Access & Directions

10747 Moyer Road, Blue Mounds WI 53517. From STH 18-151, exit on Cave of the Mounds Road in Blue Mounds. Turn right onto CTH ID and then left to stay on Cave of the Mounds Road. In 0.7 miles, turn right on CTH F and travel for 2.7 miles to Moyer Road. Turn left for 0.3 miles and then left at 10747 Moyer Road.

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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: Rob Schubert (Email)

What Makes This Prairie Special

Protection of this prairie adds to the landscape of protected habitat in the region. This prairie is adjacent to the already protected Parrish Oak Savanna, which is connected to Pleasure Valley Conservancy. 

This tract of land is nearby additional easements, county parks and state parks, creating a large mosiac of habitat.

How was This Prairie Protected

Dave Wilken always enjoyed his prairie and the land bordering his property, which eventually became Parish Oak Savanna (protected by The Prairie Enthusiasts).

When it came time to sell his country home, he contacted Empire-Sauk Chapter Volunteer, Rich Henderson. Dave was interested in The Prairie Enthusiasts protecting his land, so that his established prairie would not be plowed up and turned into corn or soybeans.

Dave fondly recalls Empire-Sauk Chapter Volunteer, Pat Trochlell walking his property with him to evaluate the quality of the prairie. It passed the test and David’s property was soon protected by The Prairie Enthusiasts.

How You Can Help This Prairie

This habitat is being managed alongside Parrish Oak Savanna.

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

Access & Directions

From Barneveld, go east on US-18. Then, turn right to head south on Co Hwy F. 

Google Map

Site Steward

Connect with the Chapter 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.

What Makes Hanley Preserve Special

Hanley Preserve is part of a complex of properties protected by The Prairie Enthusiasts called Mounds View Grassland. This landscape-scale patchwork of preserved land creates important habitat for grassland birds, animals and insects. 

The remnant at Hanley Preserve is important in it’s own right, but combined with the availability to expand that habitat, it becomes even more important. 

How was the Hanley Preserve Protected

The Hanley farm gets its name from a widowed Irish emigrant, Mary Downey Hanley, who moved here with six of her eight children in 1882. It’s the Hanley’s presence on this land that has given us the great resource we can celebrate today. Although the land had been owned by farmers, they may not have had the time or resouces to cultivate their entire acreages. It was common to have some “unimproved” land (as the agricultural census called it) on your property through the 1880s. 

After decades of farming, Empire-Sauk Chapter leader Rich Henderson visited the site in 1985. He recognized the Hanley Farm remnant as a State Natural Area quality prairie. After that, land stewardship including brush clearing and prescribed burns was conducted on the site.

After helping the Hanley’s steward the land for decades, The Prairie Enthusiasts purchased the property in 2022.  

How You Can Help Hanley Preserve

Pulling wild parsnip, prescribed burning, seed collecting and just some of the many land stewardship tasks needed at Hanley Preserve. Join us for an upcoming event and help restore this important grassland landscape. 

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

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.