Angie Hong
Guest Columnist
On July 16, 1939, the front page of the St. Paul Sunday Pioneer Press was filled with images of eroding farm fields and crumbling ravines in the St. Croix Valley.broadstreet.zone(48036);
“War has been declared on erosion that has cut into mutilated hillsides of the St. Croix Valley…Under the direction of the Soil Conservation Service, and in cooperation with farm owners, CCC boys will plant trees on these naked and mutilated hill pastures to stop gullies that are wreaking havoc on pasture land…”
The story continued, in similarly dramatic fashion, with descriptions of how the erosion began and what the impacts had been for the Mississippi and St. Croix Rivers. Conservation in Minnesota was front page news.
The tale of the eroding hills and valleys had actually begun more than a decade earlier when farmers began clearing native prairies and woodlands to plant fields of crops. Then, the stock market crashed in
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