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”.
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.)
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.
