The South Metro tells a story that almost got erased - but it's hiding in roadside ditches if you know where to look.

Step back to 1840. You're standing where Savage is now, but you wouldn't recognize it. Grass towers over your head - 6 to 8 feet tall - stretching to the horizon like an ocean. This is tallgrass prairie, and it covered one-third of Minnesota. Eighteen million acres.

The king was Andropogon gerardii - Big Bluestem. Stems turning blue-purple in late summer, seed heads splitting into three prongs like a turkey's foot. Mixed in were compass plants with 15-foot taproots (deeper than most basements), prairie dropseed that smells like buttered popcorn, and blazing star covered in butterflies.

But here's the wild part: two-thirds of these plants lived underground. What you saw above ground was just the tip. Below was a 15-foot network of roots so thick that regular plows bounced off it. Settlers called it "prairie sod."

Fire ruled this world. Lightning strikes and Native American burns kept trees out, recycled nutrients, stimulated growth. The only tree that survived? Bur oak - thick, cork-like bark that's basically fireproof. Those massive lone oaks you see in parks? Survivors from that world.

Then it vanished.

Between 1850 and 1900 - less than 50 years - we plowed 99.9% of it under. Steel plows could finally cut the sod. The government gave land away. The soil was absurdly fertile.

Someone born in 1850 who lived to 80 watched the entire ecosystem disappear in their lifetime.

Today, less than 2% remains. Out of 18 million acres, only 150,000 are left in Minnesota.

But it's not completely gone.

Murphy-Hanrehan Park Reserve in Savage has 400 acres of restored prairie - planted starting in the 1980s, managed with prescribed burns every few years just like the old days. Visit the southern sections in late August and you'll walk through 6-foot grasses and blooming wildflowers.

The real ghosts hide in:

Next time you're driving a rural road in August, look for grass way taller than everything around it with those three-pronged turkey-foot seed heads. That's Andropogon gerardii. That's the real deal - a 10,000-year-old lineage that survived ice ages and prairie fires but barely survived the plow.

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