The highest point in the Flint Hills is Butler County High Point, with an elevation of 1680 ft (512 m). Most of the hilltops in the region are capped with this chert gravel. Because chert is much less soluble than the limestone surrounding it, the weathering of the limestone has left behind a clay soil with abundant chert gravel. Unlike the Pennsylvanian limestones to the east, however, many of the limestones in the Flint Hills contain several bands of chert or flint. Numerous roadcuts of the Florence Member are prominent along Interstate 70 in Riley County, Kansas. The most notable layer of chert-bearing limestone is the Florence Limestone Member, which is approximately 45-foot thick (14 m). As a result, much of the Flint Hills is composed of limestone and shale, with plentiful fossils of prehistoric sea creatures.

During this time, much of the Midwest, including Kansas and Oklahoma, was covered with shallow seas. The rocks exposed in the Flint Hills were laid down about 250 million years ago during the Permian Period. The largest town in the area is Manhattan, Kansas, and the hills can be accessed from the Flint Hills Scenic Byway, which passes through the region. The underlying bedrock of the hills is a flinty limestone. The Flint Hills Discovery Center, a science and history museum focusing on the Flint Hills, opened in Manhattan, Kansas, in April 2012.Ī walking trail in the Konza Prairie shows the height of the grasses in the fall.Įxplorer Zebulon Pike first coined the name the Flint Hills in 1806 when he entered into his journal, 'passed very ruff flint hills'. These ranches rely on annual controlled burns conducted by ranchers every spring to renew the prairie grasses for cattle to graze. Due to its rocky soil, the early settlers were unable to plow the area, resulting in the prevalence of cattle ranches as opposed to the crop land more typical of the Great Plains. The Flint Hills Ecoregion is designated as a distinct region because it has the densest coverage of intact tallgrass prairie in North America. Oklahomans generally refer to the same geologic formation as the Osage Hills or 'the Osage.' It consists of a band of hills stretching from Kansas to Oklahoma, extending from Marshall and Washington Counties in the north to Cowley County, Kansas and Kay and Osage Counties in Oklahoma in the south, to Geary and Shawnee Counties west to east.

The Flint Hills, historically known as Bluestem Pastures or Blue Stem Hills, are a region in eastern Kansas and north-central Oklahoma named for the abundant residual flint eroded from the bedrock that lies near or at the surface.

Bank of the flint hills