Thing is, the southern U.S. has an ever changing landscape. If you add enough water and weather, which the south has an abundance, nothing stays the same very long. The southern landscape will always change with or without man’s help.

Not to make light of it, but I get a kick out of someone thinking that land should be protected this way or that, to look like they found it or remember it, or how they want it to look. It just doesn’t work that way, especially in the south.

I enjoyed reading that. My ancestors came to the Ala territory by wagon train from SC in Jan. of 1818 and settled in Brewton. I have been reading my family genealogy lately and this fit right in. My Great Great grandfather was born in Oakey Streak in 1856 and cut timber for Alger Sullivan lumber co.

I drive hwy 80 between Montgomery and Selma fairly often. I've always thought how some of that landscape reminds me of Kansas. I never knew that was how a lot of the state looked naturally.

My mother's side also came to Alabama by wagon from South Carolina by way of Georgia. It was during the Alabama land rush know as "Alabama Fever". They settled near what is now Chelsea, AL. They were Kendricks and founded a place known as "Kendrick Springs" or more commonly known today as "K Springs."

People don't think of Buffalo being in the Southeast but they were here. Not in the numbers of the Great Plains, but especially in places like Kentucky they were plentiful. Buffalo Trace Bourbon is not named that just because it's a cool name. Some modern highways still follow the paths of old buffalo traces in the southeast and most of those eventually led to a mineral lick somewhere.

There’s information about that tree in the Escambia County museum located on the campus of Coastal Community College in Brewton. Pretty cool museum.

When Boone came through the Cumberland gap he described the vast prairies and cane breaks. A much different landscape than what it is now. Make sense that alabama would be no different.

The land we used to hunt in Dallas County had a lot of cane breaks, grasslands with cedars, and wild roses. It had a lot of planted pines too but for some reason, the prairie looking areas were not planted.

Nice offshoot with the Buffalo discussion. We visited Land Between The Lakes in KY a couple years ago and went over to the Bison and Elk Prairie that they've established in the park as a way to somehow try and preserve what the landscape may have looked like before European contact. Western Kentucky had a lot of acreage that was labeled as "Barrens" by the first documented explorers of the region, from the Cumberland River westward. Also seeing waterways named the Buffalo River and the Elk River are likely hints at the fact that they were here at one time.

Here is another interesting read on the topic of Buffalo in the SE with some references to historical writings about them being here at one time.

Did The Buffalo Roam?

They mentioned "forested areas" but likes was mentioned earlier in this thread large areas of the southeast were grasslands. Especially in "The Bluegrass State."

Interesting in that article they mention William McIntosh. My 6th great grandfather was also a Creek chief and he ordered and had William McIntosh killed. Killed his sons too.

Because the landowners enjoy watching Florida Man show up with his jacked up, $85,000 truck thinking it will negotiate the Prairie soil. That usually ends up being a two tractor job.

The truth is that soil is not very conducive to growing pines.

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.

Truth. It turns a 2 pound pair of boots into a 50 pound pair of boots.

Praire mud will stop the best vehicles. You only need to learn that lesson once.

Would love to have seen the South when Buffalo and Elk still roamed. And who knows what else.

At the turn of the century the Troy Messenger in Pike County did a few articles where the interviewed the first settlers of the county that were left. My 4th great grandfater's brother was interviewed as he was a teenage boy when his father, a preacher moved them across Pea River from Barbour County into what is now Pike County around 1834. The story he told of the area and land scape at the time still fascinates me. He told of fishing the dark clear waters of the Pea River and the great Chestnut flats growing along its banks. First whitetail buck they killed, him and his brother killed in the deer's bed with the aid of a torch hunting at night. The buck bottomed out a set of 250lb cotton scales the next morning. He told of the deer migrating in the spring and the fall past there home in herds of 100 or more, and that the bear and panther tracks were as numerous in the yard of the home as the chicken tracks, which were difficult to keep from harm. Brings to mind a very interesting view.

Come on now you know no forest were ever cleared until the evil white man showed up.

You can definitely see how beavers can drastically alter the landscape. Places that once had big pines on it that are now dead replaced by grasses and brambles.

Just do a search on his name and you can download it as a free eBook. In fact, most of 18th and 19th century books about the history of the USA are free on the internet. I've probably read 25 books from that period since I retired.

Thanks to the OP for posting the article. It is a bit misleading to say that over half the state was grassland because he is including the great longleaf forest into that figure. It's just a matter of semantics, but I think most of us would call that a forest. But the Blackbelt was a very large area and everyone would call it a grassland.

I think that squirrel could have made his journey by treetop if he had picked his way carefully.

The article mentioned 15,000 years of forest management. I thought we only had evidence of humans in North America for 10,000 years. Has that number been revised?

It was said that a squirrel could tree-hop from the Atlantic Coast to the Mississippi River if it picked its route carefully.