Innovation and leadership advances Prophetstown
Prairie flowers are in bloom at Prophetstown State Park.
The DNR will open Prophetstown State Park near Battleground in just a couple of months. It will be Indiana’s 23rd state park.
Creating a new state park is an exciting adventure because each park is unique in its own way. At Prophetstown, the restoration of a prairie and fen is taking shape in an area that ranges from river bottomland to Ice Age gravel bluffs.
DNR employees haven’t done this all on our own. When cash was tight, local leaders stepped up with resources to make it possible to open Prophetstown for day use this year.
Local tourism leaders are devoting a portion of the Tippecanoe County innkeepers tax to support $5.5 million in bonds that are being used to construct park facilities.
Former state Sen. Mike Gery, Sen. Ron Alting and state representatives Sheila Klinker and Sue Scholer shepherded legislation to make this possible.
The use of the innkeepers tax is a new twist on an old theme. Visitors who stay overnight at hotels and bed-and-breakfasts in Tippecanoe County actually are helping to develop the park.
Local support for development of a state park is a Hoosier tradition. In the early 1900s, county government often purchased property to donate or sell at a very low price so that a state park could be developed.
In one of the most interesting cases, a portion of the 1916 Indianapolis 500 gate receipts was donated to help the state purchase land and save old growth trees to create Turkey Run State Park.
When the park opens this year, people will have trail access, a picnic area and a comfort station. I think you will be impressed with the prairie grass, which has been growing for a few years. Also, millions of prairie flowers have been sown with help from volunteers.
The campground is nearly complete, but we’ll wait to open it next spring so the grasses can properly grow and be strong enough for heavy traffic.
Prophetstown will be an extraordinary travel destination in a county already rich with history and tourism. The park will attract campers, day-visitors, history buffs and wildlife watchers.
The park will get a lot of use even before eager vacationers haul in the first campers. Birdwatchers will be walking the trail through the 100-acre prairie and school groups will be walking on a trail through the edge of the fen, looking at unfamiliar plants and dragonflies.
You will be amazed at the vast openness at Prophetstown, which is unlike any of our other parks.
The partial opening this year is just the first phase of Prophetstown’s development. We’ll continue to acquire land, restore native vegetation and add trails and other features.
Look for more on Prophetstown in the next issue of Outdoor Indiana and on the DNR’s home page (www.IN.gov/dnr).
