Scene in the Joseph H. Williams Tallgrass Prairie Preserve, owned and managed by the Nature Conservancy near the town of Foraker, in Osage County, Oklahoma. The preserve protects a portion of a prairie that once spanned portions of 14 Midwest states and a portion of southern Canada, covering 142 acres. Settlers moving west across these vast, forbidding plains often referred to them as the Great American Desert, even though they are not always dry. Photo by Carol Highsmith 2020.