United States purchased the Plains as part of the Louisiana Purchase in 1803

Since the earliest settlement on the Plains, the region’s population has been in flux. For example, evidence suggests that the first human occupation of the Plains occurred at the end of the last ice age (around 10,000 b.c.e.). However, between 5000 and 2000 b.c.e. a long and severe drought made the region uninhabitable. In the two hundred years since the United States purchased the Plains as part of the Louisiana Purchase in 1803, the peak of the region’s population was recorded in the 1950 census, and since that point it has exhibited a profound decline in its most rural sections. Over the long haul, this region’s environment has both welcomed and repelled its human inhabitants, but the population decline since the middle of the twentieth century has had a profound impact on the region.