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The reason why there isn't a major city in that region is largely because of the semi-arid climate. Cities need a reliable source of drinking water. In semi-arid climates, more water evaporates than precipitates. Also, food can't be grown locally because it won't grow without irrigation (most of this area is ranchland, not farmland). So it all has to be trucked in.
That's why the major cities on the corners of the region (Calgary, Winnipeg, Omaha, and Denver) are where they are. Either go east and pick up the moisture from the eastern half of the country, or go north to Canada where it's colder and thus less evaporation, or go west to the edge of the Rockies where due to the high elevation it's colder and thus less evaporation. Now the exception to this is rivers, where cities can use the river as a water source. It's a little surprising that there no major cities on the Missouri north of Omaha.
I think the best bet for building a major city in the region from scratch would be somewhere like Chamberlain and Oacoma, South Dakota. It has a relatively mild and humid climate for the region, on a major trade route (it's right on I-90), a lot of flat land, and most importantly it's on the Missouri.
It's actually not the water, it's the freakin cold. This is what it looks like where civilization first came about in Iraq South Iraq. Kinda looks like Wyoming, if only it wasn't blanketed in deep freeze for 6 months. People can grow a lot with some irrigation, they can't grow much at all in zone 2 hardiness zones.
The best thing that can happen to this area is global warming. Places like this: Green River could have a lot going on with a more temperate growing season.
It's actually not the water, it's the freakin cold. This is what it looks like where civilization first came about in Iraq South Iraq. Kinda looks like Wyoming, if only it wasn't blanketed in deep freeze for 6 months. People can grow a lot with some irrigation, they can't grow much at all in zone 2 hardiness zones.
The best thing that can happen to this area is global warming. Places like this: Green River could have a lot going on with a more temperate growing season.
Wyoming’s lack of farmland isn’t due to it being cold, their are plenty of cold tolerant plants that can be farmed, what Wyoming lacks are large flat flood plains with rich loamy soils due to it’s high elevation, but where they do exist there are plenty of farms such as along the bighorn river
It's actually not the water, it's the freakin cold. This is what it looks like where civilization first came about in Iraq South Iraq. Kinda looks like Wyoming, if only it wasn't blanketed in deep freeze for 6 months. People can grow a lot with some irrigation, they can't grow much at all in zone 2 hardiness zones.
The best thing that can happen to this area is global warming. Places like this: Green River could have a lot going on with a more temperate growing season.
As others have pointed out. The lack of precipitation and access to abundant water is the bigger issue in Wyoming.
The other thing about *good* arable riparian land in an arid/semi-arid region is that, in modernity, that the very kind of land is most often lost to river dams and the reservoirs created by them.
That kind of land is the kind of land Lakota, Cheyenne, Crow peoples et al. treasured both for villages for seasonal agriculture but also for being the foundational food nursery of bison and other game. Wašíčus had other ideas for that land.
Certainly not an optimal place for another modern metropolis to be located. If someone wants to build with an ingenious medieval mindset* with modern tools, it's possible something medium-sized could be made sustainable.
* Think of how Venice was designed in the opposite terrain problem: a city in the middle of a marine lagoon with no aqueduct to supply Alpine snowmelt to it. Solution: every small island had at least one piazza with a well surrounded by a cistern and filtering sand around that, and all buildings on the island had tile roofs and gutters that fed rainwater and fog/dew into that. That was sustainable for centuries for one of the great cities of Western Europe.
It's actually not the water, it's the freakin cold. This is what it looks like where civilization first came about in Iraq South Iraq. Kinda looks like Wyoming, if only it wasn't blanketed in deep freeze for 6 months. People can grow a lot with some irrigation, they can't grow much at all in zone 2 hardiness zones.
The best thing that can happen to this area is global warming. Places like this: Green River could have a lot going on with a more temperate growing season.
Wrong. If cold winters prevented city formation, then major cities in the Upper Midwest or interior Canada wouldn't exist.
It's simply because historically there was little to no agriculture, no large, navigable rivers suitable for transportation, and no natural resources that required large amounts of workers to extract.
In the Western states, a city generally had to be a major railroad hub to have any hope of becoming a sizable community.
Wrong. If cold winters prevented city formation, then major cities in the Upper Midwest or interior Canada wouldn't exist.
It's simply because historically there was little to no agriculture, no large, navigable rivers suitable for transportation, and no natural resources that required large amounts of workers to extract.
In the Western states, a city generally had to be a major railroad hub to have any hope of becoming a sizable community.
Let me flip it to you this way, there's tons of potential for large navigable rivers, transportation, water, and natural resources galore in northern MN and the top side of the great lakes. Why is only the southern side the densely inhabited one? The iron that powered the US steel industry comes from upper MN, why is that not a hub? The Upper Peninsula of Michigan should have 3 million people by the resources and navigation hypothesis, not 300,000.
Likewise why did the Apache and Navajo say screw Canada, leave their relatives, and come down to the SW? Did any tribes do the reverse and traverse from a warmer region to the subarctic?
Regardless though, all of this area from WY to Canada is getting warmer, especially in the winter, so there's more opportunity ahead than there was in the past.
Let me flip it to you this way, there's tons of potential for large navigable rivers, transportation, water, and natural resources galore in northern MN and the top side of the great lakes. Why is only the southern side the densely inhabited one? The iron that powered the US steel industry comes from upper MN, why is that not a hub? The Upper Peninsula of Michigan should have 3 million people by the resources and navigation hypothesis, not 300,000.
Likewise why did the Apache and Navajo say screw Canada, leave their relatives, and come down to the SW? Did any tribes do the reverse and traverse from a warmer region to the subarctic?
Regardless though, all of this area from WY to Canada is getting warmer, especially in the winter, so there's more opportunity ahead than there was in the past.
Duluth was on track to becoming a mid sized city but starting in the 1950s the city started to experience an economic decline due to high quality iron ore being depleted in the region, and then the steel and oil crisis’ in the 1970s put the nail in the coffin and to this day Duluth has a smaller population than it did a century ago.
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took me 6 hours to get to Meeker on a week day in the winter
