State agricultural experiment stations and the development of the west, 1887–1920: A look at the sources

The early advances in agricultural science coincided with the growth of the West, and that region provided many unique challenges to science. In the development of both agricultural science and the West, the agricultural experiment station was an important contributor to the many and rapid changes that occurred during the late 19th-early 20th centuries. This article discusses representative records available to scholars to study the federal research complex, consisting of state, national, and cooperative institutions, of which the agricultural experiment stations were a part. The article considers only the scientific role of the stations and not their other assigned functions. The extension role, in particular, is not discussed. Consisting of manuscripts, journals, bulletins, proceedings, and newspapers, the records become more voluminous as one moves from the individual stations to the national and cooperative levels and particularly more varied as one moves from the work of the individual stations to the general topic of agricultural science.