than a few years ago when sportsmen and farmers learned to protect these rodent hunting birds.
There is now little virgin timber standing in the El Paso area. Hamm's Woods, twice timbered but never pastured, shelters yellow violets, jewelweed, a rare yellow trillium and a blue orchid called ladies’ tresses. This timber would have made a wonderful wildlife sanctuary for future generations to enjoy, but it has recently been cut over and much of its beauty spoiled.
A large variety of trees are now supplanting native varieties; these include the Chinese elm, horse chestnut, buckeye, ginko and tulip trees. Avenues of our fine American elms are threatened with the elm disease; several trees in El Paso came down in 1952 and 1953. The chestnut blight killed chestnuts all over our country and the only mature tree to survive locally, so far as we can learn, is in the yard of Dr. A. C. King at 403 East First Street. This tree bears nuts yearly, but because of the need for cross-pollination the fruits are undeveloped.
Most of the game discussed provided our pioneers with food, and with abundant fish in our streams these furnished their meat supply. One traveler wrote quite casually, "Being hungered, I went out and shot myself a deer." It was as easy as going to the butcher shop today, and cheaper. Early farmers brought in rabbits, quail, pheasants and prairie chickens by the dozens to trade for merchandise in the shops of the new prairie towns. There is no doubt but that some of our wildlife has suffered extinction or near extinction with the settlement of the country. It points to a serious problem in conservation of game, natural resources and soil.
Pioneer days are gone and it is a good thing they are. We pleasure seeking, soft living grandchildren might not have endured the hardships as did our elders. If our own children have a broad vision and inquiring minds, the pioneering heritage will make the next hundred years more exciting than the last. Many fatal illnesses have been eradicated along with much of the hand labor drudgery of the past, and transportation our forefathers never dreamed of is today routine.
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A complete prologue to the El Paso Story should tell of the geological ages. It might say that after two billion years or so, the Pleistocene Age began and our land turned cold as great ice sheets repeatedly crawled down from the north, depositing deep moraines and each time smoothed the hills a little more. As recently as 20,000 years ago, the final glacier of the Great Ice Age melted away with the coming of warmer times, and except perhaps for the lowly turtle, the age of dinosaurs and strange animals was at an end. Prairie grasses then grew tall on our plains as new watercourses found their ways to the seas. For 15,000 years or more this grass caught the
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