Nine Mile Prairie (named for its location west and north of downtown

Lincoln Lincoln most commonly refers to: * Abraham Lincoln (1809–1865), the sixteenth president of the United States * Lincoln, England, cathedral city and county town of Lincolnshire, England * Lincoln, Nebraska, the capital of Nebraska, U.S. * Lincol ...

) is a tract of conserved

tallgrass prairie The tallgrass prairie is an ecosystem native to central North America. Historically, natural and anthropogenic fire, as well as grazing by large mammals (primarily bison) provided periodic disturbances to these ecosystems, limiting the encroachm ...

in Lancaster County,

Nebraska Nebraska () is a state in the Midwestern region of the United States. It is bordered by South Dakota to the north; Iowa to the east and Missouri to the southeast, both across the Missouri River; Kansas to the south; Colorado to the sout ...

United States The United States of America (U.S.A. or USA), commonly known as the United States (U.S. or US) or America, is a country primarily located in North America. It consists of 50 states, a federal district, five major unincorporated territori ...

. Except for one small portion of it that was farmed as recently as the 1950s, Nine-Mile Prairie has never been plowed (some of the land has at times been grazed as recently as the 1960s). As such, it is one of the largest areas of virgin tallgrass prairie in the state of Nebraska. A 228-acre portion has been listed on the

National Register of Historic Places The National Register of Historic Places (NRHP) is the United States federal government's official list of districts, sites, buildings, structures and objects deemed worthy of preservation for their historical significance or "great artistic ...

, as Nine-Mile Prairie, since 1986. The area was previously owned by the Department of Defense and served as part of a fenced buffer zone around a

World War II World War II or the Second World War, often abbreviated as WWII or WW2, was a world war that lasted from 1939 to 1945. It involved the vast majority of the world's countries—including all of the great powers—forming two opposing ...

era bomb storage depot. It was later sold to the City of Lincoln, then from 1966 on managed by the Lincoln Airport Authority, then in 1983 transferred to the University Foundation. With Nine Mile Prairie is now administered by the

University of Nebraska–Lincoln The University of Nebraska–Lincoln (Nebraska, NU, or UNL) is a public land-grant research university in Lincoln, Nebraska. Chartered in 1869 by the Nebraska Legislature as part of the Morrill Act of 1862, the school was known as the Univers ...

. The university uses it for a variety of research and recreational purposes, especially for studies of prairie

ecology Ecology () is the study of the relationships between living organisms, including humans, and their physical environment. Ecology considers organisms at the individual, population, community, ecosystem, and biosphere level. Ecology overl ...

. Research on this prairie began in the 1920s when Professor John Ernest Weaver and his students started using it for their studies of prairie plant ecology. In addition to prairie

grass Poaceae () or Gramineae () is a large and nearly ubiquitous family of monocotyledonous flowering plants commonly known as grasses. It includes the cereal grasses, bamboos and the grasses of natural grassland and species cultivated in lawns a ...

es, some of which including big bluestem (''Andropogon gerardii'') can grow as tall as six feet, the site supports a range of prairie trees, including cottonwoods and

honey locust The honey locust (''Gleditsia triacanthos''), also known as the thorny locust or thorny honeylocust, is a deciduous tree in the family Fabaceae, native to central North America where it is mostly found in the moist soil of river valleys. Hon ...

. Invasive

sumac Sumac ( or ), also spelled sumach, is any of about 35 species of flowering plants in the genus ''Rhus'' and related genera in the cashew family (Anacardiaceae). Sumacs grow in subtropical and temperate regions throughout the world, including Eas ...

plants and (in the absence of fire)

eastern juniper ''Juniperus virginiana'', also known as red cedar, eastern red cedar, Virginian juniper, eastern juniper, red juniper, and other local names, is a species of juniper native to eastern North America from southeastern Canada to the Gulf of Mexico ...

trees require control to preserve the original prairie ecology. A total of 392 species of vascular plants and 80 species of birds have been observed at Nine Mile Prairie. Notable species include the federally threatened prairie white fringed orchid (''Platanthera praeclara'') and the rare regal fritillary butterfly (''Speyeria idalia''), and it is home to

bluebird The bluebirds are a North American group of medium-sized, mostly insectivorous or omnivorous birds in the order of Passerines in the genus ''Sialia'' of the thrush family (Turdidae). Bluebirds are one of the few thrush genera in the Americas. ...

s and

white-tailed deer The white-tailed deer (''Odocoileus virginianus''), also known as the whitetail or Virginia deer, is a medium-sized deer native to North America, Central America, and South America as far south as Peru and Bolivia. It has also been introduced t ...

; herds of bison would have also passed through the site when it was open prairie until the mid-19th century.

References

External links

University of Nebraska site on Nine Mile Prairie

Protected areas of Lancaster County, Nebraska Landforms of Nebraska Prairies Nature reserves in Nebraska University of Nebraska–Lincoln Natural features on the National Register of Historic Places in Nebraska National Register of Historic Places in Lancaster County, Nebraska {{LancasterCountyNE-geo-stub