Cimarron National Grassland
Kansas’s only national grassland rewards preparation with dark skies, shortgrass wildlife, canyon shade, and Santa Fe Trail history.
Artwork inspired by Herschel Logan
Cimarron National Grassland covers a patchwork of public land in far southwestern Kansas, restored after Dust Bowl damage and managed for grazing, wildlife, history, and recreation. Shortgrass prairie, cottonwood-lined river corridors, Point of Rocks, prairie-dog towns, and the Santa Fe Trail’s longest public segment create several different trips rather than one central attraction.
Stop first at the ranger office in Elkhart for a current map, road conditions, fire restrictions, and public-land boundaries. Cellular service is unreliable and many approaches are unpaved. Choose one anchor—the Companion Trail, Point of Rocks, Middle Spring, or wildlife viewing—then carry more water and fuel than the distance seems to require.
- Scale
- More than 100,000 acres
- Historic layer
- Santa Fe Trail corridor
- Preparation
- Map, water, fuel, weather
Quick guide
- Start
- Elkhart ranger office
- Choose
- One route or destination per half day
Plan a useful visit
- Patchwork
- Confirm public boundaries; grassland parcels are interspersed with private land.
- Shortgrass
- Notice how low vegetation changes animal visibility and wind exposure.
- Trail
- Read swales and springs as infrastructure of nineteenth-century travel.
- Night
- Plan a legal exit route before staying for dark-sky viewing
Good to know
The national grassland exists partly because the federal government purchased and rehabilitated severely eroded farms after the Dust Bowl.
Notice these
- Shortgrass prairie
- Cimarron River corridor
- Santa Fe Trail
- Remote dark sky