128 PUBLIC PARKS OF IOWA 



There are different types of natural beauty. Such is the variety in na- 

 ture that there are hardly two things alike. 



A jutting granite crag on the seashore, washed by the restless tides and 

 angry waves for a thousand decades, surmounted by a lone pine that has 

 laughed at the winds for unknown years exhibits a rugged beauty that 

 makes one want to unharness the camera to catch this Titan watcher of 

 the ocean's moods on the spot where he stood guard when the Pilgrims 

 landed. 



In the unglaciated area of Iowa, near McGregor, there is another type 

 of beauty. Its high peaks overlooking the Father of Waters and portions 

 of Wisconsin, its wooded ravines, its solemn caves and picturesque views 

 and varying expressions of Nature's marvelous ways. That this is to be 

 part of a national park at an early day is the prayer and the hope of all 

 of us. 



But I want to call your attention to another spot with another type of 

 beauty, where I have wandered in times past and dreamed of a future 

 park to be owned and controlled by the sovereign state I love so well. 

 It is unlike any other spot In Iowa, and men of wide travel have told me 

 that there is no finer view anywhere. 



The men who made the original survey of this region for the govern- 

 ment and who made plats and field notes for future use, called the highest 

 peak Pilot Knob. Its altitude is only about fifteen hundred feet, and ap- 

 proximately three hundred feet above the valley which it overlooks. The 

 Knob is about four miles east of Forest City, near the county line road 

 that separates Winnebago and Hancock counties. 



It is not the highest point in Iowa, perhaps, but it commands a view 

 of the surrounding country that is nowhere surpassed. 



Standing on Pilot Knob one feels that he is on the very top of Iowa, 

 and according to geologic lore it is literally true. This pile of clay and 

 gravel and boulders is said to be a part of the eastern moraine of the 

 Wisconsin drift. Not that it came from the present state of Wisconsin, 

 but it may be remembered that all this northwest country was at one time 

 called Wisconsin territory. 



Evidently the glacier that leveled the prairies of central northern 

 Iowa came from the north. It may have brought material from Hudson's 

 Bay. The hills of the Pilot Knob region are supposed to have been 

 shoved laterally by the ice sheet and left in the irregular form in which 

 we now find them. It was the last drift that overran the country we now 

 call Iowa, and overlapped earlier and different glacial deposits. 



From the top of Pilot Knob a larger area of fertile land may be seen 

 than from anywhere else on this earth, I believe. It is a panorama of 

 wealth-producing land that makes one proud of Iowa. No matter which 

 way one turns it is a succession of fertile farms that denote prosperity. 

 The varying shades and colors caused by different crops and at different 

 times of the year make the view enjoyable at all seasons. Planted or 

 natural groves about the farmsteads, country school houses and country 

 churches all contribute to the variety of beauty of the scene. The na- 

 tive growth which one overlooks in the foreground is a study in colors. 

 Every kind of tree and bush has its individual shade of dress when in 



