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1 ' entry, timber culture, homestead and railroad patents were issued between 1885 and the end of 1900(GLO records v.d.). ' The foregoing brief review of land patenting activity tends to reinforce previously accepted interpretations of settlement in the ' region. The first users of the lands in the Study Area were stock raisers who took advantage of the public domain for free grazing lands. They used laws such as the Timber Culture act to claim ' parcels of land and after a period of time, often once the available forage had been depleted, allowed the claim to revert back to the government. The boom days of open range ranching in northeastern Colorado lasted from the late 1860s until approximately 1888 when severe winters, overgrazing and increased pressures from farmers forced an end to the system and establishment of fenced, more closely managed ranches(Peake 1937:8-27, 271). The stockmen, once the range had been depleted, ' moved elsewhere and in their wake came the farmers. The large number of patents during the period 1885-1900 coincides with the ' first large dryland farming boom to hit eastern Colorado(GLO Records v.d.). Spurred by railroad, land company, and even govern- ' ment literature that told of the changes being wrought in the climate, the retreat of the Great American Desert under the ' plowshare, and easy 10-year credit terms from railroads, hundreds of Midwestern farmers moved to the high plains of Colorado, Nebraska and Kansas. Upon arrival in or near the Study Area would-be settlers found booming markets for their produce, open land to be had for minimal prices and enough moisture to grow crops ' of corn, wheat and other grains much as they had in Iowa or Illinois. What went unrealized until a few years later was that ' the Great Plains in general had entered a periodic wet cycle, with above average precipitation, followed by a dry cycle during the mid ' 1B90s(Mehls 1989b:X:1-2). ' 35