High-desert grasses once covered the range near Pipe Spring as far as the eye could see, and for centuries Paiute people made the tiny seeds of those native grasses a staple of their diet while animals hunted by the Kaibab Paiute, including grouse, rabbits, and antelope, also depended on the nutrient-rich grass. In the 1860s, thousands of sheep and cattle were put on the range to take advantage of this sea of grass, and when a 10-year period of cooler, moist weather ended, scarce rain and snow combined with overgrazing changed for the worse all the lives that had depended on the good grass. By 1880, Clarence Dutton of the U.S. Geological Survey wrote that the desert spaces once covered with abundant grasses had become places where hardly a blade of grass could be found within 10 miles of Pipe Spring, and he said that even without drought, cattle would have destroyed the grass by cropping it clean. On damaged rangelands like the Arizona Strip, tumbleweeds and sagebrush then displaced the native grasses.