Homesteaders poured into the Badlands when the Milwaukee Railroad completed track through the White River Valley in 1907. A checker-board pattern of settlement was created, bearing little relationship to the natural lay of the land or to the land’s productivity. Many of the homesteads became “Starvation Claims” and were abandoned or sold, and starved-out homesteaders moved on to build towns and cities or to seek another homestead in a less harsh land. Today the valley’s ranches are measured in thousands of acres, and heavy equipment does much of the work once done by callused hands, yet unpredictable drought and economic crisis test ranchers as severely as they once tested homesteaders.