The Prairie State

Imagine walking from Lake Michigan to the Mississippi River and seing only tallgrass prairie.

What difference do the Flint Hills make for the tallgrass prairie? Before answering that question, let me ask you a question. Which of the 50 states bears the nickname “The Prairie State?”

If you said “Kansas” you would be wrong. What I call home is also known as the Sunflower State. Perfectly good guesses like Oklahoma and Nebraska are likewise incorrect; they are respectively known as the Sooner State and the Cornhusker State. The Prairie State, in case you haven’t figured it out yet, is Illinois. That bit of trivia might surprise folks who live in the western portion of the tallgrass prairie and it might even surprise a few people who live in the farmland bewteen St. Louis and Chicago.

There is, however, a perfectly good reason for Illinois’ association with tall grass, just as there is a good reason folks today might not readily associate the Land of Lincoln with the likes of Big Bluestem, Indian grass, Switchgrass, and Side-oats grama.

Prior to European settlement in the heartland of North America, according to most current estimates, the tallgrass prairie occupied over 140 million acres (see the introduction to the Tallgrass Prairie National Preserve). At that time, Illinois contained well over 22 million acres of tall grass. This prairie grew not on thin, rocky soils, but in deep rich soils. Supported by such a fertile foundation, the prairie grasses flourished.

In 1828, a baptist missionary from Michigan, Isaac McCoy, was appointed by the government to lead representatives from various native-American tribes on an expedition through Kansas to find land suitable for the resettling of these eastern tribes West of the Mississippi. In his report on that expedition, while describing his trip across northern Illinois, McCoy states, “Since we passed Chicago we have travelled about 14 miles of every 15 in Prarie. Since we left Illinois river Praries have been more extensive. To our left there is only now and then a small grove or streak of timber along water courses.” (See the July 11 entry of McCoy’s journal as reproduced in the article, “Journal of Isaac McCoy for the Exploring Expedition of 1828” in the Kansas Historical Quarterly of Aug., 1936, vol. 5, no. 3, pages 227 to 277).

During two expeditions through the Flint Hills in 1828, McCoy had ample opportunity to compare the prairies of Illinois and Kansas. In a later report, he stated, “This country (the Flint Hills in the vicinity of the Kansas river) which is generally prairie, differs greatly from most prairie lands in Ohio, Indiana & Illinois. In those countries prairie lands are usually too flat with too little stone, often accompanied with quagmires & ponds, and consequently unfavourable to health. Here it is quite the reverse, scarcely a quagmire is to be found.”

McCoy searched for lands suitable for resettling native American tribes, so he rejected the quagmires of central Illinois in favor of the prairie lands of Kansas. According to his descriptions of the Illinois prairie, however, the flat land and deep soil retained plenty of moisture, creating “quagmires.” At the time, such wetlands may have slowed human occupation, but it would have been healthy for a diverse grassland ecology.

A great Web site describing the Illinois prairie is maintained here by the Illinois Natural History Survey. The site contains many great resources about the prairie. On a page about settlements in this prairie, the author explains, “The early settlers, originally from the forested regions of Europe, found the prairies to be rather frightening. They were not used to the hordes of biting insect, intense summer heat and high humidity, bleak, windy winters, and periodic raging prairie fires. Because no trees grew on the prairie, the settlers at first considered the prairies to be infertile. This, plus the need for firewood and construction timber prompted them to build homes at the edges of the prairies and along rivers, where trees persisted. It was not long, however, before the settlers discovered that the prairie soil was more fertile than forest soil, and was in fact among the most productive soils in the world.”

So, with a little understanding, it is easy to see why Illinois is The Prairie State. We in the Sunflower State can only envy the 22 million acres of fertile soil covered by a blanket of tall grasses.

Now try to imagine 22 million acres of nothing but tall grass.

That same rich soil, however, proved the undoing of the Illinois prairie. In 1837, less than a decade after McCoy’s passage through an empty prairie where settlements were rare, John Deere invented a new kind of plow that easily cut through thick prairie sod. A short 50 years after Deere’s invention most of that rich prairie land was lost. From 22 million acres, Illinois’ prairie lands shrank to a low-point of just over 2,000 acres.

Now, I have nothing against Illinois. I like Chicago (but not the Cubs!) and I have to like a region that was once home to 22 million acres of prairie. So little of that prairie remains, however, that I find the state’s nickname more than ironic.

Thankfully, a lot of prairie restoration work is being done in The Prairie State, most notably at the Midewin National Tallgrass Prairie. The Midewin Prairie site (Midewin is supposedly the Pottawatomie word for “healing”) is also very involved in education about the prairie ecosystem. See here for a great site about prairies.

So it should be easy to see why Illinois deserves mention as The Prairie State. It should also be easy to see why few people today realize that state’s natural heritage, which brings me back to the Kansas Flint Hills.

Okay, Flint Hills soil is rocky and not the deep, rich, black soil of the lands just east of the Mississippi. Rich soil can be found in the lowlands of the flood-plains, but the Flint Hills themselves were covered in, well, flint. John Deere’s plow could not slice through rock. The plow made quick work of century-old roots, killing off millions of acres of native grasses, but the Flint Hills beat back the plow.

Estimates are between four- and five-million acres of tallgrass prairie have been preserved intact in the Flint Hills. For those who believe the tallgrass prairie is a special place and worthy of preservation, that is good news. That’s the difference the Flint Hills make.