High Plains

A region that runs from South Dakota to West Texas, where it is known in Spanish as the Llano Estacado or "staked or fenced plain.” The High Plains are mostly level grasslands used for dry and cattle farming as well as natural gas and oil development. The High Plains are the traditional homelands for nomadic Native American groups including the Cheyenne, Comanche, and Apache. These dynamic, equestrian based tribes followed great herds of bison across the plains. Their numbers were decimated by European settlement and the advancement of the transcontinental railroads.