DUANE
Duane's take
Here's how the official marker tells it, and I'll do my best to do it justice. Now, most of Texas has been turned, tilled, plowed, planted, paved, or otherwise persuaded into somethin it wasn't born to be. But out here in Lamar County, there is a meadow — about 2,100 acres of it — that has been sittin right where God put it since before Texas was even Texas.
This is the story of the Smiley-Woodfin Native Prairie Grassland, and friend, it is the largest section of native grassland existing in the entire state. Let that sink in a moment. The whole state.
Right here. This meadow was once part of something almost unimaginably vast — a prairie system that stretched throughout the Midwestern United States and all the way up into Canada. A living, breathing carpet of native grasses rolling on for what must have seemed like forever.
And then the settlers came. The earliest of them arrived in this area in the 1830s, back when Texas was still part of Mexico, and little by little, the plows got to work. Similar land nearby was tilled and planted.
And often — not always, but often — that resulted in erosion, or soil so overworked it had nothin left to give. That's the fate that met most of that old prairie. But this particular 2,100 acres?
It had a couple of things workin in its favor. A lack of fuel. A lack of surface water.
Those two deficiencies made the land unsuitable for pioneer farmers, and so they moved on, and the meadow stayed exactly what it had always been. Uncultivated. Native.
Patient. Now, eventually the land came to a man named M.L. Smiley, born in 1872, a native of Lamar County through and through.
He looked at this grassland and he saw what it was — not a problem to be solved, but a resource to be respected. He used the meadow for cattle grazing and for hay production. In the early days, that meant cutting the grasses by hand, stacking them up to dry, or hauling the hay out to nearby steam-powered presses.
It was work. Real work. The kind that knows your name by sundown.
But the process got simplified over time. Gasoline-powered machines came along that could harvest and bale the hay right there on the site — no hauling, no distant presses. The meadow kept on givin, and Smiley kept on tendin it.
He passed in 1953, and after his death, the meadow was inherited by brothers George S. and Gene M. Woodfin. And here's where the story lands.
From the 1830s to today, through Mexican Texas and the Republic and statehood and wars and droughts and every manner of change the world could throw at it, that meadow never got plowed. Never got overworked. Never gave up what it was.
Today, the Smiley-Woodfin Prairie Grassland is the largest supplier of native hay in the state of Texas. Two thousand one hundred acres of living proof that sometimes the best thing you can do with the land is simply let it be itself.
What the marker says
This meadow, approximately 2100 acres, is the largest section of native grassland existing in Texas. It was originally part of a prairie system that stretched throughout the Midwestern United States and into Canada. Since the earliest settlers arrived in this area in the 1830s, when Texas was part of Mexico, this grassland has remained uncultivated, providing an annual harvest of native grasses. A lack of fuel and surface water made this area unsuitable for pioneer farmers. Although similar land nearby was tilled and planted, often resulting in erosion or overworked soil, this site was saved by the owner M.L. Smiley (1872-1953). A native of Lamar County, he used the meadow for cattle grazing and for hay production. Early harvests consisted of cutting and stacking the grasses for drying, or transporting the hay to nearby steam-powered presses. The process was later simplified by the use of gasoline-powered machines that harvested and baled the hay on the site. After Smiley's death, the meadow was inherited by brothers George S. and Gene M. Woodfin. Today the Smiley-Woodfin Prairie Grassland is the largest supplier of native hay in the state. (1981)