The report moved on to how the disaster had unfolded—a chronology of collapse. One chart showed how quickly the grass was overturned. In 1879, ten million acres were plowed. Fifty years later, the total was one hundred million acres. Grass was needed to hold the soil in place; it was nature’s way of adapting to the basic conditions of the plains, the high wind and low rainfall. Buffalo grass, in particular, short and drought-resistant, was nature’s refinement over centuries. The turf was intact for thousands of years, and then in two manic periods of exploitation—the cattle boom, followed by
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