First Shelterbelt in the United States

The belts were planted to a pattern. Each ran 100 to 165 feet wide, in rows ten feet apart: tall trees in the center rows, shorter trees beside them and shrubs on the outer rows, from species such as cottonwood, black locust, Osage orange and red cedar. The farmer gave the land and fencing, prepared the ground, cultivated and controlled rodents, while WPA crews built fences and planted. Survival ran 71.5 percent in 1935, then fell to about 62 percent once upkeep passed to farmers in 1937. Belts lost to drought, grasshoppers or poor cultivation were plowed up.

What the plaque says

First Shelterbelt in the United States During the 1930s, severe drought plagued the states in the Great Plains and deepened the Depression. High winds caused dust storms which blackened the sky. In 1934, President Franklin Roosevelt initiated a program to help stabilize the blowing soil and put people to work. His "Prairie States Forestry Project" envisioned planting wide belts of trees from North Dakota to Texas to protect cropland and reduce damage to the environment. The nation's first shelterbelt was planted on the H.E. Curtis farm near Mangum, in Greer County, OK. Oklahoma's first state forester, George R. Phillips, planted the first tree on Mar. 18, 1935. From 1935 to 1942, 223 million trees were planted in 18,599 miles of shelter- belts throughout the Plains states, with 2,996 miles in Oklahoma. The nation's "number one shelterbelt" is located five miles east and one mile north. Like many of the original shelterbelts, and the narrower windbreaks planted since then, it continues to provide conservation benefits to this day. Greer County Conservation District Oklahoma Dept. of Agriculture-Forestry Services Oklahoma Forestry Association Oklahoma Historical Society 219-1995

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• Quartz Mountain State Park — 15 mi
  The granite Quartz Mountains, the low western range of the Wichitas, rising from Lake Altus-Lugert, with a CCC-built park of 1937, a rebuilt lodge and the climbing rock of Baldy Point.
• Beckham County Courthouse — 20 mi
  Sayre's domed 1911 courthouse, built to impress people stepping off the train and filmed by John Ford for The Grapes of Wrath once Route 66 came through the square.

More markers nearby

• Peace on the Plains — 15 mi
• Ron School — 28 mi