Historical Marker · No. 23
Bluestem Pasture Region
Chase County · Kansas
Erected by State of Kansas
The federal government created the preserve but owns almost none of it. Legislation in 1991 stalled because local interests objected to the National Park Service owning the whole ranch, so Senator Nancy Kassebaum gathered the parties in 1992 to work out a public and private partnership. The National Park Trust bought the 10,882-acre Spring Hill/Z-Bar Ranch in 1994, and the law signed November 12, 1996, capped Park Service ownership at 180 acres. The trust later gave the service about 32 acres around the 1881 ranch house, and the service works with The Nature Conservancy; bison returned in 2009.
What the plaque says
Bluestem Pasture Region This is one of the largest parcels of native grassland in Kansas. It is known popularly as the Flint Hills or the Bluestem prairies. For many centuries it belonged to the American Indians. Millions of buffalo, elk, antelope, coyote, eagles, and other animals roamed these prairies. After the Civil War, settlers converted much of this area into cropland. About 4.5 million acres escaped the plow because their grasses were so valuable for grazing. Cattlemen fattened their steers on these pastures just before reaching the Kansas City stock- yards. Railroads routed their tracks through here to attract cattle-shipping traffic, and by the mid-20th century more than a half million head were turned loose here each summer. In 1996 the federal government created the 11,000-acre Tallgrass Prairie National Preserve, about 20 miles north of here. Erected by the State of Kansas
Where it stands
38.09476, -96.57922 · Directions
Worth the stop nearby
- Chase County Courthouse — 19 miA Second Empire courthouse of local limestone, built in 1872 and 1873 to John G. Haskell's design and, by the county's account, the oldest courthouse in Kansas still in daily use.
- Tallgrass Prairie National Preserve — 23 miA Chase County cattle ranch of the 1880s with its limestone house, three-level barn and one-room school intact, set among 40 miles of trails through unplowed tallgrass where bison and cattle both graze.
- Kansas Oil Museum — 24 miButler County's ten-acre museum in El Dorado, telling how a town that envied its neighbors' gas wells hired the state geologist in 1914 and found one of the great oil fields of its day.