I can show you heavily forested lands that were once desolate dust bowls, due to uncontrolled logging.
I can show you terraced woodlands, where the USDA paid landowners to terrace their open terrain back in the 1930s.
We almost lost all of our top soil to ignorant farming and timber practices.

Squirrel might could do that now.

I'm currently reading "Crazy Horse and Custer."

It describes in an early chapter how Ohio was such a fertile area with incredible diversity and vast woodland habitat. When settlers arrived, the first thing they did was start removing the timber by cutting and burning.

This is the free, short preview on Scribd. Use the cursor at the bottom to move to Page 50 for the part about how they cleared Ohio.

https://www.scribd.com/read/2280061...-Parallel-Lives-of-Two-American-Warriors

That was interesting read Clem. I was at Custer's last stand last summer. I learned more there in 2 hours than a lifetime of books in school

Any idea why the cutover land was not suited for raising cattle, as described underneath an image late in the article? I know nothing about cattle or farming, but seems like the cattle could graze decently in a field full of stumps...

Ohio had such rich dirt back then a man could stick his arm up to his shoulder in good soil for planting and raising three generations. They depleted it by over doing it.

They were driving cattle then. Hundreds of miles. Texas to Montana kind of miles.

Interesting, and multifaceted, but must of contributed to why beef was 2nd to wild game in preference of commercial meat markets.

Florida Man and the next two owners will find that mud somewhere on that truck for the next 25 years, too. That mud's like herpes. Never goes away.[/quote]
Truth. It turns a 2 pound pair of boots into a 50 pound pair of boots.[/quote]
And the further you walk the taller and heavier you get.

As a young man I had always envisioned that the east/southeast was all like Bankhead Forest at one time until I read an enlightening article in a magazine that said we had more trees now than at anytime in the US’s existence, and longer. That was shocking to me at the time.

Ain’t nothing like Kansas mud. When it’s wet you can’t even drive a four wheeler on a low maintenance public road