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Agricultural Disturbance (NPS Photo) |
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In a manner of speaking the entire park is one disturbed landscape. Beginning with the Euro-American land runs in the 1890's, the land comprising and surrounding the battle site was used for farming and grazing up until the mid-1990's. Disturbances took the form of clearing land for homesteads, terracing fields, and re-directing the river itself. An obvious consequence of the conversion of prairie to cropland was the plowing under of native grasses and the removal of trees from the river floodplain. Besides agriculture, another major land disturbance resulted from the placement of a rail line across the property in the 1920's. In order to get the track to lay level, portions of the landscape were cut away or filled in.
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