August 13 , 2007

ALF Staff Explores Leopold Legacy in Coon Valley

The Coon Valley watershed demonstration project encouraged contour farming and planting trees on steep hillsides. Many of the practices continue to be used today.

In the 1930s, as the Dust Bowl drought set in across much of the nation and fertile topsoils continued to wash downstream, traditional farming methods began to be questioned. In 1933, the USDA Soil Erosion Service (today called the Natural Resources Conservation Service), a new federal agency formed as part of the New Deal, looked for a community willing to put new ideas into practice. They settled on the rural dairy farming town of Coon Valley in southwestern Wisconsin to serve as the first watershed demonstration project in the country. The SES enlisted the help of the leading land use experts at the University of Wisconsin at the time, including Aldo Leopold. Farmers were asked to voluntarily participate in the program, allowing changes to be made in their farming practices that would be funded with federal money and enacted using the available labor of the Civilian Conservation Corps crews. Erosion of top soil on the steep slopes of Coon Valley had already decimated the productivity of the once rich agricultural lands. Farmers saw the financial incentives of the program as their only option, and many enrolled. The CCC crews planted trees, built check dams, fenced cattle out of forested areas, and installed contour strips for farming the steep hillsides.

A farm in Coon Valley in the 1930s. Huge gullies like this one formed as feet of topsoil washed down from the hillsides, clogging streams and causing flooding in the bottomlands. Photo: Norman Fassett, 1934.

Leopold involved himself, characteristically, not only in the science of the project, but in winning over support of the farming community as well. He also dedicated his two eldest sons, Starker and Luna to work with the SES on the project. Leopold had become increasingly concerned with the impacts of soil erosion on land health starting early in his career in the Southwest, and he highly regarded the efforts of the Coon Valley project in engaging the private landowner in the care of the land. He wrote in an article for American Forests about the project, "One can cast his eyes upon the hills and see hard-boiled farmers who have spent their lives destroying land now carrying water by hand to their new [pine] plantations."

Small dairy farms like this one are still prominent in Coon Valley and the surrounding Vernon County today, thanks in part to the farming practices implemented in the watershed demonstration project. Organic Valley, an organic dairy cooperative headquartered in the neighboring town of Cashton, has also been critically important in allowing small family farming to continue to be profitable in the region.

Recently Aldo Leopold Foundation staff joined Natural Resources Conservation Service staff for a tour of the Coon Valley project . Many of the experimental farming practices developed in the 1930s as part of the demonstration project are still in evidence today. Rows of crops follow the contours of the hillsides interspersed by rows of sod that can be mowed for hay. Trout streams in the valley have almost completely recovered. Some farmers have begun to use no-till seeding methods to further control erosion. But there are still challenges facing the watershed. For example, small family dairy farms are increasingly converted to corn and soybean production. Without dairy there is no need for the hay in the contour strips, and without hay the strips are much less effective in controlling erosion.

ALF and NRCS employees gather around historical marker commemorating the Coon Valley Watershed Demonstration Project.

The Coon Valley demonstration project was a major step forward in combating the land pathology that Leopold described in the 1930s. Its particular success was in engaging private landowners in taking responsibility for the health of the land.

Read more about the history of the Coon Valley project here.