On a hot July afternoon drive, Linda and Lewis Rainey surveyed a prairie hay field nestled in their 400 acres of fields and farmland in Guthrie. It contains buffalo wallows — depressions in the land created by bison rolling in the dirt, which now serve as basins for rainwater and runoff. To their knowledge, the patch of land has never been plowed.
For the past eight months, the Raineys have been fighting a planned transmission line that would cross that hay field and carve out a 130-foot easement. They worry the development would threaten their forebears’ work to preserve the land, and their younger family members’ ability to live comfortably on the property.
Linda’s great-grandfather staked a claim on the original 160 acres during the 1889 Landrun — he fought a lengthy court battle against a Sooner to acquire the property rights. The Raineys’ great-grandchildren are the seventh generation to live on the land, one of Oklahoma’s 1,900 centennial farms…