[Ruy Dias de Bivar]

It has always been known as the GREAT AMERICAN DESERT.

http://www.learner.org/interactives/collapse/chacocanyon.html

“Why would the Anasazi leave — potentially for good — pueblos it had taken them decades to construct? Scientists have found one possible answer by looking at tree rings (a study called dendrochronology) in the Sand Canyon area.

In the period between A.D. 1125 and 1180, very little rain fell in the region. After 1180, rainfall briefly returned to normal. From 1270 to 1274 there was another long drought, followed by another period of normal rainfall. In 1275, yet another drought began. This one lasted 14 years.

When this cycle of drought began, Anasazi civilization was at its height. Communities were densely populated. Even with good rains, the Anasazi were using their land to its limits. Without rain, it was impossible to grow enough food to support the population. Widespread famine occurred.

People left the area in large numbers to join other pueblo peoples to the south and east, abandoning the Chaco Canyon pueblos and, later, the smaller communities that surrounded them. Anasazi civilization began a long period of migration and decline after these years of drought and famine. By the 1300s, it had all but died out in Chaco Canyon.”

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jedediah_Smith

It also appears to have been rather dry in the early 1800s. Jedediah Smith was killed by Comanches while searching for water in SW Kansas in 1831.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jedediah_Smith

[Regulator]

Facts don’t matter.