In reading the promotional literature of the railroads, it’s clear that the publicity departments played with the facts in trying to get people to move west.

One particularly harmful notion fostered by railroads was that rain followed the plow. That is, if new settlers would only plow the virgin prairies of eastern Montana, for example, the rains would come. Exposure of dark soil beneath the grassy sod would encourage increased rainfall, leading to lush crops of wheat and other grains.

Thousands of settlers acted on this creative fiction. They moved to eastern Montana and other parts of the West to start their own farms. Soon, however, they learned to their dismay that Mother Nature was not so cooperative. Farmers soon figured out that no amount of plowing could stave off drought and withering summer heat. The hard truth was especially evident after 1917, the beginning of a string of dry years.

Giving up the struggle, many hapless agrarians abandoned everything, including hopes for a better life in the West. Ironically, some of the would-be farmers ended up working as laborers for the railroad companies that first lured them west in the first place.

Railroad brochures competed with one another for the attention of would-be settlers. The Milwaukee Road issued a brochure with a tantalizing cover. It shows a farmer plowing gold coins from a Montana field. Another publicist put out a brochure titled, "The Golden West: Where Money Grows on Trees."

Some publications attracted settlers onto marginal land that could produce crops only sporadically during wet years. For example, water was too scarce in central Oregon and eastern Montana to sustain a farmer and his family over the long haul. Many of these disappointed immigrants left, embittered and disillusioned. The West was far from a Garden of Eden or even a guarantee of prosperity for most newcomers.