Tridens Prairie

Tridens Prairie is now one piece of a larger preserve. The Nature Conservancy has owned and managed about 100 acres here since 1972, once called Tridens Prairie Preserve and now part of Smiley Meadow Preserve, which is closed to the public. Texas Parks and Wildlife's magazine counted more than 170 plant species on the 97 acres that have never met a plow, and described a morning chorus of frogs and a dickcissel singing from a tree. Across US 82 to the north lies the much larger Smiley-Woodfin meadow.

What the plaque says

Tridens Prairie In 1841, when Zacharia Westfall was granted 1280 acres of land in this area, much of the northeastern region of Texas was covered with natural prairies. Over the years most of them have been plowed or destroyed. Tridens Prairie, which covers 97 acres of Westfall's original grant, is an undisturbed remnant of the blackland prairie that now is under preservation management. Tridens Prairie is part of a natural grassland that extends from Texas through the midwestern United States and into southern Canada. Its name is derived from the native, perennial bunch grass known as Long-spiked tridens. Over 150 species of grasses and wildflowers have been identified in Tridens Prairie. Dominant grasses of the prairie include Sporobolus silveanus (Silveanus dropseed), Tridens strictus (Long-spiked tridens), Paspalum floridanum (Florida paspalum), and Tripsacum dactyloides (Eastern gama). One of the few remaining native grasslands in the state and once part of a large hay-producing region, Tridens Prairie is an important part of Texas' natural history. It is being preserved by the Texas Nature Conservancy and Texas Garden Clubs, Inc. (1985)

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• Sam Bell Maxey House State Historic Site — 8.3 mi
  The Italian-villa-style house in Paris, finished in 1868 with a lawyer's fees, where a Confederate major general turned U.S. senator and two later generations of his family lived.
• Evergreen Cemetery — 8.4 mi
  Paris's town cemetery since 1866, with a carved-stone gallery that includes the Babcock monument in cowboy boots, and the grave of the three-year-old whose death led to the 1893 lynching of Henry Smith.
• Eiffel Tower — 10.0 mi
  A 65-foot Eiffel Tower with a red cowboy hat, built by the local welders' union in 1993 beside Paris's Love Civic Center.
• Cooper Lake State Park — 20 mi
  Two units on Jim Chapman Lake, a Corps reservoir proposed in the late 1930s, stalled by a lawsuit until 1984 and dedicated in 1991, with a 10.5-mile equestrian trail and wildlife land around it.

More markers nearby

• Smiley-Woodfin Native Prairie Grassland — 0.5 mi
• Lamar County — 5.6 mi
• The Historic Persimmon Grove and Capt. Hill's Military Camp — 7.4 mi
• Burial Site of John S. Chisum — 7.5 mi