Flint Hills, Tall Grass

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Don’t worry. It’s April, so those massive columns of smoke rising up over the Flint Hills’ horizon are perfectly normal. And if it smells a little smokey here in eastern Kansas this time of year, that’s a good thing.

In the springtime Flint Hills, where there is smoke there is fire. In many parts of the country, fire is considered a bad thing. Wildfires in California and forest fires in the Northwest make national news, and not in a good way. Many people consider fire, because of its destructive nature, a threat to the environment. Visitors who are unfamiliar with the Kansas tallgrass prairie often become concerned when they witness a grass fire sweeping across a pasture. Recently, I met a traveler who had just arrived to the Flint Hills on an evening flight and had witnessed some pastures burning in the dark. “Somebody had better call that in, that’s dangerous,” was the traveler’s remark.

When homes are endangered and forests destroyed, fire is a bad thing. In the tallgrass prairie, however, fires of controlled burns are not only a good thing, they are an absolute necessity.

During April, I plan on posting more stories about fire and controlled burns in the Flint Hills. Fire is a necessary part of the story of this place. For now, I want to talk about visitors’ reactions to smoke and fire in the Flint Hills and offer some reassurances that these fires are good.

Every so often, I will hear or read of someone opposing fire in the prairie. “The smoke releases carbon in the air,” they say. “It destroys wildlife habitat,” claims someone else.

These reactions and concerns are understandable, if inaccurate. There is strong historic precedent for the reactions. From the time European pioneers arrived in the prairie, they have feared fire and tried to stop it.

Fire was one of the first and most impressive aspects of the prairie noted by early explorers. When Colonel John Freemont passed through Kansas in 1842, he noted in his journal:

We suddenly emerged on the prairies, which received us at the outset with some of their striking characteristics; for here and there rode an Indian, and but a few miles distant heavy clouds of smoke were rolling before the fire.

A few years earlier, explorer Isaac McCoy had several encounters with fire as he made a fall expedition through the tallgrass prairie of Northeast Kansas. (Read the full account in the Kansas Historical Quarterly) McCoy and his party first encountered a small fire in early October of 1830. In his journal, McCoy notes:

Thursday Oct. 14
Grass for our horses, is every day becoming more scarce. The season is remarkably dry. The whole country around us, has burned over today. We had encamped in a creek bottom where there was least danger of the fire approaching us, and still, it sometimes seemed as though we should not escape. We were much annoyed by smoke and more than once, had to beat out the approaching fire. We did not leave camp. Some of the soldiers erected a couple of mounds.

Friday Oct. 15.
We steered our course due west and encamped on the sources of the Soldier. Difficult to find tolerable food for our horses. Had to beat out the fire to save a little spot for our horses. In a day the whole country put on its black and dismal dress. The dust arising from the burnt grass, and the blackened weeds and shrubbery, annoys our eyes, and blackens face, hands, and clothes.

I’m not sure how dry it was in 1830, but apparently the grass had already gone dormant in early October, resulting in a “black” landscape after the passage of this fire.

That was only the beginning of McCoy’s fire encounters, however. A few days later, he recorded a more impressive passage of another, larger fire:

Thursday Oct. 21.
Again had to leave our course, with the packhorses, two or three miles to find grass. Late before the surveyors came into camp. We had got into a tract of a few miles square, which had not been burned. While in the act of pitching our tents, we discovered the fire coming towards us with alarming rapidity. We set fire in the grass in self defense.

The fires around us were sublime-the long lines and the flame ascending ten, fifteen, and sometimes 20 feet high. On seeing these praries on fire in such a dry time as this we cease to wonder that the wood does not increase faster-we only wonder that a vestige of wood is left. It was in the night before the surveyors got in to camp. We have seen sign of Beavers and Otters, for a few days.

Both of McCoy’s encounters happened north of the Kansas River, somewhere between Soldier Creek and the Blue River. So he was likely in modern-day Pottawatomie County, around Wamego. The second entry in the journal is interesting because McCoy understood the effects the fire would have on trees. In a time when most European settlers had no idea why there were so few trees growing in the prairie, McCoy saw the fire as a major reason.

Of course, McCoy and his crew did not look at the fire as a friend. Because of fire, it became difficult to find forage for their horses. They also feared for their own safety, setting a backfire to protect themselves from the oncoming line of 20-foot flames. Also, it would not have been pleasant to deal with the black soot that covered their equipment and clothes.

After the explorers, those who chose to live in the prairie thought even less about fire. A roaring grass fire would burn down houses and destroy hay. Consider the following accounts (These accounts are taken from the book Last Stand of the Tallgrass Prairie , p. 84):

Reminiscences of Wallace Wood, born in 1855
The grass in the Cottonwood Valley would grow as high as a horse. After the frost in the fall, we were always in danger of a fire. The tall dry grass would make a fire which could travel faster than a man could run. We would make backfires by mowing a stretch around our buildings and then burning the piles of grass. Hardly a year would pass that the fire would not break loose somewhere and come across the hills. If not by any other means, the lightning would often ignite it. … Sometimes the fire would start down in the Indian Territory of Oklahoma and would be days getting here. Night after night we would see its glow in the distance

Diary of George Hildt, 1857
Sunday, Nov 1 The prairie on fire all around us & no one but Elick & myself at home. It was a magnificent sight and had been, I thought, well represented in paintings that I had seen. But there was some difference to look at the real thing itself coming towards 50 tons of hay worth $20 dollars a ton on the ground or $30 at Kansas City. As we had taken the precaution to plow a few furrows away from the stacks we did not feel as uneasy as we otherwise should. But nevertheless the raging flame at every side excited us & tonight as I am writing the horizon is lighted up at every side as if we were surrounded with furnaces and all of them burning ore.

Fortunately, the settlers in the Flint Hills also discovered the fire was good for producing rich prairie grass, which was good for cattle. They learned from the Indians who burned fires to find buffalo. The buffalo were attracted to fire because they knew after the fire came fresh, tastey grass. So despite the danger of fire, the settlers became ranchers and used fire as a way to keep the prairie healthy and feed their cattle. Despite calls to stop the burning from the so-called experts at the time, the ranchers kept burning. That’s good. Without the fire, the trees would have taken over the prairie and there would be none left.

Even today, those complaints I mentioned at the start of this post will fall on deaf ears, thankfully. As to the complaint that fire releases carbon into our otherwise endangered atmosphere, it should be noted the grasses of the tallgrass prairie actually take more carbon from the atmosphere than is released in burning. The grass, as it goes dormant in the fall, actually sends that carbon down into the soil, where it is stored for centuries. Tallgrass is actually one of the most efficient means of reducing carbon in the air. More prairie would be a good thing.

As to the complaint about destruction of wildlife habitat, there is an element of truth in that. If grass is burned every year, there is no thatch of dead grass left from last year. Many bird species need that dead thatch in which to make nests. This protects the nests from predators.

Many ranchers, however, realize this danger and are turning to patch burning as a way to protect wildlife habitat. Some ranchers burn only a portion of their pasture, each year leaving a different patch of prairie unburnt. This offers habitat cover for birds. For more information, see Dr. Bill Smith’s oral history interview with Jane Koger at the KansasFlintHills.travel heritage site.

Besides, if burning were stopped altogether, that would be catastrophic for prairie wildlife habitat. So next time smoke gets in your eyes, be happy. Breath deep, that’s a very cool smell.