In the high, dry plateau country where water and grass were scarce, competition between sheepmen and cattle ranchers for free public range led to uncontrolled grazing, overgrazing, erosion, and the destruction of open pastures. In 1934 Congress passed the Taylor Grazing Act, named for Colorado Western Slope congressman Edward T. Taylor, creating federally regulated grazing districts and ending ruinous competition among stockmen while helping protect some 170,000,000 acres of public domain. That same year President Franklin D. Roosevelt appointed Farrington R. Carpenter, a rancher educated at Princeton and Harvard Law School, as the first director of the Division of Grazing, the federal agency created by the act. Carpenter said its purpose was for the proper use of lands, and his career in northwestern Colorado had already combined ranching with public service as he established a ranch east of here, prosecuted cattle rustlers and kidnappers as district attorney for Routt, Moffat, and Grand counties, and negotiated a cease-fire when armed sheepmen and cattlemen confronted one another.