Kansas is legendary for geographical monotony, for a landscape allegedly so absent of trees and relief that the state has become the butt of national jokes and a cultural synonym for flat. U.S. Forest Service researchers noted in 1999 that forests covered slightly less than 3 percent of the state. So prevalent is the idea of a treeless Kansas that few people are aware of the many concerted attempts, during its first seventy years, to forest the state artificially.