Smoky Valley Ranch

Smoky Valley Ranch
© Staff Photo

On this land, you'll find a sight that has almost vanished from America-bison roaming a shortgrass prairie as they did hundreds of years ago. But Smoky Valley Ranch is more than prairie. Dramatic chalk bluffs overlook large expanses of grassland, rocky ravines and Smoky Hill River. Breaks along the upper reaches of the river represent a transition zone between mixed grass and shortgrass prairie environments.

Size
16,800 acres

Location
Logan County, Kansas

Visiting the Preserve
For further information regarding tours and visits, please contact the Kansas Chapter.

What to See: Animals
Prairie chickens, pronghorn, ferruginous hawks, burrowing owls, golden eagles, green toad, swift fox, and the most recent resident - the federally endangered black-footed ferret.

Why the Conservancy Selected this Site
This area is a rare remnant of shortgrass prairie and home to the green toad, a state threatened amphibian, and the swift fox. In addition to its biological significance, it is a living repository of geological, paleontological, archaeological, historical and cultural history.

Pre-Historic History
The chalk badlands along the Smoky Hill River contain a rich fossil record of animals that lived in a vast inland sea that covered Kansas during the Cretaceous Period, some 80 million years ago. The Cretaceous Period was part of the Age of Reptiles, an era famous for its dinosaurs. Although dinosaurs were restricted to landmasses far from western Kansas, their marine representatives - mosasaurs and plesiosaurs roamed the seas. Besides these large marine reptiles, huge turtles, sharks, flying reptiles, giant clams, and toothed-birds inhabited the area. Because fossil remains are so well-preserved and scientifically significant, the chalk badlands are among the world's most famous locations for fossils from this era.

A Paleoindian site, the first physical evidence that humans inhabited North America at the end of the last Ice Age, was unearthed on Smoky Valley Ranch in 1895. This discovery contradicted contemporary theory and was not confirmed until 13 years later when a similar discovery was made in Folsom, New Mexico.

Modern History
Since man first visited this area, the banks of the Smoky Hill River have served as an east-west highway. Mounted Arapahos and Cheyenne, Charles Fremont, Kit Carson, Wild Bill Hickok, the 7th Calvary of George Custer and the 10th Calvary (buffalo soldiers) rode the Smoky Hill Trail many times through Smoky Valley Ranch in the late 1860s. The Butterfield Overland Dispatch stage line passed through and stopped at a way station located on the ranch to change horses and drivers. Beginning in the late 1800s, a number of African-American settlers - nearly a hundred families - settled on and around the ranch. Two brothers from a nearby black settlement quarried the stone and built the currrent ranch headquarters in the early 1900s.

What the Conservancy is Doing
The Smoky Valley Ranch preserve will be a working model and catalyst for shortgrass prairie conservation. To achieve this goal, The Nature Conservancy works in partnership with private landowners and other conservation groups.

Plans are underway to open hiking trails at the ranch by summer 2009. The trails will vary in length and guide visitors through a scenic tour of the ranch and its environs.