North Dakota Experimental Forest

Much of North Dakota is prairie, and less than one-percent of the land is forested. In the 1930s, McHenry County residents pushed the U.S. Forest Service to plant trees on the land, similar to efforts in Nebraska and Kansas.

Seventy years ago, the area around Denbigh, North Dakota was prairie that had been overplowed and overgrazed, leaving it looking much like the Sahara desert. As part of a make-work, depression era plan to reforest the area from North Dakota to North Texas, a 636-acre experimental forest was planted in Denbigh with more than 40 species from throughout the United States, Europe and Asia to test which kinds of trees could survive the harsh climate and sandy spoils of the upper Midwest. Of those, 30 species have survived and flourished and now, their seeds and seedlings are much sought after. They are shipped throughout the United States and Canada, despite the fact that the forest concept was dropped and has had no funding since the end of World War II. The U.S. Forest Service manages Denbigh, but hasn't allocated any money to it for years. However, local residents have used the forest as a source of timber, windbreaks as well as employment. Not only did the forest stabilize the soil, it stabilized the economy. The nursery sells 1.3 million seedlings a year, about 40-percent of which come from the forest. Tree plantings from the forest have provided wind protection for crops, communities and wildlife throughout the United States and Canada. The residents would like to make something more of the forest, which has stands of Scotch pine, Siberian larch, Black Hills spruce, Russian olive, Rocky Mountain juniper and other species.