You may have heard of John Deere tractors, but did you know that John Deere first gained fame for inventing a plow? In 1837, Deere was a blacksmith in Illinois who noticed that farmers struggled to plow the thick prairie soil. The iron plows they had brought from the East clogged easily and slowed work to a crawl. Deere shaped a polished steel blade from a broken saw and attached it to a moldboard. The smooth steel cut through the heavy soil and shed dirt instead of collecting it. Farmers could plow more rows in less time and did not have to stop and clean the blade every few steps. This simple change transformed daily farm work.
The new plow spread quickly. Deere sold hundreds within a few years, and soon thousands of farmers bought them. By the 1850s, the tool was widely used across the Midwest. More land could be farmed, and farmers planted larger fields of wheat, corn, and other crops. With more food produced, profits grew, and new settlers were encouraged to move west to try farming for themselves. The invention supported the idea of westward expansion by making the prairies easier to cultivate. However, it also led to big changes in the land. Native grasses were plowed under, and animal habitats disappeared. However, the steel plow is still seen as a key invention of the mid-1800s. It changed the Great Plains into farmland and helped new communities grow.
