Center News and Events
A Window on Flint HIlls Folklife:
The Mardin Ranch Diaries 1862 1863
Rarely are detailed glimpses of 19th century life in the Flint Hills available to the 21st century reader. The recently published book, “A Window on Flint Hills Folklife: The Mardin Ranch Diaries 1862-1863,” gives readers just that glimpse on early life in Chase and Lyon counties.
Published by The Center for Great Plains Studies at Emporia State University and edited and introduced by Jim Hoy, Professor, ESU Department of English, the book allows readers to travel back to the days of farming and stock raising, pasture burning, and daily customs during the early settling of the Flint Hills.
"The grass is rich and matted, you cannot see the
soil.
It holds the rain and the mist, and they seep into
the ground...
It is well-tended, and not too many cattle feed upon
it;
Not too many fires burn it, laying bare the soil."
Cry the Beloved Country by Alan Paton
There are four major grasslands in the world--the Pampas of South America, the Savanna of Africa, the Steppes of Eastern Europe and Central Asia, and the Great Plains of North America. The Great Plains is a strip of land 400 miles wide lying just east of the Rocky Mountains. It stretches all the way from Mexico 2500 miles north into central Canada. Parts of ten states and three provinces--North Dakota, South Dakota, Montana, Nebraska, Wyoming, Colorado, Kansas, Oklahoma, Texas, New Mexico, Alberta, Saskatchewan, and Manitoba--are in the Great Plains.
Last Updated August 31, 2009