According to traditional accounts of immigration in places like rural Wisconsin, German settlers were drawn to landscapes that resembled the areas they came from in Europe, especially heavily wooded ones, and were more fastidious and ultimately successful stewards of the land than the Yankees. The symbolic and practical importance of the forest in German culture, especially during the nineteenth century, did much to reinforce this romantic view of German settlers. Americans of older stock were seen as more eager to make a quick buck rather than invest large amounts of time and resources in their land; this stereotype endures to the present in images of enterprising but somewhat rootless Americans. However, recent scholarship on nineteenth-century immigration has shown that local practical realities were more important in guiding Germans to choose where to settle than any innate cultural inclinations. To be sure, some evidence does support the view that German settlers valued a varied landscape and were generally less likely to move once they had established themselves in a particular location. And certainly popular narratives about Germans and their closeness to their land endure.