 A stand of Indian paintbrush looks like prairie fire flames. |  Ohio spiderwort adorns the Ozark Wildlife Area in purple stars. |
The prairie had been waiting for its chance to bloom again.
* * *
Jackson County Natural Resources Ecologist Tony Vorwald and I bounce along an abandoned low-maintenance road that winds through private corn fields. The road now serves as utility access for Jackson County Conservation Board (JCCB) personnel to reach the north side of the Ozark Wildlife Area. His truck lurches between—and occasionally into—the deep graveled ruts enroute to a restored prairie-oak savanna he wants to show me.
The Ozark Wildlife Area, located ten miles south of Bernard, IA, became a JCCB property around 1990, thanks to former owners Raymond and Azetta Clark. Partly cultivated at the time but mostly forested, the narrow, angled 300-acre Ozark property abuts both sides of a 3½-mile zigzagging stretch of the North Fork Maquoketa River. Despite its thickly-encroached woodlands, some of Ozark’s steep ravines, riverside cliffs, and rolling uplands offered the potential of being restored to a pre-settlement landscape.
Of Jackson County’s thirty-five parks, wildlife areas, historic sites, and trails, the Ozark Wildlife Area is “definitely my favorite,” Tony says as we exit the truck at the preserve’s gate. While Jackson County Conservation has a three-pronged mission providing for recreation, education, and habitat conservation/restoration in its various holdings, “Restoration is definitely where my passion lies,” he reveals. That is part of what has drawn him to Ozark in the seven years and two summers he’s been with JCCB.
The crest of the first hill—once a ridge-top cultivated field—was replanted as prairie shortly after acquisition and before Tony’s arrival. Prairie flowers take turns blooming throughout the growing season, and today Ohio spiderworts are adorning the prairie grasses with purple stars.
Downhill from the summit, a swell of red-orange Indian paintbrush in the distance looks as if a smokeless prairie fire has ignited the plant tips. Up close, the forbs appear aptly named, as if their stems had been dipped in fire-colored paint and splashed across the hillside.
Some of the paintbrush tips are capped with see-through, cottony bags tied with drawstrings, like tiny bonnets. Tony empties a few of the bags into a pouch he’s carrying and then ties a few more bags to the flower tips. He is collecting seedheads of the paintbrush flowers to share with fellow naturalists at the Tallgrass Prairie Center at the University of Northern Iowa, as well as gathering seed to spread on other JCCB prairies.
Further down the narrow descending ridge, we encounter old oaks that had once been sentinels of this prairie. They had flourished when the hillside was a savanna, a prairie punctuated by occasional hardwoods. Fire-resistant oaks would survive the recurrent prairie fires that consumed lesser trees. “You can tell from their outstretched, lateral branches that some of these oaks grew when there were few other trees around,” Tony explains.
Euro-American settlement, however, squelched prairie fires, and within a few decades the oaks were swallowed up in a tangle of intruding softwood species. And since oaks require some open canopy to regenerate, the aging giants were in danger of dying out altogether.
Thanks to a variety of grants, the Friends of Jackson County Conservation, JCCB resources, and a ton of labor and elbow grease, about three years ago Tony led a crew of workers in “knocking the forest back to the oaks,” to the line of ancient sentinels. And true to form, with sunlight once again warming the open grasses at the foot of the trees, a nursery of baby oaks has sprung up, each vying to replace the old ones nearing the end of their lifespans.
Near the oaks, we swing uphill again, this time onto rockier ground along the 60-foot river bluff. Due to the property’s remote ruggedness, few trails are maintained at Ozark, so we pick routes of least resistance, following deer paths and edging around outcrops where the soil is too thin to support plant growth.
Here Tony shifts from prairie tour guide to conservationist checking up on a roster of species. The cliff hillside, with broken bits of protruding limestone bedrock, is home to rattlesnakes, and Tony wants to check if any of them are home. He pokes his hiking stick under the layered and sometimes loose limestone slabs (“You there, snake?”), but on this cool morning they’ve apparently retreated further into their dens.
Tony examines and photographs a small stand of five-petaled prairie phlox. Abundant elsewhere on the property, it’s the first he’s found on this hillside, and he’s curious why it has taken root here. He gathers seed from wood betony, a yellow-flowered hemi-parasitic plant that powers itself from its own chlorophyll but taps into its neighbors’ roots for sustenance.
While Tony is off looking for snakes and gathering seeds, I am perched on the cliff face, sizing up the river below for kayaking and watching turkey vultures circle overhead.
But it is when we re-emerge from the cliff-side slope that we encounter the remnant prairie re-emerging from its long sleep. The lower half of this hillside prairie had never been tilled but had been swallowed by softwood tree encroachment over the decades. The prairie slipped into a long dormant sleep until Tony and his crew began “knocking back the forest.”
Shorn of trees and the resultant near-constant shade and leaf litter, sun-warmed on this south-facing slope, and prodded by occasional prescribed prairie burns, the prairie plants reawakened, “began to express themselves,” as Tony puts it.
You can tell the difference between a reawakened remnant prairie and a replanted one based on the species, he explains. “Remnant indicators” are grasses and flowers that typically don’t show up in modern prairie seed mixes, so where they appear it is because they have been reawakened from the original prairie.
Tony points out some of the remnant indicators: Panic grass seeds out like Fourth-of-July fireworks. Pale spiked lobelia flowers are tiny, white, bed-sheeted ghosts clinging to fragile stalks. And two-flowered Cynthia adds a dash of yellow to the mix.
* * *
We have largely altered the landscape. Much of it was necessary in order to survive. Some of it was reckless. Some unintentional.
Still, there is some comfort in knowing that, even if only on this tiny plot of land, a prairie has reawakened and bloomed again.
-- June 2025
* * *
Jackson County Natural Resources Ecologist Tony Vorwald and I bounce along an abandoned low-maintenance road that winds through private corn fields. The road now serves as utility access for Jackson County Conservation Board (JCCB) personnel to reach the north side of the Ozark Wildlife Area. His truck lurches between—and occasionally into—the deep graveled ruts enroute to a restored prairie-oak savanna he wants to show me.
The Ozark Wildlife Area, located ten miles south of Bernard, IA, became a JCCB property around 1990, thanks to former owners Raymond and Azetta Clark. Partly cultivated at the time but mostly forested, the narrow, angled 300-acre Ozark property abuts both sides of a 3½-mile zigzagging stretch of the North Fork Maquoketa River. Despite its thickly-encroached woodlands, some of Ozark’s steep ravines, riverside cliffs, and rolling uplands offered the potential of being restored to a pre-settlement landscape.
Of Jackson County’s thirty-five parks, wildlife areas, historic sites, and trails, the Ozark Wildlife Area is “definitely my favorite,” Tony says as we exit the truck at the preserve’s gate. While Jackson County Conservation has a three-pronged mission providing for recreation, education, and habitat conservation/restoration in its various holdings, “Restoration is definitely where my passion lies,” he reveals. That is part of what has drawn him to Ozark in the seven years and two summers he’s been with JCCB.
The crest of the first hill—once a ridge-top cultivated field—was replanted as prairie shortly after acquisition and before Tony’s arrival. Prairie flowers take turns blooming throughout the growing season, and today Ohio spiderworts are adorning the prairie grasses with purple stars.
Downhill from the summit, a swell of red-orange Indian paintbrush in the distance looks as if a smokeless prairie fire has ignited the plant tips. Up close, the forbs appear aptly named, as if their stems had been dipped in fire-colored paint and splashed across the hillside.
Some of the paintbrush tips are capped with see-through, cottony bags tied with drawstrings, like tiny bonnets. Tony empties a few of the bags into a pouch he’s carrying and then ties a few more bags to the flower tips. He is collecting seedheads of the paintbrush flowers to share with fellow naturalists at the Tallgrass Prairie Center at the University of Northern Iowa, as well as gathering seed to spread on other JCCB prairies.
Further down the narrow descending ridge, we encounter old oaks that had once been sentinels of this prairie. They had flourished when the hillside was a savanna, a prairie punctuated by occasional hardwoods. Fire-resistant oaks would survive the recurrent prairie fires that consumed lesser trees. “You can tell from their outstretched, lateral branches that some of these oaks grew when there were few other trees around,” Tony explains.
Euro-American settlement, however, squelched prairie fires, and within a few decades the oaks were swallowed up in a tangle of intruding softwood species. And since oaks require some open canopy to regenerate, the aging giants were in danger of dying out altogether.
Thanks to a variety of grants, the Friends of Jackson County Conservation, JCCB resources, and a ton of labor and elbow grease, about three years ago Tony led a crew of workers in “knocking the forest back to the oaks,” to the line of ancient sentinels. And true to form, with sunlight once again warming the open grasses at the foot of the trees, a nursery of baby oaks has sprung up, each vying to replace the old ones nearing the end of their lifespans.
Near the oaks, we swing uphill again, this time onto rockier ground along the 60-foot river bluff. Due to the property’s remote ruggedness, few trails are maintained at Ozark, so we pick routes of least resistance, following deer paths and edging around outcrops where the soil is too thin to support plant growth.
Here Tony shifts from prairie tour guide to conservationist checking up on a roster of species. The cliff hillside, with broken bits of protruding limestone bedrock, is home to rattlesnakes, and Tony wants to check if any of them are home. He pokes his hiking stick under the layered and sometimes loose limestone slabs (“You there, snake?”), but on this cool morning they’ve apparently retreated further into their dens.
Tony examines and photographs a small stand of five-petaled prairie phlox. Abundant elsewhere on the property, it’s the first he’s found on this hillside, and he’s curious why it has taken root here. He gathers seed from wood betony, a yellow-flowered hemi-parasitic plant that powers itself from its own chlorophyll but taps into its neighbors’ roots for sustenance.
While Tony is off looking for snakes and gathering seeds, I am perched on the cliff face, sizing up the river below for kayaking and watching turkey vultures circle overhead.
But it is when we re-emerge from the cliff-side slope that we encounter the remnant prairie re-emerging from its long sleep. The lower half of this hillside prairie had never been tilled but had been swallowed by softwood tree encroachment over the decades. The prairie slipped into a long dormant sleep until Tony and his crew began “knocking back the forest.”
Shorn of trees and the resultant near-constant shade and leaf litter, sun-warmed on this south-facing slope, and prodded by occasional prescribed prairie burns, the prairie plants reawakened, “began to express themselves,” as Tony puts it.
You can tell the difference between a reawakened remnant prairie and a replanted one based on the species, he explains. “Remnant indicators” are grasses and flowers that typically don’t show up in modern prairie seed mixes, so where they appear it is because they have been reawakened from the original prairie.
Tony points out some of the remnant indicators: Panic grass seeds out like Fourth-of-July fireworks. Pale spiked lobelia flowers are tiny, white, bed-sheeted ghosts clinging to fragile stalks. And two-flowered Cynthia adds a dash of yellow to the mix.
* * *
We have largely altered the landscape. Much of it was necessary in order to survive. Some of it was reckless. Some unintentional.
Still, there is some comfort in knowing that, even if only on this tiny plot of land, a prairie has reawakened and bloomed again.
-- June 2025
 Jackson County Natural Resources Ecologist Tony Vorwald |  A small number of prairie flower tips are bagged in order to collect their seed. |  Panic grass shows off seedheads like fireworks. |