See bison at the Midewin National Tallgrass Prairie near Chicago

Midewin National Tallgrass Prairie is a little over an hour from downtown Chicago. It’s a place people can seemingly turn back the clock a couple of hundred years to when open prairie and bison stretched to the horizon.

Illinois is known as the “Prairie State,” but less than 0.01% of its original 21 million acres of prairie remains. The Midewin National Tallgrass Prairie was established in 1996 to help preserve what little remains. Nearly half of the more than 18,000-acre preserve is open to the public. Hikers and bikers can explore more than 34 miles of trail.

Bison in Midewin National Tallgrass Prairie

One of the main reasons people visit Midewin is to see bison in the wild. In 2015, a herd of just over two dozen bison was introduced. Since then, that herd has grown to more than 50.

Bison are considered an ecology success story. But for there to be a success, there first had to be a tragedy. In the early 1800s, upwards of 60,000,000 bison roamed free. Over the next century, they were systematically slaughtered to the point that by 1900, it’s believed that fewer than 500 remained. Conservation and reintroduction programs like the one at Midewin have helped the bison population rebound.