For many years, I lived on the Texas High Plains, a part of the American Great Plains, which also extends into eastern New Mexico. This vast natural region was once a grassland extending from the Mississippi Valley to the Rocky Mountains. As farmers and others from the more humid, forested East settled these plains, they found fertile soil. But they also discovered that the annual rainfall steadily diminished and became increasingly unreliable the farther west they went.

Therefore, it is not surprising that considerable interest developed among many 19th century Americans about how precipitation might be increased, an interest that persists to this day.

One early theory was that settlement itself, including cultivated fields and smoke from chimneys, would increase rainfall. Another idea was that the metal in railroad tracks and telegraph lines being built across the plains would somehow promote more lightning storms.

Another widely held idea was that planting trees would increase rainfall, because "the tree is father to the rain." Supporters of this idea must have applauded passage of a federal law, the Timber Culture Act (1873-1891), which offered an additional 160 acres of land to settlers if they would plant trees on one-fourth of it.

As unlikely as these ideas may seem to us today, some people at the time claimed there was evidence in certain locales that these initiatives did indeed increase rainfall when, coincidentally, wetter years would follow their employment. Similar evidence also was cited by advocates of the theory that setting off explosives would increase rainfall, because it was pointed out that sometimes rain fell after artillery bombardments in the Civil War and even after Fourth of July fireworks.

In one elaborate experiment near Midland, Texas, in the late 1880s, three lines of explosives were set off. The lines were two miles long and a half mile apart. One line of charges was set on the ground. A second line consisted of dynamite hung from kites. The third line was made of balloon-supported explosives. It's possible that many ear drums never functioned quite the same after all these charges were set off. A little rain did fall, but it was concluded that it was not related to the explosives.

Today, we have come to realize that the increased rainfall claimed by advocates of these 19th century beliefs were due either to coincidence (in which a storm was imminent anyway) or to the beginning of a cycle of wetter years interspersed between those of normal rainfall or drought.

Nevertheless, in desperate times when the rains don't come, some folks are still driven to try any remedy to bring rain, such as paying an opportunist to drive around the countryside burning material in the back of a pickup truck. In one instance, where local people in a West Texas community tried this tactic, a rain shower did follow. But it occurred some distance away from lands where the rainmaker promised the precipitation. Undaunted, the rainmaker still claimed he caused the rain to fall, but that his aim was just a little off.

Another more scientific method of rain making is cloud seeding with silver iodide crystals, which has yielded rain under the right atmospheric conditions. Though still controversial to some people, data from one long-term project on the plains near Big Spring, Texas, clearly have shown an increase in rainfall. Representatives of the High Plains Underground Water District, located in Lubbock, Texas, are planning a similar project. A group from eastern New Mexico is tagging along (see story on page 3), showing that we still want to be in control of the elements.

As a historical geographer, Dr. Conroy studied peoples' perceptions of their environment.