Henry Howard "Howard" Finnell, Sr.

The agronomist Howard Finnel worked as the director of the Panhandle A&M Experiment Station from 1923 until 1934, when he came to the Dalhart Wind Erosion Control Project, shifting to leadership of Region 6 of the Soil Conservation Service in Amarillo in 1935. In his career, Finnell developed and shared ways to use contour farming, terracing, and crop rotation to save High Plains soil in the face of the Dust Bowl. Roughly 40,000 farmers adopted his practices on 5.5 million acres, reducing the amount of dangerously eroded land by over half.