Mount Mitchell Prairie Guards

The Mount Mitchell Prairie Guards formed in 2000 to develop and manage the historic site known as the Mount Mitchell Heritage Prairie. The property is a fifty-acre tallgrass prairie remnant on the bluffs above the Kansas River in Wabaunsee County, Kansas. Will Mitchell, son of pioneers Captain William and Mary Mitchell, gave the property to the people of Kansas in 1953 with the intention that it become a public park dedicated to his father and members of the Free-state Beecher Bible and Rifle Colony from Connecticut. The state was unable to fulfill Mitchell’s vision for a park and the property was turned over to local control in 2006. Since that time the Guards have made the park accessible to the community and visitors by creating an all-weather access road and parking area, developing two miles of walking trails, erecting historical interpretive signage, conducting educational programs and working with grassland scientists to return the prairie to its 1856 condition.