Cross Ranch State Park was an area that I had wanted to add to my 2021 North Dakota hiking guidebook update (Guidebook link), but I just never had enough time to make a visit. Since then, Jean and I have been discovering how nice the ND State Parks are, with great trail systems and interesting interpretive displays. We decided to make Cross Ranch the first stop on our 2022 visit.
After spending the night in Bismarck, we arrived before the Visitor Center opened. The park trails form a daisy chain of loops along the west bank of the Missouri River. We decided to try the eight mile Matah (from the Mandan word for river), Cottonwood, and Gaines loops that extend north from the Visitor Center.
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| Trail intersection at Cross Ranch. |
What
a great choice. The first part of the Matah Trail is an interpretive loop
giving us a quick lesson on the ecology of the river bottom ecosystem. The
trail was a mowed path through an open forest of cottonwood, carpeted with
thick prairie grasses. Most of the Matah Trail was right along the river,
giving us nice views across the river. The first part of the loop passed the
park campground, which also featured a few yurts and some cabins.
Cross
Ranch was created from parts of the original Gaines Ranch, first settled in the
late 1800’s. Gaines sold the ranch to the Levis, who hoped that the ranch could
be turned into a state park. The Levis had bought the Maltese Cross brand that
had been Theodore Roosevelt’s, and renamed the property as Cross Ranch. The
Levis then sold to The Nature Conservancy (TNC), who later donated much of the
land to the state to create the park. The next two loops (Cottonwood and
Gaines) on our hike would be on Nature Conservancy land used by the park.
The Cottonwood and Gaines loops are away from the river, so we lost our extensive views. But the river bottom here is lush and parklike below the many mature cottonwoods, some of which have reached remarkable size. The river here was free flowing, rather than impounded behind the massive Garrison and Oahe dams. It was the biodiversity of the river bottom that first attracted the TNC to the area. Only after acquiring the property, did they realize the extent of the diversity of the unbroken upland prairie lands above the river.
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| Jean by a huge cottonwood. |
Jean
and I continued to enjoy the easy hiking along the river bottom. It was much
colder than it had been at home, and the winds had begun to weave their way
down to us. We skipped the Levis Trail at the far end of the park, expecting the
northernmost loop would be similar to what we saw on the other loops, and we returned
to the Visitor Center after hiking about 8 miles.
The
ranger was about to head off for lunch, but he opened back up for us, and gave
us more background on the park and its facilities. We planned to try the
shorter Prairie Trail on The Nature Conservancy next, and he told us there had
been a lone bison grazing near the start of the loop.
By the time we drove the extra mile up the road to the Nature Conservancy trailhead, the wind had picked up, with gusts reaching 30 mph. Luckily there was a trail map on the sign board, the two miles of trail was a complicated “lasso” shape with two other spurs leading off it, and a social trail to a small cemetery also starting from the trailhead.
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| Jean at The Nature Conservancy Trailhead. |
The
Prairie Trail was also a path mowed through the grassland. Immediately over the
first hill we spotted the lone bison the ranger had mentioned. The preserve has
a herd of around 200 bison, but they are apparently scattered over the three
parcels that comprise the preserve. We looped around the bison, never coming so
close that we needed to leave the trail. At the far end of the loop on a
hilltop overlooking ranch headquarters was the small Gaines Cemetery. From
there we turned back and fought our way upwind back to the trailhead, this time
stopping off to see the larger Bagnell Cemetery on the knoll above the
trailhead.
