The Great Corn Belt is only great because of its incredible fertility. Its history started in the time of the glaciers and was revealed over thousands of years when Native people, followed by settlers, began to farm it. With good stewardship, farmers successfully produced commodities (crops and livestock) for a market that very soon reached far beyond McLean County.

The rich prairie soil was not the frontier farmer's first choice — the dense root systems of prairie plants made the land incredibly difficult to plow using the tools that existed at that time. Because of this and the need for wood, farmers preferred to purchase timber and savannah (the sparsely treed land between timber and prairie).

With most savannah land claimed by 1836, some farmers chose to take a chance by trying to produce something on prairie lands. Some tried draining the swampy low lying areas of the prairie in order to farm its rich soil.

Intensified farming and the use of tractors caused wind and water erosion, but area farmers did their best to address these issues.

With every crop harvested, farmers removed nutrients from the rich prairie soil. But because McLean County farmers made the efforts necessary to replace the soil’s fertility, it continues to be some of the richest in the world.