Blackland Prairie ecosystems: Lost & Found's Journal

Few ideas are more wrong-headed and greedy than the construction of landscape-blanketing installations of solar panels. For many engineering reasons, solar electricity should be produced near to its end users, period. Other approaches are simply further "justification" for development sprawl, valuable open space taken to prop up unsustainable expansion. In this instance, in the very near future all remaining evidence of original North Texas prairie habitat could be erased. Originally from the Washington Post: "Solar project pits conservation views; Land conservation at odds with renewable energy in split over prairie’s fate". https://www.arkansasonline.com/news/2022/mar/13/solar-project-pits-conservation-views/

By the end if the 20th Century, the lands around Orr Branch had undergone their most drastic transformation since the demise of the bison and the arrival of the plow. Rampant real estate speculation throughout Texas had drastically inflated North Dallas land values, and what had been middle class homes were being acquired, demolished and replaced with opulent mansions. Lots were re-landscaped wholesale and many of the native plants removed. At this point, the principle remnants of the Blackland Prairie setting are the riparian corridors, such as Orr Branch.

Over the ensuing decades, deep cultivation, cotton and drought were not kind to the black lands, and by the mid-20th Century farmlands began to be sold for other development. In 1947, a developer named Rick Strong purchased several parcels of land that surrounded a major portion of Orr Branch which became a Dallas addition known as “Hillcrest Estates”. Centered on a roughly mile-long stretch of Northaven Road, the tracts of old pasture and farm structures were subdivided, typically into 300-foot-deep lots, some with horse corrals, and restrictions required homes to be a minimum of 2,300 square feet. Landscaping on these semi-rural lots often involved adapting the native plant species. South of Northaven, a small chain of water impoundments lay along Orr Branch, some these descended from old stock tanks used by the precursor farms. With time, additional dams, bridges and retaining walls were constructed, with old horse shoes turning up in the excavations.

With the invention of plows capable of breaking through the “black waxy”, the prairie sods were turned and European-style farming came to the area. As R. T. Hill pointed out in 1901, “Large quantities of cotton, corn, and minor crops are annually raised upon these fertile lands.” The chief limiting factor for farming was the availability of water. Dams and small tanks were soon constructed to retain surface flows, and as Hill noted “for domestic purposes its inhabitants depend largely upon cisterns or ponds, the water from both of which is unwholesome”. Land not plowed for crops was mowed for hay, and a few of these old hayfields still stand open to the North Texas sun. Similarly, a few farmhouses built in the late 19th and early 20th centuries can still be found at historic sites in Dallas and smaller cities across the area.

By the mid-19th Century, cattle and other livestock had replaced the bison, and prairie grasses and forbs were vital forage for longhorns and other breeds being moved north along the ancient trace that came to be known as Preston Trail. This path was desirable partly because it traveled along the spine of the limestone ridge, or “cuesta” that separated the eastern and western zones of the Black Lands. Over-grazing eventually depleted the value of these lands for rearing hooved stock.

With the invention of plows capable of breaking through the “black waxy”, the prairie sods were turned and European-style farming came the area. As R. T. Hill pointed out in 1901, “Large quantities of cotton, corn, and minor crops are annually raised upon these fertile lands.” The chief limiting factor for farming was the availability of water. Dams and small tanks were soon constructed to retain surface flows, and as Hill noted “for domestic purposes its inhabitants depend largely upon cisterns or ponds, the water from both of which is unwholesome”. Land not plowed for crops was mowed for hay, and a few of these old hayfields still stand open to the North Texas sun. Similarly, a few farmhouses built in the late 19th and early 20th centuries can still be found at historic sites in Dallas and smaller cities across the area.

Early naturalists like Ferdinand von Roemer (1818-1891), and geologist R. T. Hill (1858-1941) described the Black Lands as one of the richest natural areas in all of North America. English naturalist Thomas Nuttall (1766-1859) was among the first trained botanists to describe the North American Great plains plant communities. On a journey out of Fort Smith Arkansas in 1819 - ultimately encountering the Black Lands just north of the Red River (east of present day Durant, OK) - he described many of the woody and herbaceous species we still associate with prairie country. The landscape through which Nuttall traveled supported scattered herds of bison, and the Indian tribes who utilized this resource. (In north central Texas, these mobile tribes would have included the Wichita, Comanche, Caddo, and Cherokee.)

This distinctive region of North America began to take shape once the Cretaceous mid-continental seaway receded to the southeast, exposing accumulated marine sediments to weathering and erosion. Bedrocks of shale and limestone ultimately converted to heavy clays that under the influence of prairie vegetation became a soil farmers called the “black waxy”.