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During the nineteenth century, the midcontinental plains were alternately disparaged as an inhospitable desert and rhapsodized as a verdant garden, depending on the mindset of the viewer, the vantage point, and the motive for recording an observation. Ever since explorers Zebulon Pike and Stephen Long created the image of the Great American Desert that emblazoned early maps of the West, writers and artists have been recording contradictory human responses to the prairied landscapes of America.