Dirt Pfeiffer on Saving Soil That Was Never His

The Docket's Archive section occasionally reconstructs conversations that history neglected to record. Harlan "Dirt" Pfeiffer is a composite character, assembled from documented conditions in Baca County, Colorado, in late 1937. He never existed. His situation was everywhere. By the time Colorado passed its Soil Conservation Act in May 1937, Baca County had lost over 40 percent of its population. Wheat acreage had collapsed from 237,000 acres to 150. The Springfield Bank's deposits had fallen 77 percent.¹ The federal government was paying farmers a dollar an acre to adopt contour plowing and strip cropping.² Those payments went to landowners. The people actually running the plows often weren't.

We spoke with Pfeiffer in late November 1937, between the passage of the Colorado Act and the formal establishment of Baca County's first conservation districts the following March.³ He was 42, tenant on 320 acres outside Springfield, and had just attended an organizational meeting about the new district. He sat in the back.

You went to the meeting in Springfield about forming the conservation district. What was that like?

Harlan: Well, I went. I'll say that much. Sat on a bench near the door. The SCS fellow had a chart with him showing contour lines, talked for maybe forty minutes about how the district would work. Five-man board, all landowners, they'd set the land-use standards for the whole area.⁴ Somebody asked if they could mandate strip cropping on private land and the answer was yes, if a majority of the farmers voted it in.⁵ I looked around the room to see if anyone was going to ask what "farmers" meant in that sentence. Nobody did. I suppose they didn't need to.

Were there other tenants?

Harlan: A couple. Earl Dietrich was there. We sort of nodded at each other. You know how you do when you're both in a room where you're not quite the intended audience. Nobody told us to leave. It's more like the chairs were arranged for other people and we happened to be sitting in them.

The SCS has been sending agents to farms in the area. Have they come to yours?

Harlan: Came by in October. Young fellow, very earnest. Showed me a pamphlet about contour plowing, how you follow the curves of the land instead of going straight downhill so the furrows hold the water instead of channeling it away.⁶ I told him I knew what contour plowing was. He seemed a little surprised. I think he had me figured for someone who needed the picture in the pamphlet.

He walked the south quarter with me, though, and he had a good eye. Pointed out where the terracing should go, where you'd want your strips. I agreed with most of it. We had a real conversation about the land. Then he asked for the owner's name and address for the paperwork and I gave him Mr. Alford's address in Pueblo and that was more or less the end of the conversation.

Did the agent understand your situation?

Harlan: Oh, he understood fine. He wasn't stupid. He just didn't have a different form to fill out. The program goes through the deed. The deed's got Alford's name on it. The payment goes to Alford. If Alford wants to share it with me, that's between me and Alford. There was a law about that, actually. The '36 Act said landlords were supposed to pass some of the payments along to the people working the land.⁷ You know what enforcement looks like in Baca County? It looks like nothing. It looks like dust.

So if the district mandates contour plowing on your acreage, you'd be the one doing the physical work.

Harlan: I'm the one doing it now. Been running those rows since September, trying the curves the way the SCS man showed me. It's harder than straight rows, I'll tell you that. You're watching the slope the whole time, adjusting. Your back knows the difference by suppertime. But the soil holds better. I can see it holding better after a rain, what little rain we get. The furrows catch it instead of letting it sheet off.

And the payment for adopting those practices?

Harlan: Goes to Pueblo.

Have you heard about the Bankhead-Jones Act? Congress passed it in July specifically to help tenants buy land.

Harlan: (pause) Yeah. I read about it in the paper. Congress says, we see you, we know tenants are getting left out, here's a loan program so you can buy your own place.⁸ I'm not going to spit on that. Somebody in Washington thought about people like me. That means something. But the loans require you to show resources. Equipment, savings, something to put down.⁹ I had resources in 1930. I had a quarter-section and a tractor and forty head of cattle. You know what I've got now? A strong back and I know what this soil needs. Try putting that on a loan application.

The government is also buying out degraded land in the county. Over 200,000 acres eventually.¹⁰ Does that feel like a solution?

Harlan: For the land, maybe. They'll rest it, reseed it, let the grass come back. That's the right thing for the ground. But every acre they buy is an acre somebody used to live on. My neighbor Gus, they bought his cattle at two dollars a head, shot them in the field, pushed them into a trench with a Cat.¹¹ He took the money and drove to California. The land will recover. I'm not sure Gus will.

What do you think about when you're out there running contour rows on land that isn't yours?

Harlan: (quiet for a moment) I think the dirt doesn't know whose name is on the deed. The dirt just knows if you're treating it right. I'm treating it right. The terracing holds, the strips hold, the wind doesn't take as much when you've got stubble standing. I can see it working. That's not nothing.

But then I come inside and shake the dust out of my collar and eat supper under a tablecloth because you can't keep the grit off the plates otherwise¹², and I think about it differently.

Is there anything that would change your situation?

Harlan: Rain.

In March 1938, the Western Baca County Soil Erosion District and the Southeast Soil Erosion District were formally established, governed by boards of local landowners.³ The contour plowing and terracing those districts mandated was carried out, in significant part, by tenant farmers who had no vote in the district's formation, no seat on its board, and no direct claim on the federal payments that funded the work their hands performed.

Today, as FEMA buyout programs offer to purchase flood-prone and fire-prone properties across the American West, the paperwork still routes through the deed. Renters, who make up roughly a third of households in many climate-vulnerable communities, can't access buyout funds, don't receive relocation payments, and have no formal role in the managed-retreat decisions reshaping their neighborhoods. The adaptation is real. Pfeiffer would recognize the question underneath it, because he lived inside it for years: whether saving the land and saving the people on it were ever the same program, or two different ones that nobody bothered to distinguish.

Footnotes

1. Colorado Encyclopedia, "Baca County" and "Dust Bowl." https://coloradoencyclopedia.org/article/baca-county; https://coloradoencyclopedia.org/article/dust-bowl ↩

2. Wikipedia, "Dust Bowl." https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dust_Bowl ↩

3. Baca County Conservation District, "About Us." https://bccd.specialdistrict.org/about-us ↩ ↩²

4. No-Till Farmer, "The Dust Bowl: How Far Have We Come?" https://www.no-tillfarmer.com/articles/1970-the-dust-bowl-how-far-have-we-come ↩

5. Gary D. Libecap, "Small Farms, Externalities, and the Dust Bowl of the 1930s," Yale Law School working paper. https://law.yale.edu/sites/default/files/documents/pdf/libecap.pdf ↩

6. Wessels Living History Farm, "Contour Plowing." https://livinghistoryfarm.org/farming-in-the-1930s/crops/contour-plowing/ ↩

7. Wikipedia, "Soil Conservation and Domestic Allotment Act of 1936." https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Soil_Conservation_and_Domestic_Allotment_Act_of_1936 ↩

8. Wikipedia, "Farm Security Administration." https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Farm_Security_Administration ↩

9. EH.net, review of Michael J. Grant, Down and Out on the Family Farm. https://eh.net/book_reviews/down-and-out-on-the-family-farm-rural-rehabilitation-in-the-great-plains-1929-1945/ ↩

10. History Colorado, National Register of Historic Places Multiple Property Documentation. https://www.historycolorado.org/sites/default/files/media/document/2017/649.pdf ↩

11. Colorado Culture Magazine, "Untold Stories of Two Buttes Families Battling the Dust Bowl." https://www.coloradoculturemagazine.com/stories-of-two-buttes-colorado-dust-bowl/ ↩

12. Colorado Encyclopedia, "Dust Bowl." https://coloradoencyclopedia.org/article/dust-bowl ↩