# Presentation: 475465

**Notes:**
Welcome to history of Conservation in Wisconsin, which in good part is the history of conservation in America.   Right here in our own state we had the first large scale erosion control demonstration project  - Project #1 , The Coon Creek Watershed in Vernon County Wisconsin.

To set the stage, by 1930, farmers had been plowing Wisconsin for nearly 70 years.  1847-1870 settlers  poured in an d plowed every suitable and many unsuitable acres.  Wheat was the big crop –very lucrative at one dollar a bushel.  But after about 20 years, disease took its toll and wheat growing moved west.  Dairy cattle came in.  Erosion was not only rampant, it was considered the normal part of farming..

**Notes:**
The land and water were suffering.  Up and down hill farming was standard, yields were falling because of poor fertility, loss of water holding capacity

**Notes:**
cattle grazed in woodlots and in steep terrain, they just grazed higher and higher up the hillsides.  Rains ran like water off a tin roof, causing gullies and flash floods 

**Notes:**
Gullies were easily big enough to lose a team of horses or wagons.

**Notes:**
Sediment from the hills filled the creeks.  Coon creek became wide, warm and flash flooding was common

## Flooding

***Farmers could no longer store their hay on the creek banks. Roads washed out regularly.  Meanders changed every year.***
***“******One time back in the 20’s, we had three floods in one week.”  ***
***  ******--  Adolph Lee, Coon Valley farmer.******  ***

## “Coon Valley  ... one of the thousand farm communities which, through the abuse of its originally rich soil, has not only filled the national dinner pail, but has created the Mississippi flood problem, the navigation problem, the overproduction problem, and the problem of its own future continuity.”   Aldo Leopold, 1935

**Notes:**
As Aldo Leopold noted in his 1935 essay[1], Coon Valley “is one of the thousand farm communities which, through the abuse of its originally rich soil, has not only filled the national dinner pail, but has created the Mississippi flood problem, the navigation problem, the overproduction problem, and the problem of its own future continuity.”

**Notes:**
In fact all over the country, gullies, floods, dust storms, and droughts were driving people off the farm.  This canyon here was in Jackson county

## Huge dust clouds carried the soil hundreds of miles, 

*all the way to the Atlantic Ocean. *
*The soil was depleted and farms failed.*

**Notes:**
Very few people were alarmed about this.  But there were a few.  

## Slide 10

**Notes:**
Hugh Hammond Bennett, a soil surveyor with the USDA, , had spent 20 years investigating soils in every state in the nation.  He became soil erosion zealot and began a national crusade to stop the coming apocalypse that had fed the decline of other great civilizations.He wrote a booklet called The Menace of Soil Erosion, to draw attention to the problem

## Slide 11

**Notes:**
Dust storms were the most dramatic evidence of the erosion, and with this dramatic backdrop, Bennett lobbied Franklin Delano Roosevelt  and congress for help in saving the country from losing its farmland.  IN 1933, Congress appropriated $5 million for erosion control, and launched a New Deal agency the Soil Erosion Service with Bennett as chief.

## Slide 12

**Notes:**
The first thing Bennett did was to identify several demonstration sites, Coon Creek Watershed was the first.  Because it had terrible erosion and flooding, farmers were in dire straits with bad prices (depression) falling yields, and a nearby UW experiment station in LaCrosse.  But also, the people in Coon Creek were somewhat more open and willing (or at least not as overtly hostile to federal employees as neighboring watersheds.)

**Notes:**
The watershed was divided into four units with a Conservation Planner in each. the four Planners sat down in late 1933 to figure out from scratch how to make this work.  They had to prove that conservation would build farm income while restoring the soil and water.  Crop yields would have to increase to make up for the acres that would be fenced, seeded or planted to trees instead of crops. [1]

## The Basic Plan

**Open pasture, slopes >40% ****	**** **
**	****	****	****--- fence out cattle & plant trees **
**Woods with slope >25%  ****	****  ****	****--- fence out cattle &  plant cover in critical spots (gullies)**
**Crop fields with slope >20% ****	****    seed pasture or hay**
**Ridge top fields with slope <10% ****	**** **
**	****	****	****	****	****----terrace and contour strips**
**All other fields with slope >3% ****	**** contour strips**
**All flat fields****	****	****	****----use crop rotations**

**Notes:**
In January, 1934, they devised this general land use plan

## Slide 15

**Notes:**
Soil Erosion Service staff – multi-disciplinary 
The Planners worked with “Technicians” –Agronomist, Forester, Engineer, Economist, Soil Expert, and Wildlife Biologist, (brought in with Leopold’s urging).
And they had a crew of CCC boys to do the heavy lifting.

## Slide 16

**Notes:**
The CCC Camp was built right outside the village of Coon Valley on Coon Creek.

## Slide 17

**Notes:**
Tents initially then buildlings.  Up to 190 young men, led military style.

## Slide 18

**Notes:**
The planners went out and met with the farmers to convince them to sign up – offering free seed, lime, labor, and telling them over and over that the gov wouldn’t take their farm just for signup up as cooperators.
This is Manske Ridge – contour stripcropping was the showcase practice for the watershed.

## Slide 19

**Notes:**
The key to adoption of  conservation they found was 
Technical assistance
Financial Assistance – first signers got a 50 cent/acre payment
Education Assistance – went to every school house in the watershed to put on the play – Old Man Erosion about how evil erosion was.

**Notes:**
Some things were labor intensive

## Slide 21

**Notes:**
The technical staff worked together to come up with ideas for conservation practices – some worked and some didn’t. Many became the basis for the practices now found in the Field Office Technical Guide.

## Fencing Cattle from Wooded Slopes

## Control Structures

## Diversions

## Brush Wing Dams

## Slide 26

**Notes:**
The Coon Creek project was wildly successful – in the 1st year 418 of 800 farmers signed up, bringing 40,000 acres into the program.  In the very short time it was open – late 1933 through 1935 – the last they took on new cooperators, and the CCC camp was dismantled in 1937.  As a demonstration site, it drew thousands of visitors from all over the country and the world

However not all did – many holdouts fearful of government involvement.  And some just copied what they saw going on – contour strips – because the improvement in crop yield was so obvious.

## Who We Are...

*Since that time,  NRCS has kept a commitment to protecting and conserving soil and other natural resources on America’s private lands.*

**Notes:**
Take the time to read this
3 of the four original conservation planners shown with Hugh Hammond Bennett.
J Bolinger,on left,   Hugh Hammond Bennett
Marv Schweers – 1st state conservationist for Wisconsin, and Herb Flueck, State Conservationist for MN

## Slide 28

**Notes:**
The Haugen brothers remember how after the contour strips went it CCCs put in the conservation practices, their barn was full of hay, when just 2 years earlier they didn’t have enough to feed their cows.

## 1934

**1934**

**1967**

**Aerial view of Coon Creek Watershed showing contour strip cropping**

**95% of Coon Creek Watershed in conservation**
**Soil erosion reduced 75%**
**Gullies reduced 77% by 1978**
**Grazed woodlands reduced by 85%**

**Notes:**
Eventually, 95% of the Coon Creek Watershed came under a conservation plan. 
Soil erosion was reduced 75%
Gullies reduced 77% by 1978
Grazed woodlands reduced by 85%

**Notes:**
The Coon Creek Watershed is one of the most studied watersheds in the country.  The improving water quality and quantity due to upland conservation practices has been documented for 70 years.

## The Trout Barometer of Conservation Success

**1957 – 3 miles marginal trout water**
**2000  - 65 miles highly productive trout streams**

**Notes:**
Hydrology

Coon creek streams continue to deepen and cool and now support naturally reproducing brown and native brook trout.  65 miles of highly productive trout streams

## Soil Improvement

**20% increase in hydraulic conductivity **
**100% increase in water-holding capacity**
**Flood peaks reduced 53%**

**Soil erosion reduced from 60 T/A/Y to 4**
**Sediment reduced from 5.9 inches/yr to 0.2 inches/yr**
** ****1939 - 391 linear miles of gullies; 92 miles of gullies in 1978**

**Notes:**
However the farm operations are changing with many dairy farms switching to cash grain.  Without the hay, the typical contour strips and crop rotations aren’t needed.  From 1200 dairy herds to less than 700 in Vernon County in the past 20 years.
The saving grace for Coon Creek Watershed has been widespread use of no-till and conservation tillage.
.

## Slide 36

**Notes:**
A conservation ethic has been established.  People are concerned and want to protect the watershed

**Notes:**
Award winning shot that was done by National Geographic