I have been thinking about Flanagan Prairie, a special place. A few days ago I shared a video from the Arkansas Natural Heritage Commission that was shot on Flanagan Prairie–arogos butterflies on a pale purple coneflower. Flanagan Prairie is one of the first, perhaps the very first, native hay meadows acquired and protected by the Arkansas Natural Heritage Commission.
Flanagan native hay meadow is also the first tallgrass prairie I ever visited and saw from the perspective of a (budding) ecologist. We went there on an undergrad plant ecology field trip in mid to late 1970s, before the prairie was protected by ANHC. I kept looking around thinking, boy, this place looks familiar. A lot of these plants look awfully familiar? It finally dawned on me that I seen them at home! Visiting Flanagan Prairie began the process of opening my eyes to be able to see the native hay meadows and prairie plants I had grown up with in LeFlore County, OK. Before then I really didn’t know what I was seeing, or how to understand what I was seeing. I came back and started driving all the back roads, looking at plants and prairie remnants. My first small thoughts about ecological restoration were also born at that time; seeing native prairie plants along the road, I started imagining putting them back together and making a new a prairie.
Today Flanagan Prairie is one of the few remnants of the once extensive Cherokee Prairie Complex that formerly occupied approximately 135,000 acres of the western portion of the Arkansas Valley in Arkansas.
For those of you old enough to remember, Flanagan was the maiden name of Betty Bumpers, wife of Dale, Arkansas governor, and US Senator from 1975 to 1999. Betty grew up in Franklin County and Flanagan natural area is named for her father H.E. “Babe” Flanagan who once owned the land.
“The prairie was the childhood playground of my wife Betty,” Bumpers remembered once in an interview. “Her father…owned this meadow for six decades and in all that time, the land was never plowed.”
(Pale purple coneflower is a personal favorite. I am fond of purple. Reupping a photo I posted back in 2017).
From Cheryl Cheadle, via Facebook:
Steve right before Covid changed our world Blue Thumb and the Commission’s Soil Health Program began developing a workshop called “Full Circle Citizenship.” A portion of the workshop is about understanding the land from yesterday to today, with an eye on protection for tomorrow. We are now scheduling some of these again.