"Trail users will soon be biking through the grassland rather than beside it."
That's how a Wisconsin DNR wildlife biologist described what's coming to the northern half of the Great Sauk Trail this year, the flat, sun-exposed stretch between downtown Prairie du Sac and the old Badger Army Ammunition Plant grounds that most regulars ride through rather than for. If you've pedaled or walked that segment this summer and noticed crews clearing brush, mowing wide swaths, or piles of cut buckthorn stacked along the shoulder, you weren't watching routine maintenance. You were watching the land get put back to something closer to what it was before the Army showed up in 1942.
The 7,300 Acres Nobody Quite Knew What to Do With
The Badger Army Ammunition Plant made propellant for three wars before it closed in 1997. After that, the site spent roughly two decades in cleanup and deconstruction before it was split among four owners. The Wisconsin DNR took 3,800 acres and turned it into the Sauk Prairie State Recreation Area. The Dairy Forage Research Center kept 2,100 acres for agricultural research. The Bluffview Sanitary District held a small tract for its treatment facility. About 1,550 acres went back to the Ho-Chunk Nation, who call the land Maa Wákącąk, meaning Sacred Earth. The Great Sauk Trail, opened in 2017 along a former rail corridor, runs straight through the middle of what used to be one contiguous industrial site, brushing against all four properties along the way.
For most of the twenty years between the plant's closure and now, nobody was actively managing the vegetation on that stretch. Invasive shrubs moved in on their own schedule: autumn olive, honeysuckle, multiflora rose, buckthorn, Siberian elm. That's the thicket riders have been pushing through since the trail opened, a scrubby corridor with limited sightlines and not much wildlife variety beyond whatever could tolerate dense brush.
What's Actually Changing This Summer
This year, that neglect is being undone on purpose. A coalition that includes the DNR, the Ho-Chunk Nation, the Badger History Group, and the Sauk Prairie Conservation Alliance is running what's being called the Historical Grassland project on the recreation area side of the trail, using mechanized forestry mowing along with hand cutting and treating to clear the invasive growth. The goal isn't a tidier edge for cyclists. It's reconnecting an open grassland corridor with land the Ho-Chunk Nation already maintains just to the west, so grassland bird species that need large, uninterrupted habitat have somewhere to recolonize instead of a broken-up patchwork.
Funding is coming from the Natural Resources Foundation of Wisconsin, the Badger History Group, the Sauk Prairie Conservation Alliance, and private donors. None of it required a ballot measure or a village board vote. It's happening because a handful of organizations that already had a stake in that land decided a twenty-year experiment in letting it grow wild wasn't the same thing as letting it go back to prairie.
The River Corridor Is Getting the Same Treatment
The trail isn't the only piece of the local landscape getting reinvested in this year. Down in the villages themselves, the Sauk Prairie Area Chamber of Commerce has been running Culture on the River, a free community series built around the newly enhanced riverfront green spaces shared by Sauk City and Prairie du Sac. The evenings mix art, music, food, and cultural programming, with support from a Sauk County Economic Development, Arts & Culture Committee grant and the Wisconsin Arts Board. Combine that with the grassland work happening a few blocks north on the trail, and 2026 has quietly become the year several different organizations decided the Wisconsin River corridor deserved more attention than it had been getting.
One Village, Forty Thousand Visitors
If you're timing a ride around avoiding crowds, mark Labor Day weekend for the opposite reason. The Wisconsin State Cow Chip Throw & Festival returns to Marion Park at Grand Avenue and First Street on September 4 and 5, 2026, a tradition that's been part of Labor Day weekend since 1975. The event regularly draws more than 40,000 visitors to a village whose year-round population sits just over 4,400. For two days, that's roughly nine visitors for every one resident who calls Prairie du Sac home.
| Day | What's Happening |
|---|---|
| Friday, Sept. 4 | Live music from Dan Lepien, corporate cow chip throw, food court opens |
| Saturday, Sept. 5 | 5K/10K run, arts and crafts fair with more than 125 exhibits, Tournament of Chips parade at noon, adult and team cow chip throw at 1 p.m., sets from Jackson Taylor and an Elvis tribute performance from Tony Rocker |
The record chip throw stands at 248 feet, and the festival still runs a petting zoo through Haven Petting Farm alongside a full slate of kids' entertainment. None of that happens on the trail itself, but Marion Park sits close enough to the corridor that a normally quiet Saturday ride turns into something closer to a parade detour if you're not planning around it.
Where the Trail Actually Feeds You
Local knowledge for anyone doing the full stretch: there are no services once you're north of the village, so plan to eat before or after, not during. Regulars keep pointing to the same short list. Que's Bar & River Deck sits right along the river just south of the Highway 60 bridge in Prairie du Sac, close enough that you can roll a bike straight up to the deck. The Gym Bar in Sauk City draws the same loyalty from the same crowd. C2 Juicery is the stop people mention when they want something lighter than a fish fry. If you've got time for a detour, Thoelke Cemetery holds grave sites dating back to just after Wisconsin became a state in 1848, and Ho-Chunk artist Christopher Sweet has artwork installed near the trail's southern terminus in Sauk City. Graff Park, along the river in Prairie du Sac, has a playground, seating, a river overlook, and more public art if you want a reason to get off the bike for ten minutes.
What to Know Before You Ride It This Month
Anyone 16 or older on a bike or inline skates needs a trail pass, five dollars for the day or twenty-five for the year, available at a self-serve kiosk near the Ruth Culver Library or in person through the Sauk Prairie Area Chamber of Commerce, the Prairie du Sac Village Hall, the Sauk County Clerk's Office, or the Sauk County Parks and Recreation Office. Walkers don't need one.
The short version: the least interesting mile of the Great Sauk Trail is getting more interesting on purpose, right as the busiest weekend of the local calendar is about to bring more people than usual anywhere near it. Ride it this month if you want to see the grassland restoration mid-progress instead of finished. Ride it over Labor Day weekend if you'd rather combine it with the cow chip toss. Either way, the corridor that used to be background scenery on the way to somewhere else is starting to feel like a destination on its own terms, on land that was prairie long before it was a rail line, an ammunition plant, or a bike trail.
People who already live along this stretch of the river tend to notice these changes before anyone writes them down. If you're weighing what a home near the trail corridor is actually worth this year, or you're getting ready to list one, Flat Fee Pros works Prairie du Sac and the rest of Sauk Prairie with the same flat-fee, full-service model we use across south-central Wisconsin. Schedule a free consultation whenever you're ready to talk specifics.
