Before the prairies in the Upper Mississippi River valley were plowed under by settlers in the late nineteenth century, the Dakota people set fire to the land in late fall or early spring to drive game and clear brush. Fire was once an elemental force on the prairie, central to the Dakota way of life. When these tribal people were pushed out of their villages and forced to leave their ancestral home after the war of 1862, seasonal fires ceased. Once settlers began clearing bluff top prairies for cultivation, the oak savannas of the Driftless region rapidly diminished in size. In some places, they disappeared altogether.
By the mid-20th century, fewer than 500 acres of intact oak savanna remained, less than 0.01% of the original 5.5 million acres. In the 1990’s, a new movement to restore oak savannas, as well as flood plain forests and sand prairies along the Mississippi River, began in earnest. When the Wisconsin DNR took over management of the Maiden Rock Bluff State Natural Area in 2011, they reintroduced fire, incorporating prescribed burns into their long-term restoration plan.