In 1850 this landscape in southern Minnesota was an expanse of tallgrass prairie with no farms or roads, and the long development of these prairies created some of the world's richest and deepest topsoil. In the mid-1800s settlers came to claim land and farm these deep soils, helping feed the growth of Minnesota as its population rose from 5,000 in 1850 to 172,000 in 1860 despite the hardships and risks of pioneer life. In 1873, George and Mary Carpenter left a rented farm near Rochester for Lyon County, making a 200-mile, two-week journey by covered wagon with their small children and livestock while many belongings went separately by train, and they staked a claim on 80 acres. Mary Carpenter's letters recalled camping by the wagon fire during the trip while six months pregnant and described the heavy labor of farm life, from rising before four to cooking, churning, washing, baking, ironing, and constantly feeding a straw fire because wood was scarce. Early settlers first used wooden plows, and after the John Deere steel moldboard plow was created in 1837, converting tallgrass prairie to farmland became much easier; within a few decades, most native prairie was gone. Though often thought of as dry, Minnesota's prairies were dotted with shallow ponds and wet and moist prairies, but many wetlands were later drained for cropland, and wildfire suppression and windbreak plantings allowed trees to spread into areas that had once been treeless. In summer, bees and other pollinators such as butterflies, moths, wasps, flies, and hummingbirds carry pollen from flower to flower, enabling flowering plants to reproduce, and prairie wildflowers provide nectar from spring through fall, unlike agricultural crops that bloom only for a few weeks. Tallgrass prairie takes its name from grasses that can exceed six feet by late summer, and it has been called an upside-down forest because roots can extend more than 15 feet underground. With more than 900 recorded plant species, this ecosystem changes through the seasons, and its massive root systems help control erosion, filter water, resist non-native plants, enrich topsoil as they decompose, and help plants survive drought. Once stretching from Saskatchewan to Mexico and from east of the Mississippi River west to the Central Great Plains, tallgrass prairie covered one-third of Minnesota before European settlement, but today only one percent of the state's original tallgrass prairie remains. Preserved and restored prairies along the Prairie Passage Route and at places such as Kilen Woods State Park, Des Moines Prairie State Scientific and Natural Area, Jeffers Petroglyphs Historic Site, and the Blue Earth River West Loop Birding Trail offer glimpses of this once vast ecosystem and support efforts to protect, restore, and teach others about native prairie.