In the summer of 1894, a curious railway car plied the tracks of western Kansas. A chemical soup wafting to a sky ruled by a demon sun and chastened by moisturedevouring winds. At the helm of this experiment on wheels, owned by the Rock Island Railroad, was a 32-year-old train dispatcher who had convinced railway officials and town leaders across the state that he had the secret to make it rain. The aspiring rainmaker, Clayton B. Jewell, was an instant celebrity in a parched land thirsting for heroes. Rock Island officials were so confident of his ability, they eventually designated three cars for his rain-making experiments, which, by their count, had succeeded in all of 52 attempts.

Jewell kept the concoction of chemicals he sent to the sky a closely held secret and scoffed at others who said they had achieved similar results with his method. In an 1895 letter to his hometown newspaper, the Topeka State Journal, he boasted that if only he had the necessary equipment, he would “wager my life itself that I could produce rain in 10 minutes in the clearest of skies.”

Jewell traversed western Kansas in his rainmaking car during the worst drought in Kansas that anybody could remember and the seventh straight year of crop failures. The drought had lasted an agonizing 20 months. The resulting economic chaos had ruined farmers and threatened the businesses, like railroads, that depended on profits from hauling and selling crops.

At Clay Center, Wis., Allen, assistant general manager of the Rock Island line, had, in April, sat in his private car at Clay Center and surveyed the dry Kansas prairie.

“We will stop this thing,” Allen declared, as reported by the Kinsley Mercury. “We will send our rainmakers into southern and western Kansas, temper this heat and save the corn crop.”

But no relief was to come.

“The great Arkansas Valley, one of the richest west of the Missouri River, with its great underflow of water, is to-day a vast desolate waste,” reported the New York Times in August 1894. “Hundreds of square miles of fine crops have been burned up in less than three days, and the cornstalks are scarcely worth cutting for fodder, as all the blades will fall to pieces when handled.”

The harsh reality of agriculture beyond the 100th Meridian, which runs through Dodge City and roughly separates the arid western third of the state from its more humid majority, was already well-known. John Wesley Powell, the Grand Canyon explorer and director of the U.S. Geological Survey during the late 19th Century, had argued that plans for settlement and development west of the line should be different because of the lack of water. Powell’s warning was ignored, according to Wallace Stegner’s 1954 book on Powell and the West, “Beyond the Hundredth Meridian.”

After the Civil War, a myth took hold on the Great Plains that “rain follows the plow.” This phrase, which expanded on previous notions that once broken the sod would absorb rain like a sponge, was coined in 1881 by Charles Dana Wilber, a journalist and land speculator. Simply planting lush green crops, Wilber wrote, would cool the earth and attract showers.

Many homesteaders staked their futures on the belief that simply breaking ground for crops would attract enough precipitation to allow rain beyond the 100th Meridian, and for a few years it seemed to work. Then came trials that must have seemed Biblical in nature: the locusts and the periodic droughts and terrifying twisters. The economic spasms of bust and boom continued until the Dust Bowl of the 1930s wiped just about everyone out, with southwest Kansas and the Oklahoma panhandle at the center of the disaster.

The Dust Bowl was the result of severe drought, economic collapse and poor soil conservation. It was an environmental crisis made worse by greed and bad decisions, and it prompted one of the largest migrations in American history. By 1940, some 2.5 million people had abandoned the plains states. Powell’s warning about settlement west of the 100th Meridian had proven true.

By far, the most water used in agriculture in western Kansas is groundwater from the Ogallala Aquifer. The aquifer is one of the world’s largest and lies beneath eight states, from South Dakota to Texas.

In the 1950s, it was thought the water in the aquifer was inexhaustible. More and more wells were drilled to reach the aquifer and new delivery methods, chiefly center point irrigation, revolutionized farming. But unlike surface water such as that found in a river, with a relatively quick recharge from rain and snow, the groundwater in the Ogallala Aquifer is prehistoric. It is recharged on a geological time scale. Now we know the aquifer is not inexhaustible.

About a third of Kansas counties are currently in a moderate to severe drought, with some of the worst conditions in the area served by District 3, according to the U.S. Drought Monitor. The drought puts pressure on farmers to pump more water instead of voluntarily committing to conserve.

It’s difficult to get people to do the right thing when it’s against their economic interests.

If only Jewell’s apparatus had really worked.

The rainmaking railway car was inspected in 1892 by a newspaper reporter who described the mysteries within.

No rainmaker, no aqueduct and no prayer will save western Kansas from the depletion of the Ogallala Aquifer. The best we can hope for is to reduce consumption, buy a little more time and adjust to a changing climate and economy. It is time to heed the warning John Wesley Powell gave us so long ago — and prepare for the new Dust Bowl.

Max McCoy, Kansas Reflector

Kansas Reflector is a nonprofit news operation providing in-depth reporting and diverse opinions. More information at https://kansasreflector.com/.