After their first flight at Kitty Hawk, North Carolina, the brothers moved to Huffman Prairie in Ohio, where for a year and a half they flew higher, farther, and with more control than anyone had imagined possible. Yet the local papers ignored it. Human beings were finally flying, but “none of us believed it,” said J.M. Cox, publisher of the Dayton Daily News.
That’s how I think of American Prairie: a visionary and weirdly underreported effort in central Montana that aims to buy private land, pull down barbed wire, and turn the ecological clock back two hundred years. If it succeeds, the 3.2 million acres it hopes to connect would be larger than any national park in the Lower 48, creating enough space for wolves, the first true free-roaming bison herd in over a century, and even grizzly bears.
Like the flights at Huffman Prairie, it’s happening largely out of sight. I not only wanted to write about it, but experience American Prairie as no
4,800 words to go
You’re just getting to the good part.
This story — and 41 issues of them — opens with a subscription.
Either one picks up right where you left off.
Join 7,000+ readers · Independently owned · Since 2008
Already a subscriber? Sign in
