160 PUBLIC PARKS OF IOWA 



RED ROCK, MARION COUNTY. 

 By W. H. H. Barker. 



I am and have been for years interested in public parks. Note your 

 (Dr. Pammel's) second visit to Marion county, in the interest of these 

 'parks. I have been in Iowa for over three score years. Have been in 

 every county of the state save two, and covered a good part of the 

 terrain in all these counties. Just above McGregor, Clayton county, bor- 

 dering the Mississippi river, is a plot ideal in my estimation for one 

 of these parks. Another is located in Marion county on the south side 

 of the Des Moines river, some miles below the village of Red Rock at 

 a point where a high bluff juts abruptly against this stream. Personally 

 I have made nine trips by boat down the stream in the last ten years, 

 from Des Moines to Harvey and Ottumwa, noting specially its scenery. 

 On account of the overflow, so frequent on this stream, no bottom land 

 should be considered in any respect. 



THE RED ROCK REGION. 

 By E. R. Harlan, Curator Iowa Historical Department. 



Ascending the Des Moines valley through Wapello and Mahaska coun- 

 ties there are numerous points of surprising scenic beauty. There are 

 many of historical and scientific interest, and for the most part, all have 

 a sufficient recreational value to warrant its reservation for the perpetual 

 use of the people. 



The Red Rock region in Marion county, however, exceeds all the 

 others in its combined and separate qualities suited for recreation or re- 

 sort by every type of mind and purpose. 



In preglacial times a north and south ridge of sandstone had been 

 created, so thoroughly impregnated with iron oxide that it is of every 

 shade or color from vivid vermilion to soft light salmon and tawny yel- 

 low or buff. It is of a thickness of a hundred feet or more. The Des 

 Moines river has cut its way through this ridge and employed the ages 

 in wearing away its sides forming bluffs and ledges of 60 to 80 feet in 

 height. These are swept by the present current at their feet or there 

 are stretches of low bottom lands, some timlbered, spreading out and 

 across the valley. The timber lands still afford exquisite primeval 

 areas, and some individual specimens of the original trees. One is syca- 

 more, being of the immense girth of 27 feet at five feet above the ground. 



Where creeks put into the river, canons are formed running back 

 from the river up the streams in varying distances, but carrying the uni- 

 form interest to the geologist, botanist and forester, while the archeolo- 

 gist finds upon the ridges created by these lateral streams, without a 

 single exception only where the plow has been at work, the prehistoric 

 mound builders structures. The red sandstone, and certain coal strata 

 underlying, were inducements for the late Jay Gould of New York and 

 Jefferson S. Polk of Iowa, to construct the Des Moines branch of the 



