Pioneers Park Nature Center

Most of Nebraska's tallgrass prairie was broken by the plow within a few generations of settlement, until only scattered fragments remained. Pioneers Park Nature Center is one of the places where that landscape has been rebuilt on purpose, with native grasses and wildflowers seeded back onto former farm ground so that visitors can walk through something close to what the first travelers saw.

The result is a living classroom. In high summer the big bluestem can rise well over head height, and the prairie hums with grasshoppers, meadowlarks, and monarch butterflies moving between milkweed stands. In the wooded draws along the creek the mood changes to cool shade, oak and hackberry and cottonwood, a reminder that Nebraska was never all open grass but a mosaic of prairie and streamside forest.

The heart of a visit for many families is the herd of American bison, the great shaggy animal that once ranged the plains in the millions and that Nebraska tribes, among them the Pawnee, Omaha, and Ponca, depended on for food, shelter, and tools. A small herd of elk shares the prairie enclosures, and white-tailed deer move through the woods nearby, so a short walk can show you three of the state's signature large mammals.

The Nature Center also cares for birds of prey that were injured and can no longer live free, among them red-tailed hawks, great horned owls, and bald eagles. Seeing these birds close up, at rest on their perches, gives a sense of scale and detail that is almost impossible to get in the wild, and the displays double as a lesson in why the birds ended up here in the first place.

A network of trails threads the preserve, most of them level and easy, linking the prairie, the woodland, the animal enclosures, and the gardens near the visitor building. Some loops are short enough for small children, while longer routes let you string together several habitats in a single walk, and interpretive signs along the way explain what you are seeing.

Near the buildings are gardens planted with native prairie flowers and grasses, designed to draw pollinators and to show gardeners how to bring a piece of the prairie home. Through summer these beds pull in butterflies, bees, and hummingbirds, and the whole preserve shifts with the seasons, from spring wildflowers to the deep gold of autumn grass.

Spring brings migrating songbirds, greening prairie, and the first wildflowers in the woodland understory, one of the freshest times to walk the trails before the summer heat arrives. Late spring and early summer are good for watching young animals and nesting birds.

Summer is warm and green, the prairie at full height and buzzing with insect life, best enjoyed in the cooler hours of morning and evening. Fall lights the tallgrass gold and copper and thins the crowds, and winter strips the preserve to its bones, quiet and open, with tracks in the snow and the bison shaggy against the cold.

The closest Boutel™ stays, so you can turn this stop into an overnight. Each is an independently owned, editorially selected place to stay.