Neal Smith National Wildlife Refuge

This 2-mile-long trail is all on hard, crushed rock surfaces and has benches to rest and watch the prairie life around you about every 1/3 mile. It has long, gradual slopes that will take you down by the stream and the buffalo enclosure that you can see from the top of the hill, just north of the Prairie Learning Center. This trail is accessible to everyone, including those in wheelchairs, walkers, or on crutches, though it does require some endurance.

This trail will allow you to see firsthand some of the plants and animals you've learned about in the Prairie Learning Center (PLC). It will show you some reintroduced plants and animals. It will take you back to what the Tallgrass Prairie once was. It will also take you forward into what this Refuge will become. It will ask you to look, listen, and ponder. The six stations refer to the six wide places in the trail with benches. You can locate them on the trail map.

Station 1 Probably it's already quieter than when you left the trailhead. Though the Learning Center is close by behind you, you are lower on the slope and surrounded by restored tallgrass prairie. Listen and watch closely. You may hear the sweet calls of meadowlarks and see them landing in a patch of Indiangrass. Their black "necklace" on a yellow chest is often visible. Meadowlarks build their hidden nests on the ground at the base of clumps of plants. Unlike many native prairie birds, meadowlarks can also nest in agricultural landscapes. For reasons we do not yet fully understand, their populations have been declining in recent years. Hopefully, more habitat like this Refuge and other grasslands will help bring them back.

Look around you and other prairie life may be visible. Butterflies may be sipping the nectar of prairie wildflowers. Many prairie plants are coming back. Some have been hanging on here for many decades. This hillside was difficult to farm. Over the years, it was seeded with non-native grasses, grazed, planted with corn, even bulldozed. But, because of their deep roots and adaptation to prairie weather, some prairie plants survived. Now this hillside is managed to preserve the native plants and encourage them to grow.

Watch for

compass plant

roundheaded bushclover

stiff goldenrod

pheasants (the 20th Century replacement for native prairie chickens)

monarch butterflies

Station 2 Creeks were the veins of water that flowed through and connected the prairie landscape. Like the one in front of you, they provided essential water for wildlife and plants. As a result, they were travel corridors for many animals.

"In every part of this whole District, beautiful rivers and creeks are to be found, whose transparent waters are perpetually renewed by the springs from which they flow." This was written by Albert Miller Lea, a man who explored this area in 1835. Much has changed since then. As prairie was broken by the plow, streams became muddy. Bringing prairie back slows erosion. One day this stream may be clear again, and bring back the life that was once common here.

River otters, for example, were once common in Iowa. By 1900, they were gone because of unregulated trapping and loss of habitat. In the 1980s, otters were brought back to Iowa. Several now live in Red Rock Reservoir, downstream from this creek. Someday, otter may swim in this stream, too.

Watch for

cottonwood trees (right across the creek from you)

damselflies

tracks of skunks, rabbits, raccoons, or turtles in the mud

cupplant

Joe-Pye weed

Station 3 Large-hooved grazers were an important part of tallgrass prairie. Buffalo and elk once roamed here by the thousands. Unrestricted and unregulated market hunting destroyed those herds. If you're lucky, you may catch a glimpse of the Neal Smith buffalo. Relatives of the few that were left, these buffalo have been brought back to view and help us understand the importance of these one-ton grazers to prairie. They eat prairie plants and trample them, as well. But they are important to its survival. Their grazing and trampling also helps the prairie grow, often thicker because of them, and "selecting" certain species for survival over others.

Another prairie animal you may see here is the brown-headed cowbird. Cowbirds used to follow the nomadic buffalo herds, eating insects from buffalo backs and insects kicked up by buffalo hooves. During the spring, if cowbirds nested for several weeks like other prairie birds, they'd lose the buffalo herd. So, they evolved an adaptation of laying eggs in other birds' nests for the other birds to raise. Today cowbirds still lay eggs in others' nests, even though the buffalo herds are gone. This "nest parasitism" is an interesting problem for many grassland birds.

Watch for

harriers (also called "marsh hawks") flitting up and down

Indiangrass

red fox tracks

fritillary butterflies

rattlesnake master (can you guess why this plant is called this?)

Station 4 Neal Smith NWR is both a reconstruction and a restoration. We reconstruct areas, like fields that have been plowed for years, by planting prairie seeds. We restore areas like this one where some native plants still exist.

This steep, rocky hillside has never been plowed. Some prairie plants survived here, along with invading non-prairie plants. Because fires didn't burn here, trees and brush gradually took over.

When this Refuge was established, this whole creek bottom was lined with trees and shrubs. The suppression of prairie fires in the last 100 years allowed them to grow up here. In addition, the rich prairie soils that once were on the surrounding hills had filled this creek bed over 20 feet deep! The creek has steep sides and a silt bottom. The Refuge has now removed the trees, reshaped the creek bottom, and reestablished prairie plants along the creek.

Prairie detective work helped us to discover this prairie remnant. Prairie soils differ from woodland soils in color, texture, and makeup. The soils here were typical of prairie. Also, despite the competition from the invading trees and shrubs, some tough prairie plants survived. Knowing what to look for, prairie managers were able to tell that this spot was, indeed, a prairie remnant. Since 1994, we have been removing the trees so that the land can gradually be restored to prairie.

Watch for

kestrels hovering overhead (watching for insects and mice to eat)

little bluestem grass

skipper butterflies

pocket gopher mounds

purple spikes of blazing star

Station 5 If you were looking for a place to live on the prairie, where would you go? What would you need to survive? Shelter, food, fuel, and water. This place has it all! Wooded streamsides and oak savannas have been favored by many cultures over many centuries and many countries. Native American groups camped in the shelter of trees and hunted game in the open prairies. James Elliot, the first settler of Prairie City, built his cabin across the stream from here, too. Many animals also favor these spots. Indiana bats, a federally endangered species, live in the savanna and woods near open water and eat flying insects. They like to roost beneath the loose back of shagbark hickory and in the hollows of burr oaks and other trees, allowing them to adjust their temperature when they want by simply moving to the bark on another side of the tree. Each spring, pregnant females leave their wintering caves in Missouri and return to Neal Smith to raise their young.

Elk also used the savanna and prairie. Now found mainly in the western U.S., elk (called "wapiti" by Native Americans) once were numerous here. This area was perfect for them: water from the creek, shrubs to browse beneath the savanna, and prairie plants on which to graze. As for so many creatures, prairie and savanna provided the resources they needed. Perhaps someday they also will return.

Watch for

nests of red-tailed hawks in trees across the creek

turkey vultures and red-tailed hawks soaring overhead

black-eyed Susans

butterfly milkweed

bats along the stream at dusk

prairie crab-apple

Station 6 Prairie conjures up many images in people's minds. For some, it is an unending expanse of grass with little diversity. In only a short distance, however, you have seen that there was much diversity here. Prairie changes from place to place and from season to season. As you've followed this trail, have you noticed how it changes? This spot provides a good place to see the diversity. You can see woods along a stream and the wet prairie beside it. To the southeast, you see the open-grown trees with large lower branches typical of an oak savanna. And, you are now sitting or standing in the middle of a dry, or "xeric," prairie. About 150 years ago, Iowa was like this—a patchwork quilt of natural communities.

Open prairie near oak savanna is perfect habitat for wild turkeys. They may nest in the dense brush along the creek, hunting insects in the prairie and acorns in the savanna. Unregulated hunting and habitat loss drove wild turkeys from Iowa by 1900. Today, resource managers are shifting the odds, bringing back prairie and the critters that lived there.

Watch for

wild turkey

badger holes in the hillside

dragonflies catching other insects over the wet prairie

big bluestem grass

Canada wild-rye

Keep in Mind

Please enjoy this trail and all of the Refuge and help protect it.

Stay on the trails.

Collecting plants or animals, building fires, or taking pets along are all prohibited.

To protect people on foot, no bicycles or skateboards are allowed on the Tallgrass Trail.

You may want to consider taking along: