Miners, trappers, and those on the Oregon Trail didn't take much time out of their work schedules to taxonomize the local flora and fauna they passed—and they didn't bother to ask the Indian population who'd resided in the area for millennia and might have educated them. But we do have some idea of what the area species were before cattle grazing—and wild horse grazing, for at least a century before cattle arrived—altered the landscape. Categorized as a sagebrush/grassland, the Snake River Plain possessed low shrubs and perennial bunchgrasses that complemented the omnipresent artemisia (sagebrush).
You might know the plant pictured above as Krascheninnikovia lanata (just kidding, unless you're a botanist) or you may have just thought it to be a low-growing, stumpy sagebrush, but this plant, a native to the Great Basin and Snake River Plain, is not related to sagebrush at all. "Winterfat" is its common name now, though early passers-through often called it white sage. It was the staple food for grazing cattle and likely saved thousands of them in the early years of ranching, when supplementary winter feeding was thought unnecessary. Ranchers at that time just let their herds scrounge the desert for native flora or grazed them in the bottoms or hills, accustomed to raising cattle in more temperate climates.
The nasty winters of 1886-1887 and 1890 ended that idea. In 1890, as early as January warnings were going out in southeast Idaho: "Unless they are rounded up and fed," the newspaper read, "Many of them will perish before spring." Stray cattle nosed through the streets of Blackfoot, looking for food and getting thinner every day. Herd losses were estimated at thirty percent by February in some places. John Sparks, who ran cattle from Nevada to Cassia County estimated his losses at 35,000 of his 65,000 cattle. His ranch had branded 38,000 calves in 1885 on Idaho and Nevada holdings, but after 1890's winter the task grew much easier: only 68 calves were branded. Raising hay soon became a feature of almost all ranching operations.
Sparks' grazing covered some of the most sparsely vegetated areas in the United States,
the Great Basin, which includes most of Nevada and the western half of Utah. It shares a great many climatic features and flora with the Snake River Plain to its north. As in Sparks' territory, Western Idaho had relatively wide areas of winterfat suitable for winter range and were touted in the 1860s. White sage/winterfat honey sold for a premium and a white sage hair tonic, said to cure baldness, was peddled for a number of years.
Winterfat was one of the few plants the desert offered to ruminants as sustenance—sagebrush, while edible, is close to the last choice for elk, bison, cattle, and deer, its odor repelling those animals. It's a good thing, as artemisia (sagebrush) contains terpenes that kill bacteria in a ruminant's stomach, resulting in a slow suicide if enough is eaten. A fat cow with an active ruminant can survive extremely cold weather, its stomach generating considerable amounts of heat, but a sagebrush-feeder, likely already somewhat emaciated if it's consented to eating sagebrush, quickly succumbs without that internal furnace. Desert grazing horses, being non-ruminant, do eat sagebrush, up to fourteen percent of their diet coming from that plant and other woody shrubs.
The lack of edible vegetation explains the dearth of ruminants on the desert prior to the nineteenth century. Antelope, while ruminants, have adapted much better to sagebrush as food, and were the only large herbivore of sizable population in the Great Basin and on the Snake River Plain. Along streams and rivers, however, small populations of other large grazers existed.
Sheep, like antelope, find sagebrush less toxic and consequently fared well as a cattle competitor, being cheaper to raise and easier to winter. Their ability to eat snow to provide their water needs gave them an edge on cattle, too. Cows needed to stay close to open streams in the winter, thereby limiting their foraging range considerably. The result: degraded areas that were overgrazed. Sheep can withstand longer periods without water than cattle which enabled them to extend their grazing range further than cows.
Sheep had yet another advantage. They were more open than cattle to grazing a grass common to the area, too—Stipa, its common name needlegrass.
In large amounts, needlegrass is toxic to cattle, sometimes putting them to sleep for days.
Annual grasses didn't exist on these ranges (cheatgrass didn't show up until about 1900 in northern Nevada and Twin Falls and a decade later in eastern Idaho), due to the short spring and arid climate that allow no time or water for plant growth. Hence, a grazing animal amenable to both sagebrush and needlegrass, having more options for forage, had a better chance at surviving winters without considerable supplementary feeding.
Given the lack of annuals, perennial bunchgrasses provided the primary feed until summer set in and cattle were moved to higher elevations still verdant with foliage. That worked for a couple decades until repeated spring grazing set back those perennial species, the removal of early growth preventing plants from rejuvenating their roots—leaves being a primary method of energy retrieval. A lack of reserves results in a failure to flower and seed, so the bunchgrass populations diminished. Ranges suffered as a result of this improper management. Sagebrush flourished though as a species it suffered in later years, for the onset of cheatgrass and its heavy fuel load resulted in large fires that burned the brush. Unlike most other desert shrubs, sagebrush don't regrow after fires by resprouting new shoots. Hence, small shrubs took over for ten or fifteen years after a fire before artemisias returned.
Bluebunch wheatgrass and Idaho fescue appeared regularly in the area, though to an observer they might have seemed sparse. Sagebrush-bunchgrass ecosystems leave a great deal of empty space between plants due to the low amount of summer rainfall. There were never any real "pastures" as early cattlemen from the Southern U.S. or the British Isles may have experienced and envisioned.
Agropyron spicata (bluebunch wheatgrass)
Festuca idahoensis Idaho fescue
Below, six-week fescue (Vulpia octoflora) was a small native annual that populated the area but didn't appear in large populations as it is not highly competitive.
Junipers (most Idahoans mistakenly refer to them as cedars) were generally absent out in the open, the desert being devoid of trees, but did cluster—and still do—in pockets and in the lava beds, where settlers harvested them in the winter for firewood and fenceposts. The area now known as Morgan's Pasture was full of cedars and pine, reportedly, before being burned by those attempting to dry farm the area in the early twentieth century. Settlers harvested junipers at will until the 1930s when, spurred by a spreading absence of the species, permits were finally required to collect them.
"You don't know what you've got til it's gone" is a line from a Joni Mitchell song that probably summarizes the attitude of every generation that followed a pioneering population. Not much attention gets paid to resources when they appear abundant—and then when they're nearly gone, reclamation suddenly seems important. "It's easier to get forgiveness than permission" might be another description of early activity in new environments. Grazers probably didn't consider it possible to damage the vast areas they fed cattle and sheep on, the first farmers likely had no idea that improper care of the land would allow cheatgrass and russian thistle to flourish, and trappers who saw abundance weren't imagining the future dearth of animals. There's a lesson there that unfortunately needs to be repeated again and again by each generation.
Ralph Thurston is the author of the recent local history The Great Pasture: Bingham County's Shifting Dreams. Grab your copy inside the door at Kesler's Market or online at https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0CZXYD7JS/ref=sr_1_8?dib=eyJ2IjoiMSJ9.EBJ9VSZBMvmn2VF2qkLCSeFUmMrreos6vRQ9rOfiqNTPq9ZRRjxRwlxrpN7xcAjZuRRtPD7SWgVyYz9mwtmppKVcyueJ9T94_f62eCO6tw5FEhfFFupXjSMFQlPDUE5dPswTGnCSZoQnLAZAynjgcviG7OP72Cyz8Nhs4U-40tPYAbgx0evkNl8SXmpEhGTJcGjvEZo5h5f_-nS1dbGUizvEQvUfr2D3-OpbjZO2cSs.B30xVoq9xZLx_-nIMZvA_LUSQv8yU6AHtPf_z1YdHhg&dib_tag=se&qid=1712352724&refinements=p_27%3ARalph+Thurston&s=books&sr=1-8
You can still get a copy of The Shanghi Plain at Kesler's, too, and soon to come is We, The People: Two Canals' Battle for Territory, the story of the Peoples Canal and its multi-year court battle with the opposing interest The American Falls Canal.
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