Colorado and the western half of Nebraska are the worst. Virtually no greenery at all. Even Denver is kind of depressing, because when you fly into it and look down, it looks like the set of Mad Max, all drab and brown.
A huge issue hitting that entire region is the Ogallala Aquifer, which lies underneath it. Water is being pumped out faster than it's being replenished. Within a few decades, irrigation of crops in the region may no longer be possible.
I agree...in fact so many are moving to the POA I live in that water pumping just might go dry in the next ten years. Can''t pump the amount we used to be able to per day. And not just Ogallala either...and then there is the fracking....
I live on the western edge of the empty zone. My water well is 238 feet deep, and has over 150 feet of water in the bottom. The water level hasn’t gone down since I had the well drilled 10 years ago.
The Ogalala aquifer has gone down, is not replenished, and is also contaminated.
@@bigbadkal I had a sample from my well tested at a Texas state lab, they said it was one of the best they’d ever tested.
Between the draining and lack of true measures to save the water, the aquifer doesn’t have much longer.
I lived in this belt for most of my life in West Texas. Very much true about weather fluctuations, it snowed at about 25 degrees one day and day and half later it got to 75 degrees in February
Also you didn't mention, the Dust Bowl. When you hear the term Dust Bowl this is where it happened by and large. Huge tracks of totally depopulated, this is why we have so many national grasslands out there. From what I understand it was abandoned land. Combined with mechanization, nearly all of the smaller counties (not Amarillo) have 50 to 80 percent pop drop since 1930.
Very good point.
We live in a small town an hour NE of Abilene, TX. In the 20's this town's population was abt 30,000, now it's barely over 5,000.
The last few years, people from Coastal states have been flooding into Texas' biggest cities. It's surprising so many settle in, in spite of the miserable weather.
They're changing the housing industry and property taxes, even in this tiny town.
I think some of the small towns will make slight comebacks with people driving evs having to stop more often will bring back the ole rt66 feels
What’s the name of the town
I grew up in Rule. Ten miles west of Haskell, 20 miles north of Stamford. About 1,000 pop in the 60s, maybe 600 there now.
@@l042987 The coming re-advent of public transportation helps as well
Cisco? Ranger? The highway system rerouted around them and ruined they're economy.
It's a similar story in Australia, it started in the east, one main city of the west but most of the west is sparce, and so it the inland, the mountain range is closer to the coast here tho, so popular doesn't reach as far inland
I live in Brisbane personally. And even here it feels so deserted. Drive a couple kilometres outside of Ipswich and it feels like you're deep in the country sides
Australias remoteness and population density (or lack there of) is on another level that the continental USA is not even close too.. you could drive 10 hours north west south and east and still be in a complete empty desert with no sign of life
Isn't Australia like 90% dessert ?
The craziest fact is the comparison of areas of Australia and the contiguous US. They are basically the same area! Yes check the numbers, they come to within 2% of each other.
Australia's even more harsher climate is only able to sustain about 26mil people whereas the continuous US has over 328mil. So effectively if you had to make Australia out of the contiguous US, just keep a hand full of eastern US metropolitan areas and a couple on the west coast of US and that is it! That will make up all of Australia. Just the New York metro area (~20mil) and the Los Angeles metro area (~13mil) together have more population than all of Australia.
I love Australian and US geography.
I had the opportunity to camp across Australia for the better part of 5 months, much of it in Western Australia. I loved the remoteness.
I live in Nebraska and this is spot on. The blight, drought and the wind.
Your assessment is pretty accurate. Population centers around areas that are fertile and where goods can be easily transported to market. The area gets little rainfall. No rivers run thru it. And, as you said, the climate fluctuates greatly.
All said, it's a great place to live!
It's inaccurate to say that no rivers flow through there. The Arkansas, Missouri and Platte Rivers come to mind. Perhaps you mean there's fewer bodies of water here than in other regions.
@@nathanbrandli6827 I have driven trucks through 48 states and the places I have crossed the Platte, and the Arkansas, wouldn't be considered rivers in the rest of the country.
wrong the Platte, Republican both run through this area and that is just in Nebraska and Colorado. The Niobrara, Missouri are also major rivers. Nebraska has 80,000 miles of rivers.
@@ramblerdave1339 You should see the Rio Grande. Small compared to most rivers but super important in the desert.
@@Catlily5 I've seen it, not one of the three I was commenting on. The two I mentioned, in the strip he was talking about, you could jump across.
I love travelling through this area. I live in the Albuquerque area and drive back east once or twice a year to see family. A couple of years ago we drove all the way to Kansas City avoiding the interstates. From Tucumcari we went through Dalhart Texas, Guymon Oklahoma, Liberal Kansas where we stopped and had a fantastic pancake breakfast at the Original Pancake House. Drove north and stopped in Dodge City which has a lot of cool history. Continued east and visited a museum in Kinsey Kansas and then on to Hutchinson. Was an awesome trip!
BUT, in Albuquerque we worry about tornadoes, floods, humidity,
An abundance of rain, etc. oh wait, I was talking about the 80% east of us. We keep our population centers quiet because we don’t want you to move here!
Good luck with that. It didn’t work for us in Florida
I've done that trip from CA. Liberal is a great roadtrip spot
@@melissak8892 we did that trip, too! On our way to eastern Kansas. Man, I love Kansas!
Bruh I was born in this belt. It’s not that bad in west Texas just not much to do. There are three main things about the Lubbock economy. 1. Oil 2. Texas Tech 3. Cotton due to the aquifer down below Lubbock. I can confirm most of your video is very accurate. Lubbock has LOTS of dust storms and when the occasional rain comes by and rains over dust storm we get mud rain. We call these haboobs.
And Lubbock loves to share their dust with the other population centers to the south in the region!! We always joke that Lubbock is sending dust our way!, 😀😀
The Texas Panhandle also has some of the finest people in the world.
I'm from south texas but explored that whole area recently. Honestly it's under rated. Cool places to see like palo duro canyon and such. Pretty cool towns like Lubbock and amarillo. It was waaaay better than I thought it was gonna be and what everyone from where im from views it.
4. Good musicians. ;)
My ex girlfriend had a real nice pair of those.
I'm so glad I discovered your channel. I've always been fascinated by geography and the topics/questions you address!
Plus, the few people who did try to settle were driven out by the 1930's Dustbowl. Drive through there, there are numerous homesteads abandoned during that time.
My grand dad stayed and never took anything from the govt, so dad tells me. In fact most stayed like Dan Blockers parents who our family traded with for groceries. They ate a lot of sand, but toughed it out.
I live in this belt and the openness is is the best thing. I recently traveled to the east coast and it just seemed like a foreign world to me. The continuous community to community. It all seemed like one large city but in reality we traveled the same distance as it would take me to get to 3 to 4 towns over. The amount of development and how the roads were not on a grid system like here in Nebraska was just mind boggling!
I grew up in SW Nebraska, and I am familiar with looking towards the horizon, and seeing for a long way without anything blocking the view. I took a trip back east to Pennsylvania on Amtrack and got to Pennsylvania in a small town called Titusville. What really made an impression were all the trees blocking my view towards the horizon, and it was sort of building on me after a few days, to the point of making me vaguely uneasy. In my area you look to the horizon to see the approach of bad weather,and being blocked by trees my line of sight was really limited. This was tornado season when I went, and no one in town had ever seen one in real life, and I had grown up in tornado alley with lots of dangerous thunder storms and tornadoes. Growing up we spent more than a few afternoons huddled in the storm shelter listening to NOAA radio announcements tracking thunder storms and the tornadoes that were spawned from them.
@@wilhelm090 I’m from SW Nebraska as well! Perkins County area!
@@wilhelm090 is the county you're from close to Colorado boarder? If so we are fairly close! I live in Kit Carson County Colorado. But I sure do love going into SW Nebraska to go camp at Rock Creek Reservoir.
@@leslielucero92 I know the park superintendent that runs rock creek! I’m from the Grant NE area!
@@Picquets that is wild! Small world after ALL!
I live in that region. I love it. It does get hot in the summer and cold in the winter. And has sudden temperature changes. it is dry most of the time but gets severe thunderstorms.
In the old west days it was called the great American desert. It is not a desert but much like the steps of Russia or Mongolia. Cattle country. Lots of very large ranches where much of the beef in your supermarket comes from.
Sounds wonderful to me. Beautiful country.
I live in this belt South of San Angelo, Texas. The weather is extreme. We really only have 2 seasons here: summer and winter. It’s nice being in an area that isn’t overpopulated. I don’t spend time in traffic or waiting in lines. Instead, I spend time outside in nature.
Nature? ..in Texas?
Love this topic. Being extremely familiar with these areas, you will note these areas of Wyoming and Texas are very windy year around. These areas of Montana, North Dakota and Wyoming have brutal winters.
Also, that part of Texas is know for ice storms and dust storms, which ruin crops and do other damage. Then there's the lack of water. Many people have tried it there and have moved on. Oil, natural gas, cattle, Russian wheat and a few other crops, seem to be the basis of the economy in the area.
Im from E. Montana and I concur. I don’t live there anymore, but visit in the summer when the temps are nice.
I’m from northeast Wyoming and thought I knew what “cold” and “winter” meant, but then I went to college in North Dakota and really learned 🤣. It’s all relative, but yeah the winters in this region aren’t for the faint of heart.
I was born and raised in southern CA. After 23 years, I moved to North Dakota because my husband is from there. I love it here, everything is cheaper, beautiful stars at night, the sun on summer nights sets around 11pm, no traffic, not a lot of people, white Christmases, and genuinely nice people. It is small town America where your name (particularly your last name) is attached with your reputation. The rolling hills spans miles and miles of nothing but GREEN! The sky is so big with the lack of skyscrapers and mountains so the sunsets are beautiful. You can still go fishing, golfing, lake days on boats and jet skis, beautiful nature trails, horseback riding, ice fishing in winter, sledding, skiing, and snow mobiling to name a few. Our closest stoplights and Walmarts are either an hour north or an hour south, get to enjoy the scenic drives to either major city. Great place to live and I wouldn’t trade it for California ever
That's so cool so I imagine that all the people that are moving from California then would not vote for the policies of California if they left that state because of the situation
@@harrybarnes3539 that too. I left because my now husband is from North Dakota. I know many people who left CA before and after me to get closer to family and/or because of the politics. Finding a cheaper, simpler, and more practical place to live/raise a family in
@@marihoverson and safer english speaking is also a plus.
I would imagine the population of the region has decreased even more over recent years. My family is from the TX panhandle and most of the small agricultural communities in the area today have lost population by an order of magnitude over the past century or so
Changing from route 66 to I40 changed a lot of the panhandle population. Then you had boom and bust towns like Pampa and Borger which at one time was huge and lawless for a long time.. I feel as though some of the small towns are finding some life again. Specifically because the ev cars need to charge.. Places like the u drop inn at shamrock offering a unique tourist stop and charging point.. Some towns are starting to catch on and adapt to this.. And there is good history in the areas and actually some cool hidden gems like the Palo duro canyon
We lived in Eastern WY., where we saw several declining towns east of the Rockies essentially ceased to exist when the State could no longer support schools. So kids had to be bussed or sent to boarding schools in larger towns. Unless you are willing to home school your kids, it can be difficult to raise a family in this part of the country. Wyoming was wonderfully helpful for our home school, no hassles, no onerous demands just help if we wanted. Weather is challenging, but neighbors help each other. My first school was a two room school house, but that was in the 1950’s. Teachers aren’t likely to want to work in such schools today.
7:38 This is true, I live in lubbock and it can be 80 degrees, and then it can snow.
This is hilarious! I'm only 30 secs in and I already know that I live in this belt. Far SE Colorado, and I live there BECAUSE it's empty... I didn't want neighbors. 😉
Right you need neighbors a lot yeah better off about 50 miles away
Lucky. I could live in Prtchett, Colorado or the Oklahoma pan handle.
YAYYY another lonely ass colorado plains person!!
I have Neighbors in the suburbs but you would never know it because our properties are large, surrounded by fence and tons of tree & bush. You could sunbathe nude & bbq or have a campfire with Malls & restaurants 10m away.
I've spent the last decade or so living and working in Western ND, Eastern MT, and Eastern CO. I've traveled to West Texas, and Eastern New Mexico. Its just dry prairie grasslands North/South for 1,000 miles. Rattlesnakes are common, Pronghorn Antelope are somewhat scarcer but can be found. Oil is found everywhere in this narrow belt from the borders of Canada to Mexico.
We have mainly prairie rattlers where I live although I've been told that we have some diamondbacks as well. The prairie rattlers are usually fairly non-aggressive as long as you don't get too close to them. I even fell on one once, back first, and it didn't strike me.
But do be careful if you have to go pick up a portable stock tank. If you stick your fingers under and there are any there, they might just think that your fingers look like tasty and nutritious mice.
Northern new mexico has as many antelope as you could ever want.
Reminds me of Geography King's video "Top 15 Emptiest parts of the U.S.". You could make an entire series talking about vast empty spots within the U.S.
I lived in Rapid City, SD from the age of 3 to 11. Loved it as a child. I remember the air was crisp and you could see the Milky Way galaxy clearly in the night sky.
I grew up in this belt and I can vouch for the wild temperature swings. I have witnessed the temperature going from 70 DegF to 20 DegF in a few minutes. Also I have hunted White Tail, pheasant, and quail in this zone and it was amazing, totally wild and free. It is truly one of the last truly wild places in the US outside Alaska.
My grand parents farm was North of Lamesa/ O Donald TX. My dad tells me a dust bowl storm raged for a couple of days. The sand covered most of the fence. He went to dig it out to find a strip of snow six inches thick which had fallen during the black out.
Indeed I live on the edge of it at foothills of rockies here in Wyoming.. The last cold snap we had around christmas, The temperature went from 54F to "with windchill added AKA Real Feel" -55F in a span of 27 hours
@Justin Williams farmers, wind techs, road crews, and electricians. A lot of people are leaving because of the drought and the aquifer drying up at least in ks.
@the proof is out there somewhere there is only one wolf pack left. They are in yellowstone so technically yes. There are a ton of coyotes out and about
@@theproofisouttheresomewhere yes we have wolves here
I grew up literally in the middle of this zone. Nearest mall was 60 miles, nearest airport 3hrs away. Nearest Walmart 20 miles away. My graduating class was 11 people in 2011 and it was great. I miss it and go back twice a year. I now live in SF Bay Area and it’s a whole different world and not for the better.
Then go home. People like you forced people out.
I get the 'not for the better' part...
Well maybe you should go back if you love it so much
The most important reason is that that belt contains the most severe weather in the Americas on a consistent basis. Shipping is also another criterion still to this day. It’s very hard to get commodities in and out.
You're spot on.
Great video! However, that is still a lot of people considering the beginning of your video states, “almost nobody lives there”, and “why ‘nobody’ lives in the belt”…(head scratching). P.S. Is this broadcasted from someone’s basement ?
Same story going up into Canada, until you hit the Boreal Forest up north. SE Alberta and SW Saskatchewan are barren deserts of grass aside from the Cypress Hills. Used for ranching basically. The rest of Sask and West Manitoba have a lot of farm land. I'm from Regina and the only reason the city exists where it does is because the governor of the old NW territories owned the land so that's where he built his capital. Freezing cold winters and hot dry summers. Usually the day time highs and lows swing widely too.
Yep - I used to live right across the border in north-central Montana. A dry, treeless plain with unpredictable rainfall. The amount of agricultural output is just not enough to eceonomically support a large population.
Saskatchewan has one of the widest temperature ranges in the world. Up to low +40C’s in summer and to below -40 in the winter not counting the windchill. Absolutely crazy
Curious as to why the areas you mentioned are grasslands and not farmland as other parts of the Province? Thanks.
@@hillsofwi Lack of rain to support farming. It has been tried.
Canada is amazing. You can fly for hours and not see anything man made.
Growing up in the eastern plains of Colorado, many of us referred to it as middle of nowhere BFE. And my hometown Sterling as the "coffin corner" being roughly equidistant from BFE Wyoming, BFE Nebraska, and BFE Kansas.
Sterling: home of Parts & Labor Brewing. Did they survive the ‘Rona? I’m up in SD, where the wind drowns out most man made noise.
@@bearvonsteuben9675 They have a giant prison
I grew up in Sterling. Now live in Littleton. I miss things about my hometown.
I also live in this region (foothills of the Black Hills) and having moved from MN, the winters are vastly different. There is less depth of snow and it melts quickly, more wind, and more mild temperatures than the rest of the upper midwest (20-40s). The dryness is the biggest factor as there is less rain, no natural lakes in the Black Hills (all reservoirs), no major rivers in my area and only a series of smaller creeks/streams. Biggest plus: Significantly less mosquitos.
Sounds like you've only experienced the last winter.
yes all good, but starting to feel crowded now......😏
As a Californian, reading that temps in the 20s are "mild" is terrifying lol
As a non-Californian, knowing how few civil freedoms you have in California, I'd never want to live there regardless of the climate.
@@exothermal.sprocket If you say so, dude. I would respond further, but first I have to get out of the Stalinist re-education camp that Newsom put me in, then evade those pesky Khmer Rouge death squads in Long Beach, and slay Hugo Chavez's ghost in Fresno...
California, rough place
I live in Lubbock Texas. There's a saying here - "Happiness is Lubbock in your rearview mirror" :)
We live in SD in beautiful red rock canyons with mountains in our backyard and are 10 miles from the nearest house. It's wonderful 😊
I was born and raised and still live in this zone so this was interesting to me. Although I live in the most populated city in the zone, I understand how unpopulated it is in general. Drive just outside of my city and it is wide open with miles and miles between towns. I have no issue with that but it does mean we drive a looong way or need to fly to almost anywhere you might want to vacation. As someone else commented, water is an more expensive and harder to get with the aquifer depleting quickly. Drought is an issue here just as it is in California. Climate change may force even more people to move out of the area if we can't get water in the years to come.
I live on the Eastern edge of Mitchell County just South of interstate 20.. all of the small towns [that I know of] have steadily declined in population over the last 100 years. Interstate Highways have been the death of them all. There are more people aboard one aircraft Carrier than live in this entire county.. and Mitchell is one of the lucky ones. There are counties North and South (with no Interstate access) that have dwindled to almost nothing. When I was younger, this bothered me terribly. At one time, Big Spring, Texas would've made that short list of population centers and even had an indoor shopping mall. No more. On account of having grown up in the area (and outside of town), I am extremely socially awkward. I don't mind anymore. I love it here. My best friend is a cow. People are overrated :'D
Your analogy to aircraft carriers tickled me. I grew up in this unpopulated belt as well. I noted the same thing when I joined the navy after high school, and I was assigned to serve on an aircraft carrier: there were more people on the crew of the aircraft carrier than the entire population of my home county in Wyoming.
The weather thing is real! Here in Denver we can have a 75 degree day on January 20th…12 hours later it’s 28 degrees and 6 inches of snow!! Then a day or two later, it’s 60 degrees and all melts away!! Happens all winter long here from October to mid May…we’ve even had heavy snow as late as May 26-June 2nd-ish crazy weather here…summer is pretty consistent though 80’s-90’s all summer
I grew up in SW Nebraska, right in the middle of the belt. It was a crossroads of the country, but not a lot of travelers stuck around very long before they were moving on again.
To walk across the entire country and see how vast and different it is speaks volumes but most people won't even walk to a nearby store these days. I did this after being inan auto/pedestrian accident back in the early 1980s. I have seen things many never can nor will. Imagine knowing that you are able to survive without modernized things,alone and without having to take things from others. The greatest thing about life is learning how to do things that are different and unique.
That sounds like my dream journey!
As a black man that was born and raised in the Midwest this is only a dream a non black person can attempt due to its a lot of racist areas in "the belt"
I still gotta walk to the store you still have to walk if you dont have a car
I grew up in Hays, Kansas, which is right on the eastern boundary of the belt. Hays itself isn't a very large town (roughly 20 - 25 thousand people, last I checked) though it's a significant population area compared to any place west of the line. It's funny, we used to always joke that Hays was an "oasis" in western Ks -- though there's really an element of truth to that. Driving west from Hays on I-70, it gets seriously sparse all the way to Denver. Sure, there are some small, isolated towns here and there; but speaking from experience... that region which spans western Kansas into eastern Colorado is eerily barren!
Hey I was born in hays
I miss Golden Corral 😢
I recently broke down in Hays, Kansas while driving back to Denver. I was towing a Geo Metro with a Jeep Wrangler I also just bought and fortunately found an O’Rielly and Auto Zone to get Jeep parts. Also ate at Bricks BBQ. Not a bad little town!
Hi, My Dad was born in Hayes, Kansas in 1930. He & his family moved to Indianapolis, Indiana in 1942 so my Grandfather had more steady work. His parents were Vulga Russia Germans immigrants & my Grandmother's parents from Southwest Germany. My Dad always talked about growing up in Hayes Kansas. My sister & I took a trip with Dad in 2000 to Hayes. We flew into Kansas City & drove to Hayes. I loved how the sky & horizon opened up in a bit more west in Kansas. We stayed in a Bed & Breakfast right across the street from the Catholic Church where he was baptized & went to grade school. It was a wonderful trip together. He was happy to see Hayes again which made us happy. Six weeks later our Dad passed away suddenly. So our trip to Hayes Kansas was much more meaningful than we had ever imagined.
@Mary W wow thanks for sharing! There is still a large Volga-German population in Hays -- many of my friends in grade school even had parents and grandparents with residual accents, and the old family names still in tact, of course. & Yes, the sky over Hays & western Kansas is beautiful! I live in Colorado now, but I still visit Hays on occasion and will always consider it my hometown. The old limestone churches are still standing, some well over a century old. The community in Hays seems to truly value them as staples of town's identity, so I have no doubt they will be cared for and remain standing well into the future. Very glad to hear your father had the chance to return to Hays before he passed; it was his hometown too. What a wonderful thing!
I live in this region. We have had heatwave, heavy rain, extreme high speed wind, and snow/ice in the same day in my city.
As someone who was born and raised in “the belt”, it was fun to hear the reasons I loved living there listed as reasons to avoid living there. Great video!
Actually if you exclude vegas phoenix & denver there is a larger area of mountain & desert even less populated
Tons of federal land, little state administered land around those parts.
Certainly agree with his comment which is very obvious when flying to Vegas in a window seat,
Had a friend visit me in central Kansas who was originally from Africa. He loved everything about Kansas and especially how peaceful and non chaotic it was he even said he would move here in a heartbeat.
He’s your friend but you only know he comes from Africa?
I’ve notice a lot of the new immigrants from Africa are settling in the Midwest and westerly regions that are less populated than previous generations who came to the US.
You taught me something new my question however is why eastern new mexico not part of the belt? That side of the state is fairly empty with mostly native villages along Hwy. 54
I love history and geography. I watched about 30 seconds and subscribed. I look forward to watching more of your content. Props Geoff.
I live in this area! West Texas to be exact. It's not for everybody but I absolutely love it. Beautiful sunrises/sunsets, amazing starry nights, warm, dry, and wide open spaces. I'm pretty sure you are off on the Midland/Odessa populations though. Midland is definitely not 295k and I'm pretty sure Odessa is a bit larger than Midland.
Too many Mexicans. Can't do it.
He uses the population of the Midland Metro area, but then uses the city proper population for Odessa.
My husband is from the South Plains area of Texas. Some great things about this area are cotton producers, peanut farms, oilfield, chili pepper farms, watermelon farms and cattle ranches. Housing cost is lower in some of the smaller towns. The climate is dry and arid. It’s all about perspective.
I definitely feel the Texas plains are under rated there's more here than meets the eye
Born and raised in Eastern Colorado you only have to drive to Denver to see why we want to keep what we have