History is relative to where we live. I'm in a house built in 1976 on an area that was a dairy farm for decades, probably the first European use of land in this area beyond the occasional transit of cattle being driven north through the region. Prior to this, it had Comanche encampments, US military encampments, and in the distant past, wild horses (escaped from early Europeans to the continent), Clovis-era people, and the passage of charismatic large mammals. Bison (southern populations), perhaps antelope, and way back, mammoths.

British and Europeans had long since killed off the elephants, lions, etc. that once roamed outside of Africa. Think of the Lascaux caves.