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| Young oaks line the bluffside in spring on the Thrive! Park Trail. |
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| Thrive! Park map; trail in yellow. |
The Thrive! Park Trail runs 1.5 miles from the tiny village of Nelson, Wis., to a goat prairie some 425 feet above the river valley. Located in Thrive! Park, the public land is part of an effort to restore the bluffs to how they looked in the 1800s before pioneers almost eliminated them. The U.S. Fish and Wildlife and the landowners jointly funding the restoration effort.
To reach the trail, from Wis. Hwys. 25/35 in Nelson, turn east onto Cleveland Street. When the road enters the woods, turn left onto Christopherson Road. A parking lot is on the right. A marker showing the trailhead is in the lot.
Several trails run through the 25-acre park that covers a traversable, albeit steep bluffside and its tops. The hiking trails are about six feet wide and used to be old logging trails; because of this, grass grows over them, so you’ll want to wear high socks or pants. Most of the spurs heading off the hiking roads are about three feet wide, with some being former deer trails.
Ancient bluffs
A representative route the loops about the bluff, the Thrive! Park Trail starts with a steep ascent. This and other climbs generally are short, broken up with fairly flat trails on tables in the bluff.
The bluff and others like it along the Mississippi River began to form some 500 million years ago, as rivers deposited sand into a shallow sea. Year after year, layer upon layer built up, reaching a depth of well over 800 feet in Wisconsin and Minnesota. Under the pressure and heat, those layers cemented together forming sandstone, dolomite and limestone. Some of the layers are extremely coarse and easily crumble while others are so hard that power drills must be used to cut through them.
Ice ages during the past 2.6 million years have wiped away the top layers. Along this region of the Mississippi, glacier meltwater at the end of the last age age cut deep and wide rivers valleys, exposing whole sides of the bluffs as water levels decreased. Wind, rain, snowmelt, and the freezing cycle continues the erosion process today.
At a number of spots along the river, this has left steep stone faces, such as at Pikes Peak in the northernmost portion of the park and which this trail goes to the top of. Its summit offers a great view of the village and Mississippi River below for about 15 miles around.
Smaller stone faces that the trail also heads atop includes the Three Sisters and the Lost Brother on the park’s east side.
Goat prairies
During the hike, the trail crosses a couple of blufftop meadows and goat prairies. Of the latter, no wild goats ever actually lived on the prairies; the open area received the nickname because settlers believed only goats ever could reach and live on the blufftops and steep sides.
The goat prairies for the most part didn’t exist during the 20th century. They flourish when lightning strikes start them on fire, allowing ash to provide the nutrients for the grass there to grow again, but settlers during the latter half of the 1800s feared the flames would destroy their homesteads and villages. So, they suppressed the fires, which allowed red cedar and other trees to move in. As those trees shaded out the grasses and wildflowers that needed sun, woodlands soon dominated.
Rejuvenation efforts, however, have since cleared out the trees and with a replanting of native grasses and wildflowers helped revive the goat prairies. Today, the bluff looks more like what pioneers coming up and down the river in the 1860s would have observed rather than what a driver on Hwys. 25/35 below would have seen in the 1960s.
Beyond the goat prairies and other meadows, oak dominates the bluffside.
Thrive! Park is fairly new. The land for the park was donated in 2015 by Gary “Chris” Christopherson, who led a long career in the federal government and created 150 sculptures, primarily in copper, wood and stone. His studio and some of his works sit north of the parking lot.
Recommended Route
From the parking lot, go northeast up the bluff. At the first trail junction, go right/southeast then at the next one turn left/northeast. This takes you to about 800 feet elevation.
Go right/east up the steep Knob Hiking Road. Past the Knob River View, turn left/northwest then right/northeast toward Pikes Peak. At the next trail junction, go right/northwest atop the peak and onto Pikes Peak Prairie.
Return to the junction you turned at right after passing Knob River View. From there, walk left/northeast. This heads through a small prairie. Then turn left/northeast and head to the Three Sisters bluff.
Spur trails head to the Second Sister, the Third Sister, and the Lost Brother. For all three, you’re at about 1200 feet elevation.
Between the spurs for the Third Sister and Lost Brother, take the trail southeast. This is a steep descent to the bluff bottom.
A little more than 200 feet down, the trail levels out (but still descends) and becomes the Valley Hiking Road. Take this back to the stem trail that goes left/southwest to the parking lot.
Learn about trail guidebooks available in the Hittin’ the Trail series.
