The Friends of the Rexroat Prairie welcome you to our site. Rexroat Prairie was initiated in 1977 in an effort to provide a refuge for the original tall-grass prairie plants that were disappearing from our landscape at an alarming rate. 

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The prairie was named for Rolo Rexroat, a Virginia, Illinois native who was a self-taught botanist. He collected plants for many years, eventually donating around 11,000 native plant species to the state of Illinois before his death in 1979.