There’s not much left of the original landscape in Kansas City, before it was bulldozed, plowed or overgrown with invasive plants.
But people can access a good chunk of it up a steep, rocky trail past truck-sized slabs of limestone south of Swope Park.
Conservationist Larry Rizzo describes the Blue River Glades as “very prairie-like” in its vegetation, rife with prairie grasses like big bluestem and sideoats grama.
Rizzo helped identify the land for preservation in the 1980s as a Missouri Department of Conservation biologist. He started a volunteer organization called Kansas City WildLands in part to preserve it…