The land that is now the Reservation was part of a tract acquired in the eighteen sixties by former governor Charles Robinson, after the Delaware Reserve lands in the northeastern part of Kansas Territory were sold by the tribe. The section of land now comprising the Reservation was used primarily for grazing after Robinson acquired it. However, several squatters settled on the area and cultivated small acreages for periods of years in the eighteen seventies and eighteen eighties. In the eighteen nineties parts of the area including some of the hillsides were still covered with a mixed forest of virgin timber (_fide_ Frank H. Leonhard in conversation, October 19, 1951). Mr. Leonhard, who was long in the employ of the Charles Robinson family, remembered the area as far back as the early eighteen nineties when he worked on it cutting timber. He remembered, especially, cutting large walnut trees as much as two feet in diameter, which were valuable timber, but he thought that elm also was abundant at that time. By then the area, separated into east and west halves by a rock wall, had already been heavily grazed, and the original prairie vegetation, presumably dominated by big bluestem, had been much altered. The open upland portions were dominated by blue grass. [Illustration: Fig. 1. Tracing from early (1855-60) U. S. Government maps of northeastern Douglas County, Kansas, and adjacent western edge of Leavenworth County, showing stream courses and approximate distribution of woodland before deforestation had occurred. Section 4 to right of center at upper edge of figure, is now mostly included in the University of Kansas Natural History Reservation. Note inaccuracies in drainage systems on this part of map as compared with Fig. 2.] [Illustration: Fig. 2. Tracing from 1950 U.S. Geological Survey maps of same area shown in Fig. 1, indicating present distribution of woodland, and the pattern of drainage systems.] By about 1900 control of the area had passed to the J. F. Morgan family. The homesteads had long since been deserted and the entire area was used for grazing (_fide_ J. F. Morgan, in conversation, January 13, 1952). Parts of the bottomland were fenced and broken for cultivation in 1907, 1912, and 1915, and hilltop fields were first cultivated in 1909. Tree cutting was more or less continual. Many of the old stumps still present on the area are remnants of the trees cut in the "twenties" or even earlier. Several acres of hilltop and south slope in the northwest corner of the area were protected from livestock and maintained for harvesting of prairie hay. The hay was mowed annually, and the vegetation was burned at less frequent intervals, usually in early spring. This treatment served to kill encroaching woody vegetation and to maintain a prairie type.