Organization
Ridgeway Pine Relict State Natural Area
Also known as: Ridgeway Pine Relict
97-acre Wisconsin State Natural Area protecting one of the southernmost remaining stands of native eastern white pine in the upper Midwest. The pines here are post-glacial relicts — survivors of the cooler climate that followed the retreat of the last Pleistocene ice sheet, persisting in the cool sandstone-walled gorges of the Driftless Area while the surrounding broader landscape warmed beyond their tolerance. The site is small but ecologically priceless: one of the clearest physical pieces of evidence that Driftless ecology is genuinely older than the ecology of the surrounding glaciated upper Midwest.
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Scientific
Eastern [[kahikatea|white pine]] (Pinus strobus) was widespread across the upper Midwest during the cool post-glacial period (roughly 11,000–8,000 years ago), as the ice sheets retreated and boreal-affinity species followed the cool climate north. As the regional climate warmed through the mid-Holocene, [[kahikatea|white pine]] populations retreated north and east toward the Great Lakes, where they remain abundant today. In most of the southern upper Midwest, the species was lost from the landscape entirely.
The Ridgeway Pine Relict and a handful of similar small [[driftless-area|Driftless]] sites are exceptions. In the cool, narrow, sandstone-walled gorges of the [[driftless-area|Driftless]] coulee country, the local microclimate stays cool enough year-round to support white pine in spite of the warmer regional climate. The Ridgeway stand has been there continuously since the post-glacial cool period — these trees are the descendants of pines that arrived 10,000+ years ago and have never left.
The forest below the canopy is correspondingly cool-relict: Canada yew (Taxus canadensis), mountain maple, hemlock-affinity ferns and herbs. The site is small enough that a careful walk reveals the entire community in an hour. It is one of the most direct ways for a visitor to understand what makes [[driftless-ecology|Driftless ecology]] distinct from the surrounding glaciated landscape: this forest is a survivor, not a resident.
Practical
The Natural Area is open to the public year-round, free, with a small parking pull-off on County Road H. No facilities; the site is small (97 acres) and sensitive — stay on existing trails and tread lightly. Fall colors are striking in October. Best visited in the cool months (May, October, November) when the bedrock gorge is most evocatively cool against the surrounding warmer landscape.
See also
Auto-generated from this entry’s typed relations: frontmatter, grouped by relation type so the editorial signal isn’t flattened.
- Shares substrate with: [[hudson-highlands]]
- Member of: [[organization]]
- Contained by: [[driftless-ecology]] · [[driftless-area]]
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Scientific
contains
- Driftless Area relict eastern white pine stand surviving from the post-glacial cool period — geological proof of the Driftless ecology's antiquity
- Driftless ecology relict eastern white pine stand — emblematic of the bioregion's preserved post-glacial cool-period ecology
2 inbound links · 4 outbound