46 Nebraskaland • March 2021
estled in the hills of southern Jeff erson County, Rock
Glen Wildlife Management Area, as its name implies,
is a rocky land shaped by ancient geological forces,
among them, meandering tropical rivers and grinding
glacial ice.
Euro-American settlers in the region arrived to a picturesque
scene: rolling hills cloaked in tallgrass prairie fi ngered by
glens, narrow valleys and canyons, fi lled with sprawling
bur oaks. Too rocky to plow, southern Jeff erson County has
survived as an island of prairie amidst a sea of cropland.
Settlement was not kind to the land. Fire suppression
allowed eastern red cedars and other trees to spread, choking
the grasslands and oak woodlands and obscuring the ancient
rock formations. Thanks to decades of recent work, however,
the native plant communities have been restored, and the
landscape is once again scenic.
Dakota Sandstone
Bob Diff endal, retired professor and research geologist
with the University of Nebraska-Lincoln, is an expert on the
geology of Jeff erson County. Pick a pebble from the ground
and he can name the rock type and its source of origin,
ancient seabed, river channel or glacier. For a portion of his
career, he studied the Dakota Formation, the heart of this
rocky landscape.
The Dakota, composed mainly of sandstone interspersed
with shale, forms the surface bedrock of the region. On
hillsides and fl at ridge tops, it is veiled by a thin, mostly
sandy topsoil, but is visible as boulders, shelves and cliff s in
ravines and canyons.
Diff endal explained that the formation was deposited
in the Cretaceous Period more than 100 million years ago,
when Nebraska had a tropical climate. Dinosaurs ruled the
land while giant reptiles swam in the seas and fl owering
N
Rock Glen
Wildlife
Area
A Landscape History
By Gerry Steinauer, Photos by
Eric Fowler and Gerry Steinauer
Located just south of Rock Creek Station, 6 miles
east and 2 miles south of Fairbury, Rock Glen Wildlife
Management Area has 707 acres of virgin prairies and
wood-studded ravines. The WMA is ideal for hiking, bird
watching, hunting and primitive camping.
Rock Glen WMA
