The 230-acre Nine-Mile Prairie is one of the last remnants of a once expansive ecosystem that spanned over 400,000 square miles across central North America, the tallgrass prairie. From Manitoba to the Gulf of Mexico, and from eastern Nebraska to Ohio, the landscape was dominated by an ocean of grass that was maintained by frequent fires, large herbivores, and Indigenous peoples. As European settlers pushed west, the prairies were quickly plowed under and replaced with crops.
