Great Plains Studies, Center for
Date of this Version
1989
Abstract
The Flint Hills of Kansas, forming a band approximately fifty miles wide, start north of Manhattan near the Nebraska border and run south nearly two hundred miles, at which point they merge into the Osage Hills of Oklahoma. This area, together with the row of counties bordering the Flint Hills to the east, is sometimes labeled the Bluestem Grazing Region; its four million acres of native grass represent the remaining one percent of a tallgrass prairie that once stretched north to Canada and east to Indiana and Ohio. 1 Cattle raising in the Flint Hills portion of this region differs in several respects from ranching in most other major grazing regions of the American West. Prominent among these differentiating traits (which include transient grazing and an occupational mix of farmer-stockman and pasture man alongside the more traditional rancher and cowboy) is the custom of pasture burning. 2
Comments
Published in Great Plains Quarterly[GPQ 9 (Fall 1989): 231-238].Copyright 1989 Center for Great Plains Studies, University of Nebraska—Lincoln.