Wolf Haven's Prairie
Wolf Haven's prairie and Mima Mound habitat is an extremely unique environment. The mounds that dot the landscape are a mystery to all. Various theories of the origin of the mounds include gophers, seismic activity, vegetative anchoring and the always popular Paul Bunyan theory.
Wolf Haven's prairie is the legacy of a great continental glacier, known as the Vashon Glacier that plowed through the northern half of Washington over 18,000 years. This great carving created the Puget Sound and the beginning of the appearance of the lowland and foothills we see today. As the great Vashon Glacier receded, it left billions of tons of silt, rock and gravel creating huge outwash plains of deep gravelly deposits. If you dug a hole on Wolf Haven's prairie you would encounter thousands of these rocks. These soils are poor and drain very quickly which creates a habitat found nowhere else in the state.
The dimensions of the mounds at Wolf Haven are all similar in size. That tends to be the case for mounds within a specific area; they are uniform in size. Mounds occur at densities of as much as 8-10 per acre and are generally circular to elliptical in outline.
Wolf Haven's prairie is home to native plants, various butterfly species, the state threatened Mazama Pocket Gopher, snakes, raptors, and much more.
