History of the Sheyenne Valley Grazing Association

by Alice Kjar Maung-Mercurio

This community Cooperative Association grazes cattle, goats and sheep on the Sheyenne Valley Grasslands in southeastern North Dakota, and has remained a central feature of the local economy for over 80 years. This group, along with the Soil Conservation Service and the US Forest Service has, from its beginning, used unique community-based approaches to stewardship of the 70,000+ acres of the Sheyenne Valley Grasslands, part of the Dakota Prairie Grasslands, which is administered by the U.S. Forest Service, USDA.
Alice Maung-Mercurio follows the amazing story from the time this land was covered by Lake Agassiz, the hundreds of years of native American tribal life and then white settlement, the local effects of the radical land use turnover of the Resettlement Program during the 1930s drought years, and the community's complex relationships with federal government agencies and local conservation groups since the 1940s. Stories from senior members and elders of the Grazing Association about this community and the long-standing heritage of knowledge of local land, water, animals and plants through all seasons, climate and weather patterns.