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IOWA ACADEMY OP SCIENCE Vol. XXV, 1918 



valley offers with its timber covering a most attractive scene in 

 our land of fields and prairies. Below Eldon the limestones rise 

 high in the hills, and their rugged walls gleaming from out their 

 forest cloak or standing green with the moss of ages make pic- 

 tures which will hang long on memory's chamber walls. The vi- 

 cinity of the gi^eat "oxbow" in the valley at Keosauqua offers 

 one of the best examples of this type of scene. Near Kilbourn at 

 the upper extremity of the great bend, below Mount Zion, at the 

 lower limb, and at various places around the loop these mural 

 escarpments stand at the valley's margin as centers of natural 

 beauty. Similar conditions prevail in the vicinity of those bits 

 of rare antique, Bentonsport and Bonaparte, which lie between 



Fig. 190. — Des Moines valley at Red Rock, Marion county. 



Keosaucjua and Farmington. These different towns offer an- 

 other sort of interest in that they were sites of the early attempts 

 by means of locks and dams to improve river navis-ation. Some 

 of the old lock walls at Keosau(iua are yet standing in fairly 

 good repair. Just below Croton another massive cliff rises straight 

 from the river's edge, bearing aloft its cro^\^l of foliage and af- 

 fording the traveler another of those gems of quiet beauty which 

 make this part of the valley so attractive. An old-time ferry 

 will carry the visitor from Croton to Athens on the Missouri side 

 and will add the spice of variety to the perspective of valley and 

 bluff and forest which he may there gain. In the vicinity of Keo- 

 kuk, too, the city which is built upon a hill, with its beautiful 



