Nothing But Land

Nothing But Land. . , This prairie is a small remnant of an immense, sloping prairie that once ran unbroken from Canada to central Texas. Its original inhabitants, the Pawnee tribe, farmed and hunted here for hundreds of years before the arrival of America's homesteaders., Today, unbroken prairie remnants are biological treasures that are crucial to the survival of the prairie plants and animals that rely upon them, but to 19th century settlers, this unfamiliar land was a formidable and bewildering sight. , The prairie has changed little since Cather's day. With support from the Woods Charitable Fund, the Nature Conservancy purchased this relict prairie in 1974, in order to preserve and protect the largest tract of unbroken prairie in the surrounding six counties., In 2006, the Willa Cather Foundation took ownership with a goal of preserving the landscape that Cather - and so many others - first encountered here., "There seemed to be nothing to see; no fences, no creeks or trees, no hills or fields. If there was a road, I could not make it out in the faint starlight. There was nothing but land: not a country at all, but the material out of which countries are made." - Willa Cather, author