5 core states · 5 partly · 10,524,498 people (core) · Central and Mountain time
Great Plains states map
The Great Plains are the dry grassland belt east of the Rockies. Five states lie almost entirely within it — North Dakota, South Dakota, Nebraska, Kansas and Oklahoma — and five more have their eastern or western parts on it.
How the region is defined
The Great Plains are a physical region first and a list of states second. Physically they are the belt of high, flat, semi-arid grassland between the 98th meridian (roughly the line of rainfall below 20 inches a year) and the Rocky Mountain front, from the Canadian prairies to the Rio Grande. Five states are usually treated as Plains states because most of their area is on it: North Dakota, South Dakota, Nebraska, Kansas and Oklahoma. Eastern Montana, eastern Wyoming, eastern Colorado, eastern New Mexico, and the Texas Panhandle and West Texas are Plains too, while the western parts of Minnesota, Iowa and Missouri are sometimes included as the wetter "prairie" edge.
The five core states had 10,524,498 people in 2020 on 377,339 square miles — about the area of Texas and Louisiana together, with fewer people than Michigan. The Census Bureau has no Great Plains region; the core states sit in the West North Central and West South Central divisions. Totals in the table are for whole states, not for the plains portion alone.
States on the Great Plains
| State | Capital | Largest city | Population (2020) | Area (sq mi) | Included |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| North Dakota (ND) | Bismarck | Fargo | 779,094 | 70,698 | Mostly on the Plains |
| South Dakota (SD) | Pierre | Sioux Falls | 886,667 | 77,116 | Mostly on the Plains |
| Nebraska (NE) | Lincoln | Omaha | 1,961,504 | 77,348 | Mostly on the Plains |
| Kansas (KS) | Topeka | Wichita | 2,937,880 | 82,278 | Mostly on the Plains |
| Oklahoma (OK) | Oklahoma City | Oklahoma City | 3,959,353 | 69,899 | Mostly on the Plains |
| Montana (MT) | Helena | Billings | 1,084,225 | 147,040 | Partly |
| Wyoming (WY) | Cheyenne | Cheyenne | 576,851 | 97,813 | Partly |
| Colorado (CO) | Denver | Denver | 5,773,714 | 104,094 | Partly |
| New Mexico (NM) | Santa Fe | Albuquerque | 2,117,522 | 121,590 | Partly |
| Texas (TX) | Austin | Houston | 29,145,505 | 268,596 | Partly |
| Total, all listed (10 states) | 49,222,315 | 1,116,472 |
Geography
The Plains slope gently upward from about 1,000 ft at their eastern edge to 5,000–6,000 ft at the foot of the Rockies, a rise of a mile over 400 miles that is invisible on the ground. Three subregions stand out: the Missouri Plateau of the Dakotas and Montana, with the Badlands and the isolated Black Hills (Black Elk Peak, 7,242 ft, the highest point in the core states); the High Plains of Nebraska, Kansas, Colorado and the Texas Panhandle, capped by the Ogallala aquifer, and including the Nebraska Sandhills, the largest dune field in the Western Hemisphere; and the Llano Estacado of Texas and New Mexico, one of the flattest surfaces on earth.
Rivers cross the Plains from west to east: the Missouri and its tributaries the Yellowstone, Platte and Kansas; the Arkansas through Kansas and Oklahoma; the Canadian and Red through Oklahoma and Texas. All are wide, shallow and braided, "a mile wide and an inch deep" in the old description of the Platte. The region has the most violent weather in the country: Tornado Alley runs from Texas through Oklahoma and Kansas to Nebraska, and winter blizzards and summer heat both come from the same lack of any mountain shelter.
The Great Plains geography page covers the physical region in more detail. Time zones: the eastern parts of the core states are Central, the western parts of the Dakotas, Nebraska and Kansas are Mountain.
Related maps
- Official versions: West North Central, West South Central and Mountain divisions; Midwest region.
- Overlapping informal regions: Rocky Mountain states, Southwest.
- Cities: Oklahoma City, Omaha; capitals Bismarck, Pierre, Lincoln, Topeka, Oklahoma City.
- Geography: Great Plains, Missouri River, Arkansas River.