Our Rich Land

The Great Corn Belt is only great because of its incredible fertility. With good stewardship, farmers successfully produced commodities (crops and livestock) for a market that very soon reached far beyond McLean County.

Our Rich Land

The Great Corn Belt is only great because of its incredible fertility. Its history started in the time of the glaciers and was revealed over thousands of years when Native people, followed by settlers, began to farm it.

Frontier Resources

The rich prairie soil was not the frontier farmer's first choice — the dense root systems of prairie plants made the land incredibly difficult to plow using the tools that existed at that time.

Draining the Prairie

With most savannah land claimed by 1836, some farmers chose to take a chance by trying to produce something on prairie lands. Some tried draining the swampy low lying areas of the prairie in order to farm its rich soil.

Erosion

Intensified farming and the use of tractors caused wind and water erosion, but area farmers did their best to address these issues.

Fertilizer

With every crop harvested, farmers removed nutrients from the rich prairie soil. But because McLean County farmers made the efforts necessary to replace the soil’s fertility, it continues to be some of the richest in the world.