In northern Oklahoma near Pawhuska, the Joseph H. Williams Tallgrass Prairie Preserve protects the world’s largest remaining tract of tallgrass prairie, preserving a landscape that once stretched across the Great Plains. At the southern end of the Flint Hills, its rocky terrain spared much of it from cultivation, allowing open prairie, Cross Timbers forest, and Salt Creek valleys to endure. Managed by The Nature Conservancy, it relies on patch burning to sustain grazing and wildlife, including bison, cattle, and threatened species. The land also preserves Osage history, oil-era legacies, ranching heritage, and the home and gravesite of writer John Joseph Mathews.