Subsoil

Once upon a time there was a valley, nothing more than a slight depression in the vast expanse of grassland that swept through the center of America. It had a slow filling spring that bubbled in the early part of the year. Normally the water dried up in the heat of the summer, but the year of 1879 produced a strangely cold season, giving the impression to Benjamin Brewer of a verdant paradise. He named his foundling community “Brewersville.”

In 1902 the town changed its name. Benjamin had not been well liked.

The town struggled through every summer, managing to make due with some grazing beasts and a few grain crops. There was no railroad that increased the town’s fortunes, no cattle baron that lobbied Congress for the town’s economic growth. They struggled, and for them, the Great Depression was no different to the years preceding and following.

If there had been a market for dust and bugs, the town might have pulled through.

Occasionally storms swept through the town on the prairie that to outside observers wiped it off of the proverbial map. Never populated by more than 300 residents, the farmland finally dried up and then there were no more storefronts open to the public, no cattle to graze, no schools to be erected, no fast food chains to employ dropouts. The buildings stood there until the next big storm and then there was no one to rebuild, no reason to rebuild. The surrounding cities expanded their borders to include land that used to belong to the town. Within two generations it was gone, nothing but pavement and a faded street to prove it had ever been there.

And that was the end.

 Photo Credit: Russel Lee via The Library of Congress