6/18/2008:
Governor Norman Brunsdale accepted ownership of the Soil Conservation Service Nursery at Fort Lincoln on this date in 1956. Previously, the tree nursery belonged to the U.S. Department of Agriculture, under the supervision of the Northern Great Plains Field Station in Mandan.
Early pioneers on the prairie had to “prove up” – or improve – their allotted acreage in order to receive clear title to their land claims. The resulting plowing up of the prairie sod soon led to soil erosion. Beginning in 1916, the Field Station began offering demonstration projects in how to use shelter belts to combat the effects of this erosion.
By the early 1930s, the facility was providing trees and shrubs for many of the windbreaks we now see across the state. Besides the production of nursery stock, the nursery also performed plant testing to identify the trees and shrubs most able to withstand the soil and weather conditions of the northern prairie. Their recommended species were cottonwood, Russian olive, Siberian elm, eastern red cedar, pine, green ash, lilacs and caragana.
In 1935, the nursery was transferred to the Department of Agriculture’s Soil Erosion Service – wisely renamed the Soil Conservation Service a month later. The operation was under the supervision of the Great Plains Experiment Station at Mandan and was located between Bismarck and Mandan at that time.
In 1952, flooding led to relocation of the facility to a 355-acre plot at Fort Lincoln. The following year, the Department of Agriculture decided to discontinue all Soil Conservation Service nurseries, leading to the transfer of the deed to the nursery to the state of North Dakota.
The handoff ceremony took place in the opening session of a two-day conference attended by about 150 representatives from six states. Field representative T. L. Gaston presented the deed and acknowledged the operation was well recognized in Washington. “The nursery doesn’t owe a dime,” he said, “and will continue to be of increasing benefit to the people of North Dakota.”
Among the North Dakota farmers Governor Brunsdale recognized was Otis Tossett, of Lansford. Tossett gave an overview of his efforts in soil conservation, praising the progress North Dakota farmers had made since the days in which they considered his ideas “backward and isolated.” Now, in 1956, he said farmers were required “by necessity to know a vast field of knowledge and must know mechanics, electricity and chemistry as well as agriculture.”
Otis Tossett is credited with being an extraordinary farmer and, among other things, having the first mile-long shelter belt in the state. His lifetime of visionary work garnered him an induction into the North Dakota Agriculture Hall of Fame in 2001.
By Merry Helm
Source: Bismarck Tribune. Monday, 18 June 1956;
Lincolnoakes.com. Lincoln-Oakes Nurseries: Our History;
Knudson, Michael (Forester). Paper: Twenty-five years of tree planting trials at the Highmore, South Dakota Field Evaluation Planting. USDA-NRCS Plant Materials Center: Bismarck ND.