During the 1930s, severe drought plagued the Great Plains states, deepened the Depression, and brought high winds that caused dust storms which blackened the sky. In 1934, President Franklin Roosevelt began a prairie states forestry project to stabilize blowing soil and put people to work by planting wide belts of trees from North Dakota to Texas to protect cropland and reduce environmental damage. The first shelterbelt in the United States was planted on the H.E. Curtis farm near Mangum in Greer County, Oklahoma, where Oklahoma's first state forester, George R. Phillips, planted the first tree on Mar. 18, 1935. From 1935 to 1942, 223 million trees were planted in 18,599 miles of shelterbelts across the plains states, including 2,996 miles in Oklahoma. Many of the original shelterbelts, along with narrower windbreaks planted since then, continue to provide conservation benefits.