Exploring the Rich Heritage of Prairie du Rocher, IL

An hour from St. Louis, near the Mississippi River, is the small town of Prairie du Rocher (French for prairie on the rock). We visited as part of our trip out to see Fort de Chartres and found small town charm, prehistoric shelters, French colonial history, and one amazing hike. Read on for details of our discoveries and how you can experience them yourself.

Discover Modoc Rock Shelter

We started our journey at Modoc Rock Shelter, a National Historic Landmark that’s archaeologically significant because it shows evidence of Native Americans camping here in the Archaic Period (8,000-1,000 BC). The site was used regularly by nomadic peoples, and later used during hunting once villages were settled. There’s no parking at the site, so we just pulled off on the side of the road. There are a few interpretive signs, but otherwise it is a very quick photo stop and not much more.

Hike at Fults Hill Prairie

I had learned about Fults Hill Prairie from Illinois Botanizer’s list of featured natural areas and knew it would be a good place for botanizing, but was not expecting it to also be such a great hike! The trail is 1.4 miles long and rated at an extreme difficulty. We started up a very long and steep set of stairs. We were already getting tired from the steps when we saw the first trail marker- at 0.1 miles. 0.2-0.3 miles were more uphill, but with some great views off the top of the bluffs. After that, things leveled off more as we followed along the ridge line through the woods. Besides the wildflowers we saw, we also saw two snakes- a garter snake and a rat snake that Josh almost sat on. The final stretch was downhill through the hill prairie, which I would love to go back and see in summer. 

Fults Hill Prairie State Natural Area is the largest-complex of loess hill prairies in the state, a very unique habitat! The whole preserve is 997 acres and is a National Natural Landmark. Besides the hill prairies, there’s upland forest, savanna, limestone glades, limestone cliffs, and sink hole ponds.

Some of the flowers in bloom we observed were: narrowleaf puccoon, hoary puccoon, blue phlox, dwarf lockspur, Vvirginia spring beauty, common blue violet, rose vervain, bellwort, flowering dogwood, prairie trillium, violet woodsorrel, cleft phlox, wedgeleaf draba, white blue-eyed grass, and Miami mist. It definitely boosted my inat numbers!

Check out the Creole House

We stopped downtown to check out the Creole House. This historic home is owned by the Randolph County Historical Society. You can take tours, but have to call ahead for appointments- so we just looked at the outside. There’s also a row of 15 informational signs about the house and town. Basically, I was in heaven reading signs. The Creole House was originally built around 1800 for either Dr. Hill or Dr. MacDonald. It changed hands throughout the decades and was enlarged in 1858.

The original part of the house was built in the French palisade log style on a stone foundation. It’s on the National Register of Historic Places because of its significance as one of the few remaining examples of vernacular French architecture in the Mississippi Valley. The other claim to fame is that Henry Clay Hansbrough was born in the Creole House. He went on to become the first US Senator from North Dakota.

Around Town in Prairie du Rocher

After all our exploring, I needed lunch before I got too cranky. We looked online and found Lisa’s Market Street Grille downtown. It had good reviews on Google and looked like a nice local spot- exactly the kind of place we try to eat at while traveling. It must be popular, because it was packed! There was a sign to seat yourselves, and then it took around 20 minutes to get a menu because everyone working was so swamped. We spent a lot of time waiting for menus, then waiting to make our orders, then waiting for food- but we could tell that they were just overwhelmed. The staff was all very friendly and apologetic. The food ended up being pretty good too- exactly the kind of local diner food we were looking for.

We stopped by the Saint Joseph Cemetery at the edge of town. Since Prairie du Rocher is such an old town, we were hoping to also find some old graves! We were intrigued by the amount of iron crosses throughout the cemetery. Some were very ornate, leading me to believe it was more out of tradition than necessity. Apparently, the iron crosses are a very old tradition that was also popular in French Canada in the 1800s.