Although lumbering continued sporadically through the 1950s, farming and ranching had become the dominant activities by the 1880s. A wide variety of crops were raised, including cattle, sheep, alfalfa, wheat, corn, hay and beans. Potatoes, however, were the agricultural product for which the Black Forest area became most renowned. Agricultural productivity was subject to boom and bust cycles with crops often ruined by drought, floods, hail, blizzards, or grasshoppers. The drought of the 1920s and the Depression of the 1930s combined to eliminate most types of agriculture in the planning area. By the 1920s the area was mostly consolidated into large ranches. Some of these remain today.