Then came the homesteaders with mold- 

 board plows that could turn the deep 

 prairie sod. There were a few good years 

 when enough rain fell to produce adequate 

 crops. But then drought, a natural recur- 

 rence in the prairie climate, came— and 

 stayed. Without the deep-rooted grasses to 

 hold it, the soil dried and blew in dust 

 storms that covered the plains. Crops 

 failed, and most of the homesteaders, 

 broke and disillusioned, moved on. The 

 land they left behind was severely dam- 

 aged. 



Repairing the Damage 



In the years that followed, national con- 

 cern focused on rebuilding the soils of the 

 Great Plains, where most of the country's 

 grain had been grown. In 1930 the U.S. 

 Congress passed the Buchanan Amend- 

 ment to the Agriculture Appropriation Bill. 

 This amendment provided funds to create 

 the Soil Erosion Service, which in 1935 be- 

 came known as the Soil Conservation Serv- 

 ice. Its duty was twofold: (1) to find ways of 

 improving and conserving our soil, water, 

 and other natural resources, and (2) to 

 demonstrate and teach conservation prac- 

 tices. 



In 1937 President Franklin D. Roosevelt 

 asked the nation's governors to support 

 laws permitting landowners to form con- 

 servation districts. Their purpose was to 

 work through local people to conserve and 

 improve our natural resources. In 1939 



Montana passed a law to form conserva- 

 tion districts that would be a part of state 

 government. 



Meanwhile, rangeland and grass spe- 

 cialists were searching for grasses and 

 other plants that could teike root in the des- 

 ert-like conditions left by the great dust 

 storms that had stripped the land of pre- 

 cious topsoil. From Russia they brought 

 the seeds of crested wheatgrass, a native of 

 the cold, windswept steppes near the arctic 

 circle. Bromegrass, an import from 

 Hungary, did well on the high dry plains of 

 this country. From the wheatlands of cen- 

 tral Canada came ideas for new ways of 

 planting grain and the use of shelterbelts 

 and strip farming to fight the wind. 



Because damage to rangelands has long 

 been a problem in Montana, the state legis- 

 lature has passed several laws to improve 

 our grasslands. Among these laws are the 

 Montana Grazing District Law of 1933, 

 and the only rangeland management law in 

 the United States, the Coordinated 

 Management Act. The Rangeland Resource 

 Program established in 1970 works to im- 

 prove Montana's rangelands through 

 county range leaders who are local 

 ranchers. 



Erosion from wind will always be a prob- 

 lem in Montana; in 1980 and 1981, 

 drought and high winds gave us the second 

 highest erosion rate in the United States 

 (figure 7). 



7. Wind Erosion in Eastern 

 Montana, 1981 



U.S. Soil Conservation Service 



12 



