Saginaw Bay Area - Michigan | Hilltop Husker - 4/17/2024 12:59
No this was farm ground that eroded after settlement.
There seems to be some debate on the origins. This 1985 GA DNR guidebook states the erosion from 1820 to 1930 was 8" per year. That's 60 feet over 100 years with other accounts indicating farming was not happening in this area until the late 1830s. The farming practices would not have caused this overnight and there's evidence for it happening prior to the start of the settlement and subsequent farming. As I'll state further down, there's probably some small sliver of truth to the farming aspect, but the evidence does not point to it being a primary cause. The guidebook makes a statement: "Heavy rains have removed as much as six feet of canyon floor in one night." If that is true, it is not reflected in their other numbers of how much erosion has taken place. Clearly "heavy rains" would happen more than a single time in a century, so is the statement hyperbole or does their math just not add up?
Look at the photos from the 1930s linked at the end and judge distances in height compared to the trees and vehicles. The DNR's guidebook reckons 60' of erosion by then, the photos show depths of well over 100'. Those two positions do not add up.
https://epd.georgia.gov/document/publication/gg-9-geologic-guide-pro...
From wikipedia:
"Evidence of the existence of the canyons at this time includes their mention in a deed by James S. Lunsford to William Tatam from 1836"; area was not settled until after 1825.
Sure sounds like urban legend regarding farming practices causing this. Looking at the geography of the area, it's at the higher elevation, no hydrology sources nor enough surface area to allow hydraulic or aerated erosion.
I concede the area is highly erodible. The evidence for it seems plain.
In the 1930s the locals were very adamant, based on their local knowledge, that this was a natural phenomenon.
Bunny squeezers want to "blame" man and the dumb farmers. Heck, even slavery.
"And what were those euphemistically named “European-influenced farming practices?” They were cotton fields tended with forced African American slave labor, comprising what Charles S. Aiken calls “the plantation crescent” in southwest Georgia. Paul S. Sutter, an environmental historian at the University of Colorado Boulder, describes in his book how slaveholders resisted advice from agricultural reformers to protect the soil by rotating their crops and manuring the land. Doing so would have diverted precious land and labor from the cotton cash crop. Thus, “slavery and the plantation system led to agricultural methods that depleted the soil” and eventually destroyed it, as Eugene D. Genovese succinctly summarizes in his book. "
If you step back and look at the presented information, there is an agenda and that includes "blaming the farmers" for something that, as the evidence is presented, is barely plausible. Look at the geography of the area (on google earth). There does not appear to be any hydrology capable of being diverted to generate that significant of erosion in that short of time frame.
Hydraulic mining would have been difficult to achieve that level, but there's not enough water there to do so.
This truly reeks of "a great story" that anyone was eager to believe and did believe followed up by a book or two by somebody with an agenda and not fact driven. Environmentalists do not write books about natural geography, they write about the perceived evils of man so they can drum up action to take their side (and guess what that is driven by? Feelings, not facts).
If anyone can educate me on this topic, I would love to know more of the factual evidence on how "man caused this" feature to be formed. I'm sure there's a part of man involved and a bigger part of nature involved.
Note this 1937 photo on eBay for the area: https://www.ebay.com/itm/354874047428 or the photo: https://i.ebayimg.com/images/g/0HYAAOSwrZ1kjHvZ/s-l1600.jpg
Look at the bottom, there is flowing water. That would be nothing to do with farming practices. There is an associated info tag on the ebay link that claims this is the same area. Looking for similar on eBay (linked above), more photos with period-specific statements and evidence of erosion but nothing to do with farm practices.
1930s photos:
https://i.ebayimg.com/images/g/~KEAAOSwUixluDcN/s-l1600.jpg
https://i.ebayimg.com/images/g/ed8AAOSwS1BkjHvV/s-l1600.jpg
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