The Great Plains is the broad expanse of flat land, much of it covered in prairie, steppe, and grassland, that lies west of the Mississippi River tallgrass prairie in the United States and east of the Rocky Mountains in the U.S. and Canada. It embraces:
Lewis Wickes Hine was an American sociologist and photographer. Hine used his camera as a tool for social reform. His photographs were instrumental in changing child labor laws in the United States.
The Farm Security Administration (FSA) was a New Deal agency created in 1937 to combat rural poverty during the Great Depression in the United States. It succeeded the Resettlement Administration (1935–1937).
North Dakota was first settled by Native Americans several thousand years ago. The first Europeans explored the area in the 18th century establishing some limited trade with the natives.
Ole Edvart Rølvaag was a Norwegian-American novelist and professor who became well known for his writings regarding the Norwegian American immigrant experience. Ole Rolvaag is most frequently associated with Giants in the Earth, his award-winning, epic novel of Norwegian immigrant homesteaders in Dakota Territory.
Jack E. Boucher was an American photographer for the National Park Service for more than 40 years beginning in 1958. He served as the Chief Photographer for the Historic American Buildings Survey (HABS). In 1966 he left the Park Service for two years to supervise New Jersey's State Historic Preservation program, including the State's roadside marker program, 18 historic museum houses, several lighthouses, and two historic villages. Offered his old job back by the Park Service/HABS in 1970, he left New Jersey to return to NPS/HABS and the highly specialized job of large format photographic architectural documentation. His work took him to 49 States, the Virgin Islands and Puerto Rico. April 2008 was the fiftieth anniversary of his employment with the National Park Service's "HABS" program. He traveled with 900 pounds of photographic equipment.
Johan Bojer was a popular Norwegian novelist and dramatist. He principally wrote about the lives of the poor farmers and fishermen, both in his native Norway and among the Norwegian immigrants in the United States. He was nominated for the Nobel Prize in Literature five times.
Michael Forsberg is conservation photographer who has dedicated 25 years of his life to photograph America's Great Plains, once one of the greatest grassland ecosystems on Earth. He is best known for his images of the Great Plains, wildlife, landscapes, sandhill cranes, and watersheds. His images have been featured in publications including National Geographic, Audubon, Outdoor Photographer, and the Nature Conservancy.
Wright Marion Morris was an American novelist, photographer, and essayist. He is known for his portrayals of the people and artifacts of the Great Plains in words and pictures, as well as for experimenting with narrative forms.
Milton Ruben Young was a United States politician, most notable for representing North Dakota in the United States Senate from 1945 until 1981. At the time of his retirement, he was the most senior Republican in the Senate.
Olger Burton Burtness was a U.S. Representative from North Dakota and a North Dakota District Court Judge.
The Bakken Formation is a rock unit from the Late Devonian to Early Mississippian age occupying about 200,000 square miles (520,000 km2) of the subsurface of the Williston Basin, underlying parts of Montana, North Dakota, Saskatchewan and Manitoba. The formation was initially described by geologist J.W. Nordquist in 1953. The formation is entirely in the subsurface, and has no surface outcrop. It is named after Henry Bakken, a farmer in Tioga, North Dakota, who owned the land where the formation was initially discovered, during drilling for oil.
Kyle Cassidy is an American photographer and videographer who lives in West Philadelphia. He holds a BA in English from Rowan University, and also holds an MCSE. He is the author of the book Armed America: Portraits of Gun Owners in Their Homes.
Aagot Raaen was an American author and educator.
Solomon D. Butcher was an itinerant photographer who spent most of his life in central Nebraska, in the Great Plains region of the United States. A settler under the Homestead Act, he began in 1886 to produce a photographic record of the history of white settlement in the region. Over 3,000 of his negatives survive; more than 1,000 of these depict sod houses. Butcher wrote two books incorporating his photographs: Pioneer History of Custer County and Short Sketches of Early Days in Nebraska (1901), and Sod Houses, or the Development of the Great American Plains (1904).
Carl Martin Grimstad was a pioneer in Dakota Territory and a dairy farmer in the state of Wisconsin. He also served as a member of the Wisconsin State Assembly.
John Alvin Anderson was a Swedish-American photographer who spent most of his life in the United States. He is known for photographing Sioux Indians at the Rosebud Indian Reservation in South Dakota from 1885 until 1930. Many of his works are displayed at the Nebraska State Historical Society in Lincoln, Nebraska.
Erling Nicolai Rolfsrud was a teacher and writer from North Dakota. His writing particularly covered the history of the state of North Dakota and the Norwegian-American immigrant community.
Shane Balkowitsch is an American wet plate photographer from Bismarck, North Dakota. The subject of his photos is the human condition. Since 2012 he has photographed over 2,000 individuals, including various celebrities and historical figures. Balkowitsch is a self-taught photographer.
The Society for the Study of Supernormal Pictures (SSSP) was a short-lived psychical organization that formed in 1918 to investigate claims of spirit photography. It was established as a rival to the Society for Psychical Research.
