The Great Plains
The Great Plains are a vast expanse of wheat prairies, cornfields and cattle ranches. The main cities seem almost to be oases, with their commercial centres, stockyards and railway termini surrounded by the ubiquitous suburbs and embellished by the campus of some State University dominated by its football stadium. This is also the region of small towns which served crucial local functions in the early days but failed to grow: a group of grain elevators along the railway track, a dusty Main Street built optimistically wide and long where shops peter out after a few blocks, and a small uninviting hotel on the corner where the Greyhound bus stops. Population continues to decline in much of the plains.
Dennis Welland (Hg.): The United States. A Companion to American Studies; Methuen, London, 1987, page 33