TALLGRASS PRAIRIE PRESERVE–MILES AND MILES OF ROLLING GREEN HILLS

by YouShouldGoHere
April 19, 2015
in Eat Here, Go Here, Stay Here
0

[STRONG CITY, KANSAS] — Here’s a post about a fantastic visit to the National Tallgrass Prairie Preserve. Thousands of acres of rolling green grasslands in Strong City, Kansas. And a review of the excellent Clover Cliff Ranch B&B, you should stay here.

____________________________________

What Are The Flint Hills?

Out in the middle of Kansas lies the astounding Flint Hills, hundreds of thousands of acres of treeless, rolling hills with few fences and even fewer people. For generations these hills have remained the same, the soil so thick with rocks and limestone, they’ve never been plowed.

What are the Flint Hills — *To get your bearings. All this used to be a great sea of unending tallgrass prairies. The Flint Hills are named after the stoney chalky soil.*

Some of those thousands of acres have been preserved in the National Tallgrass Prairie Preserve, owned by the Nature Conservancy and co-managed with the National Park Service, you can visit the original homestead house and walk its open lands. See some buffalo and feel the wind.

Here’s a great video of the Tallgrass Prairie Preserve by The Last Great Places. And this great time-lapse from the Wichita Eagle Beacon.

The tallgrass prairie is almost zen like in its emptiness and calm. You should go here.

Tallgrass Prairie National Preserve road and sky — *The views are expansive and serene. Even surreal. Zen-like.*

Visit the Amazing National Tallgrass Prairie Preserve

This whole area has been undergoing protection and restoration. Hundreds of thousands of acres of grazing land has been purchased or donated to create the National Tallgrass Prairie Preserve. Big family ranches combined together and stitched like a quilt to form a giant patchwork of uninterrupted land. Often pulling up fences and restoring the grasslands.

What fences there were have been pulled up, opening up this massive ecosystem. It’s like the Sahara. But green. And in Kansas.

They call this Post Rock Country. Because there were no tress, settlers would dig up the shallow limestone and use it to build everything. Houses. Barns. Even use it as fence posts, dotting the land. You’ve heard of sod houses? That was here. Easier to dig a hole in the ground and cover it with sod to brave the winters and stay cool in Summer.

Tallgrass Prairie National Preserve views — *Green grass as far as the eye can see.*

big sky National Tallgrass Prairie Preserve — Still shunted in early spring, the tallgrass can grow to several feet by the autumn. Prescribed, seasonal burns keep the planes treeless and free of noxious weeds. Chock-full of flint and limestone, the fields have always been too thick to plow, so thousands of acres of virgin prairie remain today, now in this national scenic preserve.

The nation’s cow-calf operations happen all around these parts. Every summer, ranchers ship cattle from as far away as Texas to fatten up on the thick grasses of the tallgrass prairie. Not from corn, grass. As it should be.

Cattle will put on several pounds a day eating all that thick tallgrass, which is loaded with mineral-rich nutrients from the flinty soil. Some say this is the best beef in the world. All because of this magical stony soil.

Tallgrass Prairie Preserve limestone ground — There has never been trees here. The limestone is just inches under ground. For thousands of years, this was just a windswept sea of grass as far as the eye could see. Like the great Steppes in the Balkans and Mongolia.

From the Post Rock Country website.

Tallgrass Prairie Preserve fence line — *With nary a tree for miles but plenty of stone, ranchers built fence lines made of local limestone.* *They had no trees for posts, so they used stone. That’s why they call this Post Rock country.*

National Tallgrass Prairie Preserve buffalo herd — *They’ve reintroduced herds of wild buffalo that roam the range, eat the non-native weeds (the Sweet Grass) and regenerate the soil with their hooves. Just like Native Americans did for centuries.*

National Tallgrass Prairie Preserve rock wall

National Tallgrass Prairie Preserve sod house — You’ve heard of sod houses? This is where they came from. No timber here. You just dig into the ground and use the stone to build your house, sod for the roof. *There’s a small unassuming visitor’s center that tells the whole story, including some sod houses and sturdy stone barns.*

National Tallgrass Prairie Preserve museum

National Tallgrass Prairie Preserve birdwatching

The Importance of Fire on the Plains

Ain’t nature grand? Actually, it was nature that started this thing. Lightning threw the first punch. Then the Native American tribes saw the cleansing power of nature and started lighting their own fires. They saw the clearing out of noxious weeds, the nutrients churning back into the soil, the green grass snapping back stronger and more resilient.

Lighting fire to the prairies each spring has been going on for hundreds of years. For years, Americans grew fearful of fire. Must. Put. It. Out.

But over years, we’ve learned to love fire and its many benefits. So for the last several decades there’s been resurgence in the natural power of regenerative fire, in fields and forests. Now ranchers embrace…even celebrate… the restorative power fire can bring to the prairies.

lighting prairie on fire Strong City Kansas

Tallgrass Prairie previously burned fields — See these luscious green shoots? This field was on fire the week before, in prescribed burns. Charred to the roots, black and all smokey, like my famous blackened pork tenderloin recipe. Now look at it. This stuff grows like a weed.

Most of prescribed burns happen in early spring, usually March. Ranchers work together to move from ranch to ranch each day.

They used to have an amazing fire-burning event at the super great Flying W Guest Ranch, with hundreds of people invited to help burn the fields. But after COVID the Hoy family have stopped hosting the event so they can focus on the cattle operations and be ranchers, not innkeepers.

Here’s a big post I wrote about it when they were putting on the event.

Here’s how cool it is to witness in person:

Clover Cliff Ranch–Where to Stay in the Tallgrass Prairie

If you need a place to stay, the Clover Cliff Ranch is a fantastic B&B. I typically don’t like B&Bs, but the owner Susie Harshman is an amazing host, lived in New York City for a while and is wicked smart. And her husband is great, too and runs their whole ranch.

Clover Cliff Ranch ned & breakfast — *It is a gorgeously restored old 1883 limestone main house. With not much wood around, most of the houses were built of limestone dug up nearby.*

Clover Cliff Ranch green tallgrass — *The backyard of Clover Cliff Ranch.*

fires in distance Clover Cliff Ranch — *You can see the fields on fire in the distance. Clover Cliff had just burned their fields the week before.*

Strong City & Cottonwood Falls–Holding on to the Past

There are two cute little Kansas towns nearby, Strong City and Cottonwood Falls. They were down on their luck for years, but have seen a resurgence in tourism and second homes/farms nearby due to the popularity of The Flint Hills and the various big events like the extremely popular fundraising event Symphony in the Flint Hills. Thousands of people drive from all over in the first week of June to watch a concert by the Kansas City Symphony in the rolling green hills. It’s magical.