Kansas National Forest and the Sandsage Bison Range and Wildlife
Area Odd as it may seem, southwest Kansas once had a national
forest. Its remnants, along with the oldest publicly-owned herd
of American bison in Kansas, can be seen at the Sandsage Bison
Range and Wildlife Area. First, the Forest The idea of a forest
reserve was first voiced by A.W. Stubbs, a Garden City attorney
and Charles J. “Buffalo” Jones, who in 1878 became one of the
founders of Garden City and its first mayor. Stubbs reasoned
that if pine trees would grow at sea level in the white sands of
the Carolinas and Georgia and on the slopes of Pike's Peak, they
would grow well in the sandy hills south of Garden City. In
1905, President Theodore Roosevelt signed an Executive Order
establishing 30,000 acres of land across the Arkansas River from
Garden City in Finney, Kearney and Grant counties as the Garden
City Forest Reserve. This forest was to be a five-year
experiment to determine which species of trees adapted best to
the Great Plains. Pla