 Grass as far as the eye can see. Today I'm standing in the Thunder Basin National Grassland, located in the Powder River Basin, between the Black Hills and the Bacorn Mountains. Occupying over 1.8 million acres of federal, state, and private lands, the grassland was established over the 1930s when homesteaders discovered that tilling, the fragile soil caused massive amounts of erosion and made the lands uninhabitable. As you can see, the ecosystem has recovered from the dust bowl of the Depression era. Today, rolling grasslands and sagebrush provide homes to large herds of antelope, as well as mule deer, elk, prairie dogs, coyotes, and fox, many species of birds, rodents, reptiles, and insects. This land also provides an abundance of forage for domestic sheep and cattle grazing. The area is rich in mineral resources and in the past there has been mining of uranium, coal, Trona, bentonite, oil, and gas, many of which still occur today. The Thunder Basin National Grassland is a wonderful example of how Wyoming's range lands are managed for multiple uses. With its complex land patterns, private, state, and federal land ownership, co-mingling of wildlife and livestock, and vast array of minerals, this grassland truly is a wonder of Wyoming. This has been Rachel Meehler with the University of Wyoming Cooperative Extension Service.