Social and Behavioral Sciences Commons^™

The New Deal's Land Utilization Program In The Great Plains, Geoff Cunfer

Great Plains Quarterly

Drive the remote highways of the Great Plains and you will find signs marking US Forest Service property in the midst of the nation's vast interior grassland, a place where it could be miles to the next tree, let alone a forest. In fact, the Forest Service (USFS) manages several million acres of land in the Great Plains, public land designated "National Grasslands" and committed to grazing by private cattle ranchers. The National Grasslands are remnants of the Great Plains past, their story rooted in pioneer homesteads and in the drought and depression of the 1930s. USFS brochures explain the …