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Waving "A Bough Of Challenge" Forestry On The Kansas Grasslands, 1868-1915, Brian Allen Drake

Great Plains Quarterly

Kansas is legendary for geographical monotony, for a landscape allegedly so absent of trees and relief that the state has become the butt of national jokes and a cultural synonym for flat. Kansas is not really flat; tilted might be a better description, for the state rises some 3,300 feet in elevation along the 400-mile stretch between Kansas City and Kanorado. Kansas is lacking in substantial tree cover, though, especially in its western third. US Forest Service researchers noted in 1999 that forests covered slightly less than 3 percent of the state, concentrated mostly in the northeast and southeast corners. …