South Park (Houston MN) Hike

A gem of a city bluff park lies hidden on the south side of Houston, a small community about 20 miles west of La Crescent. Recently, a friend introduced me to this short but lovely hike and I have been back a few times to poke around and hike its rolling and sometimes steep trails.

The trailhead starts partway up the bluff off a parking lot near the park's archery range. The 1.5 mile trail winds through a mature hardwood forest on a narrow dirt trail. The park is impressive for its huge lush spring wildflowers, summer ferns and fungi and an understory surprisingly clear on non-native invasives.

Image -Mike Bonner

As you head up and down the trail (320 feet of elevation gain) you come to a fork. Take the right hand way and continue upwards amidst lush growth. 

On my first May visit, we passed enormous Jack-in-the-Pulpits all along the bluffsides. To the right you can see one Marge-thigh-high Jack.

As the spring has given way to summer, the trail has gotten a bit more overgrown so keep your eye out as the trail heads steeply up to the right. Once you climb that short steep section, the rest of the trail to the top is a snap. 

You will pass "Chimney Rock," a great sandstone structure near the top. Surprisingly it is one of the only formations you can see at the park as you take a turn on the trail and there it is!

Keep going and you will emerge into a lovely wild prairie remnant at the top. Each time I have been there over the past two months I have spotted a rare native plant or two along with prolific varieties of more familiar prairie natives. 

Once at the prairie, there are options to continue to your right or left and continue hiking to the borders of the park by climbing a bit more.  We added another mile + and additional elevation gain exploring these these two other blufftop and bluffside trails. 

Above is my Alltrails map of the two choices . The light colored areas on the map are private property where we turned around. The dot shows the trailhead and the bottom of the loop shows the location of the prairie.

The right hand trail follows a steep old logging trail down through interesting rocks and growth. You dead end at the park's border. In early summer, we chose to bushwhack back (bushwhack seen at the top of the map) in a fairly clear understory  to the main trail rather than climb our way back to the prairie. The left hand trail continues on a very little used section on top the bluff that is a pleasant flat trail before it too runs into the park's border. On that section, we backtracked to the prairie to finish our hike.

Once back on the prairie, if just doing the 1.5 mile loop up to the prairie and back, head down towards the chimney rock and turned right to follow a trail that hugs the opposite bluffside on the way down. There is a large downed tree trunk to go over and then a pleasant rolling trip down to rejoin the main trail. 

THE HIKE

This city bluff park has a main trail loop of about 1.5 miles and 320 feet elevation gain that you can hike to a lovely wild blufftop remnant prairie. The main loop to the prairie, past a towering chimney rock formation and back, is about an hour if you don't stop to admire the many lush plants and fungi. Exploring the trails at the bluff top adds an extra hour of poking around in the woods and on an old logging trail on the bluffside. In terms of difficulty, there are many steep spots and the trails can be damp and a bit greasy, so a hiking stick can be a plus.

The Location

From Hwy 76 through Houston, turn south on Grant St (if you turned north, you would would access the Root River bike trail) and follow it to it's end where you take a slight right by the South Park sign. Follow the unmaintained road to its end. The trailhead is on your right near the archery range.

Bushwhacking revealed a treasure trove!
Image - Nola Larson

All images, unless noted -Marge Loch-Wouters