Black Kettle National Grassland spans mixed-grass prairie in western Oklahoma and the Texas Panhandle, with most of its acreage in Roger Mills County and the rest in Hemphill County. Managed by the Cibola National Forest, it consists of about 100 separate tracts of prairie, hills, oak brush, and wooded creek bottoms along the upper Washita River. Named for the Southern Cheyenne leader killed here in 1868 during the Battle of the Washita, the area reflects a longer history of Native use, reservation breakup, settlement, Dust Bowl damage, and federal restoration beginning in 1938. Designated a national grassland in 1960, it remains both a working landscape and a protected prairie ecosystem.