Access & Directions

The larger parcel of this site is located 1.9 miles south of State Highway 14, and the village of Arena, on County Road H. There is no parking lot;  park in the west roadside right-of-way of County Road H (to be legal, parked vehicles need to be at least 3 feet away from the gravel shoulder). Access is by foot only starting at the The Prairie Enthusiasts sign, walking along the field edge to the trail head at the edge of the wooded area. The smaller parcel is located 0.2 miles to the south-southeast. The hike up to either prairie is very steep.

Google Map

Site Steward

Connect with the site steward to see how you can care for this rare habitat at an upcoming work party.

This site is stewarded by The Prairie Enthusiasts Empire-Sauk Chapter.

Site Steward: Scott Sauer (Email)

What Makes Swenson Bluff Preserve Special

This preserve contains three parcels: Swenson Hill Prairie, Agaski Bluff and Shooting Star Prairie. Swenson Hill Prairie is approximately 16 acres, including the surrounding woods. Agaski Bluff nearby is a 38-acre section with specatular species. The smaller parcel, known as Shooting Star Prairie, is approximately three acres in size, which includes its namesake plant.

Swenson Bluff Preserve is, at five acres of open grassland, a large remnant representative of calcareous, dry-mesic hill prairie. It is largely free of common herbaceous weeds such as white sweetclover (Melilotus alba) and wild parsnip (Pastinaca sa). There are small clusters of compass plant (Silphium laciniatum), indicating a light or non-existent grazing history (the hillside is considerably removed from the dairy barn on the Swenson farm). It is most notable for the heterogeneity of its summer prairie flora, with leadplant, butterflyweed, and prairie coreopsis (Amorpha canescens, Asclepias tuberosa, and Coreopsis palmata) blooming in a vast, intermixed display.  Likewise, the 2014 burn revealed a rich display of prairie spring ephemerals (violets, puccoon, and violet wood sorrel among them) on a lower, more level portion of the property. Other plants of note are tuberous Indian plantain, prairie turnip, cream Baptisia, and Hill’s thistle (Arnoglossum plantagineum, Pediomelum esculentum, Baptisia bracteate, and Cirsium Hillii).

After extensive clearing in 2003, Shooting Star Prairie demonstrated why it received its common name. The skirt of brush at the base of the hill had concealed a huge display of Shooting Star (Dodecatheon meadia). This small remnant is also home to one of four, and the largest, Wisconsin populations of pale false foxglove, Agalinis skinneriana, a prairie annual that is listed as Endangered or Threatened in all the States where it occurs.

Good invertebrate records from WDNR surveys in the 1990s and 2000s exist for both parcels. Across both tracts, thirteen prairie-specialist species – those dependent on prairie remnants – have been cataloged. On Swenson Hill Prairie, there is a collection record for the rare Kansas Prairie Leafhopper (Prairiana kansana), but that collection was not repeated after the initial collection. The WDNR lists P. kansana as a Species of Greatest Conservation Need (SGCN). Shooting Star Prairie has rich sods of prairie dropseed (Sporobolus heterolepis) which harbor the State-endangered Hill Prairie Shovelhead Leafhopper (Attenuipyga vanuduzeei), known from only six or seven locations in the Upper Midwest. The State-threatened prairie specialist Net-Veined Leafhopper (Polyamia dilata is also found on Shooting Star Prairie.

SGCN, Threatened and Endangered Species on the Swenson Hill (SHP) and Shooting Star Prairies (SSP):

How was Swenson Bluff Preserve Protected

The Prairie Enthusiasts has been active on the Swenson Bluff Prairie site with management activities and field trips since 2002. This, along with the ongoing relationship maintained with the Swenson family by volunteers Amy Staffen and Scott Sauer through the past decades, kept the protection prospects alive and led to The Prairie Enthusiasts ownership on August 20, 2018. Funding for this purchase was made possible, in part, by the Wisconsin Department of Natural Resources Knowles-Nelson Stewardship Program.

The Swenson Bluff Prairie parcels are part of a larger prairie complex with other remnants persisting on nearby hillsides and bluff tops, making this an important area for native plant diversity. The Nature Conservancy (TNC) led protection efforts in this area beginning in the early 1990’s when The Prairie Enthusiasts was still a small organization. The Nature Conservancy’s interest in this area derived primarily from the presence of the rare Agalinis skinneriana and, secondarily, from the biodiversity of the area provided by the prairie-savanna-woodland complex.

Either the Swenson Hill or nearby Drakenburg prairie were included in the description and analysis of dry-mesic prairies in John Curtis’s seminal work The Vegetation of Wisconsin (1956). Notes within the 1990 TNC description of the sites and the St. John’s Complex suggest that Olive Thomson visited these sites in the 1950’s. (Read more about Dr. John and Olive Thomson, premier conservationists, environmental education leaders and naturalists.)

In 2024, The Prairie Enthusiasts purchased the 38-acre Agaski Bluff addition. Read more about that story HERE.

How You Can Help Swenson Bluff Preserve

In 2002, with funding provided by a US Fish and Wildlife Service (USFWS) grant for private lands, both Swenson Hill Prairie and Shooting Start Prairie were largely cleared of invasive red cedars, as well as some planted and volunteer white pines, black cherry, buckthorn, honeysuckle, and other invasive shrubs.  In 2007, Empire-Sauk Chapter volunteers burned roughly 2/3 of Swenson Hill Prairie. Site Steward Scott Sauer, along with volunteers from Quercus Land Stewardship, conducted winter-season burns on Swenson Hill Prairie in 2012, 2013, 2014 and 2016.

Current management efforts are focused on continued removal of invasive species, especially buckthorn and honeysuckle.

Check out our Events Calendar to see upcoming work parties or contact the site steward to get involved.