PUBLIC PARKS OF IOWA 275 



Twin lakes of Calhoun country are centers of attraction and the same is 

 true of many others in the hill country which affords them lodgement, 

 such as Tuttle lake, on the state line in Emmett county, Medium lake 

 near Emmetsburg, Lost Island lake near Ruthven, and others which will 

 occur to your minds. 



Along with their loads of finer material some of the continental gla- 

 ciers brought down from farther north immense boulders which now 

 lie scattered over the surface of the drift-sheets. Some of these have 

 really enormous dimensions, as for example, Pilot Rock, a boulder of 

 Sioux quartzite near Cherokee, which measures on the ground sixty to 

 forty feet and rises above the surface twenty feet. The lowan drift, 

 in northeast Iowa, is especially noted for these monuments of bygone 

 events and has more large boulders than any of the other drift sheets 

 in the state. Something should be done to preserve the most notable of 

 these glacial boulders in view of their unique origin and character. If 

 nothing is done to prevent it they will ere long be sacrificed to the de- 

 sires of their present owners for convenient building material and will 

 be entirely lost to posterity. 



Closely associated with the glacial deposits of the state and yet only 

 partly related to them in origin is a remarkable formation known as the 

 loess. In northeastern Iowa it is derived directly from the lowan drift 

 but along the western margin of the state it owes its origin to the great 

 quantities of silt brought down and deposited by Missouri and Big Sioux 

 rivers. From their flood plains it is picked up and carried away by the 

 winds to be dropped over the clay hills in an ever thinning mantle 

 with increasing distance from the source. I do not recall that I have 

 heard or se'en these loess bluffs mentioned in conservation discussions, but 

 there is no room for doubt that both botanists and geologists will agree 

 in commending them for careful consideration. The fact that wind 

 blown deposits with thicknesses of fifty to one hundred feet have been 

 shaped into such striking topographic forms as are found among these 

 bluffs, and the further fact that they bear what is in reality a desert type 

 of vegetation, and this in the most fertile stale in the world, are facts 

 which entitle them to recognition in any plans for conservation of our 

 beauty spots. The beautiful park at Council Bluffs with its winding 

 valleys and steep slopes is sufficient witness to what is possible with these 

 loess hills, but there should be preserved in an absolutely natural state, a 

 tract which would permit of the retention both of the original topographic 

 forms and of their remarkable vegetal covering. Such areas are available 

 near Missouri Valley, or near Turin, in Monona county, or in the vicinity 

 of Sioux City, and at other localities where the phenomena are equally 

 striking. 



In the extreme northwest corner of Iowa, occupying an area of not 

 over five acres is a little spot which is unique in its interest. This in- 

 terest arises both because of its rock exposures, which are scores of miles 

 distant from any others in Iowa, with the exception of a similar one a 

 mile away, and because of the fact that this rock is the oldest exposed 

 stratum in the state. It is really the rock foundation upon which all 

 subsequent foundations are laid. This rock is the Sioux quartzite and the 

 center of its interest is the natural depression perhaps twenty feet deep 



