DIAMOND, Mo. (AP) – Southwest Missouri has a newly dedicated prairie.

The 163-acre George Washington Carver Prairie was dedicated Saturday. It’s located near the town of Diamond, the birthplace of Carver, who became a well-known botanist and inventor. Carol Davit, executive director of the Missouri Prairie Foundation, told The Joplin Globe the foundation wanted the prairie to complement the nearby George Washington Carver National Monument.

The foundation bought the land with part of a $750,000 grant that was part of a settlement with Asarco, a mining company, for environmental damage in the area.

Bruce Schuette, the foundation’s vice president of science and management, says before Carver was born in the 1860s there were at least 15 million acres of prairie in Missouri. Now there are fewer than 70,000 acres of native prairies.