Garden City National Forest was established as the Garden City Forest Reserve by the U.S. Forest Service in Kansas on July 25, 1905 with . It became a National Forest on March 4, 1907. On May 15, 1908 it was expanded and renamed Kansas National Forest, and on December 1, 1915 it was abolished. As Kansas National Forest the lands encompassed Finney, Grant, Hamilton, Haskell and Kearny counties, with .
The project was intended as a research project to establish an inventory of suitable tree species for planting in the high plains climate. Plantings in 1906 with 50,000 yellow pines and 30,000 hackberry, locust and Osage orange trees, followed the next year with 170,000 additional trees including black locust, jack pine, Scotch pine and other evergreens. Prairie fires and drought killed most of the trees, and additional plantings were unsuccessful. The best performing trees never exceeded in height during the experiment. The land was dispersed to homesteaders after disestablishment. A total of 800,000 seedlings were planted, only about of the designated forest area.
A remainder of the designated lands is maintained by the state of Kansas as the Sandsage Bison Range &amp; Wildlife Area, formerly the Finney Game Refuge. A remnant of the tree planting program is visible in one of the reserve's pastures.
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