An Amorphous Border: Making Modern Agronomy across the 49th Parallel

My poster examines the environmental and agronomic history of the Montana Hi-Line and Southern Prairie Provinces in the late 19^th and early 20^th centuries. I argue that agricultural nation-building projects in the Western hinterland created a divergence in agronomic practice on both sides of the border and ultimately led to the decline of ethnoagricultural practices and ethnic diversity in Northern Montana. My project explains the ethnic and environmental homogenization of a region that was constructed to be an extractive periphery in service to Saint Paul and Seattle.

My poster’s general layout will reflect the textual narrative of my chapter through two large juxtaposed maps of Montana, Alberta, and Saskatchewan. The maps will reflect a “Pre-1910” and “Post-1910” image of the region. Charles Saunders, the Canadian Dominion Cerealist, released the first standard modern hard red spring wheat, “Marquis,” in 1910. This watershed moment reflects a transition in the history of the U.S.-Canadian borderland and agronomy from an amorphous, porous, boundary to a defined agricultural periphery with a function in relation to the larger economy of both the United States and Canada.

The left side of my poster will feature the “Pre-1910” map of the region with a dotted line to show the 1872 North American Boundary Commission’s boundary line as a vague construct that meant little to both the Native inhabitants and homesteaders in the region. Additionally, I plan on demarcating Native and First Nations ancestral lands with a hard line containing corresponding dates to show how the Northern Great Plains was a site of a multi-national conflict over land and territory. On a smaller scale, I hope to put pins on the map with strings that lead to photos and stories of immigrants and homesteaders that grew crops that were largely the same across the boundary. For example, many of the Scandinavian, Irish, and Eastern European groups brought seed with them that originated in Ukraine and Turkey. Thus, regardless of boundary, Red Fife and Turkey Red varieties of wheat were ubiquitous, and farmers made community-based and ethnically informed decisions about what to grow. Many of these photos are digitized at the Montana Historical Society and University of Calgary. I will also order seed from the Germplasm Resources Information Network at the USDA to display the historic seed of what these homesteaders grew next to their photographs and stories.

The right side of my poster will show the transition of the dotted boundary line to a solid border along the 49^th parallel. Similarly, I will draw the four reservations along the Montana Hi-Line and corresponding First Nations reservations in Alberta and Saskatchewan. Also, I plan on drawing the Great Northern and Canadian Pacific Railway lines with towns along the line that became important towns. Additionally, I plan on including the agricultural experiment stations, land grant universities, and centers of crop divergence on the map. My poster shows change over time in a region that was created from the outset as a marginal hinterland.