The Big Basin Prairie Preserve is a nature preserve owned and managed by the Kansas Department of Wildlife and Parks. The preserve is in the Red Hills near Ashland in Clark County, Kansas. The main features are St. Jacob's Well, a water-filled sinkhole which lies in the Little Basin, and the Big Basin, a lush mile-wide crater-like depression, also resulting from a sinkhole. The area is stocked with buffalo and is open to the public.

The Big Basin is transected by U.S. Route 283 and U.S. Route 160 which run together for a short ways. The portion of the basin west of the highway is privately owned. The property was acquired in 1974 from The Nature Conservancy which made operation as a nature preserve a condition of the sale. In December of 1978, the preserve was designated as a National Natural Landmark and was added to the National Registry of Natural Landmarks.

The area was one of the locations where the Northern Cheyenne camped and rested during the Northern Cheyenne Exodus in the fall of 1878. The area was not occupied, and perhaps not even generally known, by white settlers at that time.

File:Big Basin in Fog 2002.jpg|Big Basin in the fog.File:Big Basin sink floor 2002.jpg|The wet floor of Big Basin.

Notes

1. Information and video on the web site of the Kansas Department of Wildlife and Parks
2. Maddux, Albert Glenn. 2003. In Dull Knife's Wake: The True Story of the Northern Cheyenne Exodus of 1878, Horse Creek Publications (October 20, 2003), trade paperback, 224 pages, ISBN 0972221719 ISBN 978-0972221719 (See p. 22)

See also

• Konza Prairie
• Tallgrass Prairie National Preserve
• Flint Hills

External links

• Set of photos on Flickr