Early Accounts of Oak Savanna

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"When the county was first settled there was no underbrush or small timber such as now exists. The timbered lands were open, the trees standing so far apart that hunters could see the deer at distances from one to fire hundred yards. The entire surface of the country was then covered with a rank growth of vegetation, consisting of native grasses and wild flowers, which gave the landscape, especially the timbered lands, a much more beautiful appearance than it now has."
-Joseph Mudd, Lincoln Co. Missouri, 1888.

"Among the oak openings you find some of the most lovely landscapes of the west, and travel for miles and miles through varied park scenery of natural growth, with all the diversity of gently swelling hill and dale; here the trees are grouped or standing single, and there arranged in long avenues, as though by human hands, with strips of open meadow between."
-Ellsworth, H.L., 1837. Illinois in 1837

"In the timbered portions of the county, there was absolutely no brush. The trees were very massive and the ground underneath covered with prairie grass. The massive trees, the prairie flowers and grass all combined to make this a truly beautiful and inviting country."
-Thomas Dockery, 1855, Adair Co. Missouri

"Its indented and irregular outline of wood, its varied surface interspersed with clumps of oaks of centuries' growth, its tall grass, with seed stalks from six to ten feet high, like tall and slender reeds waving in a gentle breeze, the whole presenting a magnificence of park scenery, complete from the hand of Nature, and unrivalled by the same sort of scenery by European art."
-George Flower, Illinois prairies, 1817

"Trees are met with from time to time, but are so placed that they seem to have been planted with design, in order to make the avenues more pleasing to the eye than those of orchards. The bases of these trees are often watered by little streamlets, at which are seen large herds of stags and hinds refreshing themselves, and peacefully feeding on short grass."
-Allouez, on the Illinois River

"But on the clay ridges the white oak flourished sometimes to the exclusion of all else; while the most striking peculiarity of the Iowa upland forest was its openness. One could drive through it anywhere. To one following some long clay ridge the trees opened on every hand as in a royal park, and out past their clean white weathered boles on a summer day the emerald prairie gleamed and shone to the horizon's edge."
Prof. T.H. MacBride, 1896. "The Landscapes of Early Iowa". Iowa Historical Record, published by the State Historical Society at Iowa City, Volumes X., XI. and XII.

"To the old regime or status contributed likewise the annual fires which swept all grass-grown regions, forest and prairie alike, keeping down the natural increase of the forest so that only the hardiest individual under exceptional conditions managed to survive at all. Occasionally where some "old settler" still preserves them may yet be seen some of the old oaks of Iowa's primeval woods. Such trees are now, owing to the absence of forest fires, wholly surrounded by " second growth" and do not show to the casual observer for what they really are; but if one be privileged to walk through such a surviving bit of woodland and can for the once imagine the smaller trees removed, and the ground beneath the remaining lofty white oaks with grass, he may even yet at least in imagination see the woods of Iowa when through their shades the Sacs and Foxes "pursued the panting deer."" Prof. T.H. MacBride, 1896. The Landscapes of Early Iowa. Iowa Historical Record, published by the State Historical Society at Iowa City, Volumes X., XI. and XII.



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