1889

The year 1889 is so full of meaning in the history of the Great Plains. To Samuel Western (that’s his real name, seriously), it connotes the writing of constitutions, five of them, all in the Great Northwest — North Dakota, South Dakota, Montana, Wyoming, and Idaho — as authorized by Congress in the Omnibus Bill of 1889. He writes about them in his new book from University Press of Kansas, The Spirit of 1889: Restoring the Lost Promise of the High Plains and Northern Rockies.