Crawler tractor pulling implement across field, mountains behind

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Mountains rise in the background of this scene, where a crawler tractor drags an implement across an open field. Crawler tractors ran on steel tracks rather than wheels, which let them keep their footing on soft or uneven ground and made them a common sight on large farms and in land-clearing work through the early and mid twentieth century. Machines like this one replaced teams of horses and mules across much of rural America, changing how fields were plowed and planted. The pairing of a working machine with a distant range gives the picture its sense of scale, with the open land stretching between the two.

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