Immense prairies once covered more than 2,100,000 acres in southern and western Wisconsin into the 1800s, resembling a landscape of very high grass where a man could be lost among it and where buffaloes and herds of deer passed along paths. These prairie conditions allowed only certain grasses, wildflowers, and a few shrubs to prosper. Early settlers first believed treeless land had little agricultural value, but trial plots showed that prairie soils could produce bumper crops of nearly everything planted. Because there were very few trees to clear and because the steel moldboard plow could cut through the tough prairie sod, the prairies were quickly converted to cropland. Today, less than one percent of the original tallgrass prairie remains.