barrens

It was a kind of land generally known in the West as "barrens" -- rolling upland, with very thin, unproductive soil.

A Short Life of Abraham Lincoln Condensed from Nicolay & Hay's Abraham Lincoln: A History John George Nicolay 1866

In these parts, the barrens were a mere strip; she could see the ice beyond them.

A Knight of Ghosts and Shadows Anderson, Poul, 1926- 1974

Then the Air Force, realizing the barrens was a difficult part of the country to operate in and the planes quite largely avoided it before the war, and the distances were very great and as they were using mainly wheeled aircraft they had to drop their supplies, and fly seven hundred miles in and back and the 1,400 miles was quite a long flight.

Exercise Muskox 1946

Extensive "barrens" (i.e. bluestem prairies) were once maintained by fires set by Native Americans on rolling to flat parts of the Interior Plateau (71) and Mississippi Valley Loess Plains (74).

Ecoregions of Kentucky (EPA) 2008

Today, these areas are dominated by cropland and pastureland and the historic "barrens" are nearly extinct.

Ecoregions of Kentucky (EPA) 2008

They would populate them, and the so-called "barrens" would thunder to the innumerable hoofs of reindeer herds as the American plains had never thundered to the beat of cattle.

The Alaskan James Oliver Curwood 1903

But her experience with this one had not justified that point of view, and the matter largely occupied her thoughts as they walked slowly through the thickets of a bit of "second-growth" beyond the fire, which, stopped by the rocky "barrens," was dying out behind them.

In Old Kentucky Edward Marshall 1901

These "barrens" constitute a high rolling plateau of ground between the ranges of hills at Duck

The Army of the Cumberland Henry Martyn Cist 1870

From Duck River, south, the country is rough, with rocky ranges of hills, which divide the "barrens" from the fertile parts of Middle Tennessee.

The Army of the Cumberland Henry Martyn Cist 1870

The Manchester pike passed through Hoover's Gap and reached the "barrens" by ascending a long, difficult cañon called

The Army of the Cumberland Henry Martyn Cist 1870