What is The Great Plains Project?

The North American Great Plains are one of the most important places in the world for the world. I often say this when describing the significance of the Great Plains to folks that have maybe up to that moment just viewed them as a patchwork of fly-over country. I also add that, like many places where there has ever been any human population, it has dramatically changed over time.

I’m a travel and conservation photographer and a professor at Texas Tech University, and I’ve been obsessed with the Great Plains for a long time. I’m no encyclopedia on the topic, but I’m a curious explorer of place, particularly when its that place that’s been right outside the door for over half my life. That’s why in 2018, I started developing a backroad cycling route from Lubbock, Texas, to Calgary, Alberta. The bicycle is a machine that moves slow enough for the rider to really soak in his or her surroundings, and there is so much more revealed about a place when traversing it from the gravel and no-lane roads that thread their way across its topography compared to the monotonous interstate at 80 mph. Since 2018, I’ve had the opportunity to work on a more formalized version of the route with colleagues from other states in the region, and it is now developed into a forthcoming national recreation gravel cycling route from the Texas/Mexico border to the North Dakota/Canada border.

But, what is the project, you ask? After years of incubating the idea, my great friend, writer, and close collaborator Brandon Weaver and I are setting out on a two-week-long adventure motorcycle journey along the route, riding some 3,500 miles from Presidio, Texas, to Fortuna, North Dakota. Our mission is several fold: to recon the ultimate viability of this long-distance backroad track, to steep ourselves in what and who makes the Great Plains special, and to show everyone that there’s more to the region than just dots, lines, and the occasional town you can make out from their airplane windows. We are modern day explorers saddling steel horses and revisiting a place that has been explored and known over and over by generations of people, a place that represents the American frontier, and a place that without its existence, we’d most likely all be a bit hungrier and less clothed.

Join the journey, and follow this space for more details soon!