Mixed-grass prairie named for a Southern Cheyenne leader, restored from Dust Bowl farmland.
Black Kettle National Grassland
Black Kettle National Grassland is a federally protected tract of mixed-grass prairie in Roger Mills County, Oklahoma, with a smaller portion extending into Hemphill County, Texas. Spanning roughly 31,000 acres across about 100 scattered parcels interspersed with private ranchland, it preserves a representative sample of one of the most altered ecosystems in North America. The terrain combines sandy soils, red slate hills, oak brush, and wooded creek bottoms, threaded by the headwaters of the Washita River.
The grassland is named for the Southern Cheyenne chief Mo'ohtavetoo'o, who was killed along the Washita during the 1868 Battle of the Washita led by George Armstrong Custer. The land was once part of the Cheyenne and Arapaho reservation, was opened to private farming in 1892, and was abandoned after the Dust Bowl. The federal government acquired the failed farmland and, beginning in 1938, restored it as grassland before formally designating it as a National Grassland in 1960.
Today the area is managed by the U.S. Forest Service and co-managed with Oklahoma as a wildlife management area. It supports white-tailed deer, turkey, and quail, and serves as recreation, grazing, and energy-producing land, while also preserving a significant remnant of the southern Great Plains prairie ecosystem.
