Strain Farm-Strain, W.A., House (Boundary Increase)

This 163-acre farm in Lancaster, Dallas County, surrounds an 1896 farmhouse complex that was listed in 1978 on a 2-acre tract. The expanded area protects the landscape around the house: terraced and contoured fields, a trench silo, a windmill and well site, a ca. 1900 barn, and archaeological remains of a wagon dump and a chicken house destroyed by a 1994 tornado. A 1920 brick garage and an old millstone within the original tract are also counted. The farm matters because Ellis Strain, working with Dallas County extension agent A.B. Jolley, built soil conservation terraces from about 1930 to curb erosion left by decades of cotton growing and tenant farming. He also grew award-winning hybrid corn and raised special livestock breeds for neighbors to observe. Aerial photographs from 1942 show the terraced fields much as they look today, set apart from surrounding rectangular fields. The farm was one of few known demonstration farms in the county between 1930 and 1950.