Light on the Prairie: Solomon D. Butcher, Photographer of Nebraska's Pioneers

Light on the Prairie: Solomon D. Butcher, Photographer of Nebraska's Pioneer Days.
 
Author Nancy Plain, 113 pages, Paperback, 2012.
 
Once President Lincoln signed the Homestead Act of 1862, which granted 160 acres of free land to anyone with the grit to farm it for five years, the rush to the Great Plains was on. Solomon D. Butcher was there to document it, amassing more than three thousand photographs and compiling the most complete record of the sod house era ever made. 
 
In this book, Nancy Plain explores the task Butcher took on. Alongside sixty-two of Butcher's iconic photographs, Light on the Prairie conveys the irrepressible spirit of a man whose passion would give us a firsthand look at the men and women who settled the Great Plains. Like his subjects, Butcher was  pioneer, even though he held a camera more often than a plow.