Where the Prairie Still Remains

In the 19th and 20th centuries, plows destroyed most of America’s tallgrass prairie to make way for crops, wiping out a richly biodiverse ecosystem. In this piece, Christian Elliott explores the last pockets of Iowa prairie, especially the grassland that survives in Rochester Cemetery. He uncovers an extraordinary place where a rare ecosystem and a rural burial ground overlap, causing tensions between those focused on the land itself and those devoted to preserving the graves of the pioneers who cultivated it.

I think of the postage-stamp perfect square cemetery I grew up visiting on Memorial Day in nearby Wapello, Iowa, with its close-cropped turfgrass, ornamental bushes and stones in lines straight as the corn rows that box them in on all sides. With manicured lawns and trimmed trees as the blueprint for cemeteries, I can see why some less well acquainted with prairie plants — including other township trustees here — complain this place looks “overgrown” with weeds and in need of a good mow. But at the same time, it strikes me that if one of the pioneers buried here suddenly rose from the dead, these hills are about the only part of the Iowa landscape they’d recognize.