The Akron Station That Taught the Plains to Hold Its Rain

Drive past the wheat and millet fields near Akron and you may not notice the place that helped them grow. The USDA’s Central Great Plains Research Station got its start here in 1907, when it opened as the “Akron Field Station” — the USDA working with what is now Colorado State University to figure out how to farm land that punished the practices settlers had brought from back east.

The problem is the rain, or the lack of it. Across the Central Great Plains, USDA scientists note that rainfall averages “a mere 14 to 18 inches a year.” So much of the work here has been about catching and keeping that scarce water in the soil. In 1956 the station was given a regional charge — the agricultural problems of a roughly 55-million-acre stretch of eastern Colorado, western Kansas, southwestern Nebraska, and southeastern Wyoming — and over the years its researchers helped pioneer conservation methods now used widely, including no-till, eco-fallow, and stubble-mulch farming.

It is a quietly national-caliber place sitting in plain sight in Washington County, and it still holds field days where the public can come see the work. If you’re curious, the USDA’s own pages tell the story best — start with the centennial write-up at ars.usda.gov.