Prairie Union School Restoration

Celebrating One Room School Houses on the Prairie

On Saturday, June 16, 2007, the American Prairie Foundation (APF) hosted a dedication of the Prairie Union School at its site about 50 miles SE of Malta on the American Prairie Reserve. APF is dedicating this one room schoolhouse to the people of the prairie who obtained their education at this and other similar schools across the prairie grasslands.

In service from 1943 to 1957, the Prairie Union School was originally built in 1912 for the Hockett family homestead. Later in 1943, it was moved to the nearby Shore family ranch where it started as a school for grades 1-8. In 1948, it was moved to its current site nearby. Young teachers lived at the school, sleeping on a fold-up bed, cooking their meals and teaching students from 9am to 4pm weekly. Many former students, interviewed during the school’s renovation in 2005, said they received a wonderful education here and developed life long relationships with their fellow students and their families. The school also served as a community center for special holidays and events and graduated its last students in 1957.

The American Prairie Foundation was established in 2001 to create and manage a prairie–based wildlife reserve that, when combined with public lands already devoted to wildlife, will protect a unique natural habitat, provide lasting economic benefits and improve public access to and enjoyment of the reserve. The renovation of the school was possible due to the generous support of the Biehl family, restoration expertise contributed by Yellowstone Traditions and contributions of original school materials and stories by the local community and those that attended the school.

APF is pleased to offer the school as a resource for future generations to better understand the courage and resilience of their pioneering ancestors.

Bison Restoration

November 16, 2005 - American Prairie Foundation, in cooperation with World Wildlife Fund, released 16 bison today on a portion of 32,000 acres that we own or lease in the prairie south of Malta, Montana. This area is the core of our new prairie reserve intended to restore native wildlife, including genetically valuable bison.

"History was made today," said Sean Gerrity, president of American Prairie Foundation. "Bison once roamed this land in herds of thousands, and today they're back. Their return signals the start of an exciting project to restore native wildlife to the grasslands where they have been absent for more than 120 years."

Two important factors set APF's bison herd apart from others. First, it is one of only a handful of herds remaining anywhere that are free of bison-cattle hybrids; this is because of generations of experimentation at the turn of the last century when bison numbers dropped to just a few hundred individuals. Our source herd, at Wind Cave National Park in South Dakota, is one of the few herds derived from original wild stock, not animals from bison-cattle crosses. Second, unlike genetically pure herds in Yellowstone, the Wind Cave herd is free from the disease brucellosis, which is a concern to domestic cattle producers.

The director of World Wildlife Fund's Northern Great Plains Ecoregion Program, Dr. Curt Freese, notes that recent research on the bison genome has found that some of the genes that make bison "wild" are disappearing for other reasons as well. "Basically, bison are already largely ecologically extinct in their historic range and are becoming livestock through selective breeding," says Freese, whose program is providing scientific and technical support to the project. "The need to establish new, large herds to conserve the wild bison genome is extremely important. The great news about today is that these bison are returning to the heart of their historic range, and we didn't have to do anything special to prepare the land except putting up fences. Decades of stewardship by local landowners has kept the land in very good shape. The bison will graze the land very differently from cattle, and we expect it will benefit other wildlife almost immediately."

American Prairie Foundation has the unique ability to provide a real and lasting contribution to the conservation of bison in North America. The bison pictured here are our very own starter herd!

To see a bison photo at full size, click on a thumbnail photo.

For more information, see our Bison Restoration page.

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