Don't Just Travel to Get There, Enjoy the Drive

Don't Just Travel to Get There, Enjoy the Drive. . , Welcome to the Loess Hills Scenic Byway, , the first scenic byway in Iowa. Flanking the state's western border, this Byway passes through a unique land formation that's only one to fifteen miles wide and about 200 miles long from near Sioux City, Iowa to St. Joseph, Missouri. Although deposits of loess, which are windblown soils pronounced "luss", are found across the world, nowhere else but China do they reach as high as here, where some hills are more than 200 feet above the adjacent valleys., At the end of the last Ice Age about 18,000 years ago, the waterway that eventually became the Missouri River was a torrent of glacial runoff during the increasing warm spells. However, as each winter set in, the waters diminished, leaving behind soils that had been ground as fine as flour by the glaciers. Prevailing northwesterly winds blew the lightweight particles to the eastern bank where they tumbled from the sky, forming dunes as the process repeated itself over thousands of years. Eventually topsoils evolved and a unique natural community developed., During their early years , the hills were inhabited by Ice Age animals including the wooly mammoth, camel, giant beaver, and sloth. Stone tools, spear points, pottery and burials indicate that humans inhabited the hills up to 5,500 years ago. By the time Lewis and Clark visited the area in 1804, the hills were occupied by Sioux, Omaha, Iowa, Pottawattamie and Oto Indians., At that time, the hills were mostly prairie. Since then, the creation of farms, communities and roads have halted the wildfires that once swept the hill of invasive woodland plants, and trees have taken over many of the hills. In those forested areas, if prairie plantlife exists, it's usually on the south and west slopes which are warmed and dried by the sun and wind to levels intolerable to all but prairie plants. Although the prairie remains dominant on some hills, its flora and fauna have become isolated from others of their species which are not found now until hundreds of miles to the west. Thus some prairie plants and animals seen nowhere else in Iowa endure in the Loess Hills. Among the animals are the prairie rattlesnake (only near Westfield), plains pocket mouse, upland sandpiper, zebra swallowtail, ornate box turtle and plains spadefoot toad. Among the plants are yucca, ten-petal blazing star, spear grass, tumble grass and prairie moonwort, which is found only in Iowa's Loess Hills., The hills have peculiarities that are easily noticed. First, a look at any cut made in the hills will show mostly loess and little else. Only in a few places, as at Stone State Park and southern Fremont County, are rocks naturally exposed., Second, loess has unique physical qualities. Remove the topsoil on the slope of a hill and the exposed loess will dissolve like sugar in the next rain. Even when covered with topsoil, loess can slump, often in a unified way across a slope, creating the "cat-step" ledges seen on some grassy hills. However, cut a loess hill vertically and its walls will stand nearly forever. Because of how they erode in the rain and wind, the hills that front the waterways often have sharp-edged flanks while those further back are more rounded., Today, debate exists as to whether the hills should be preserved and some returned to their prairie origins or developed for agricultural, residential and commercial uses such as removing the hills to quarry the limestone that underlies them. Even tourism raises questions about the economic impact visitors have on area communities versus the preservation of the area's natural resources., View from Murray Hill, Harrison County , Sylvan Runkel Preserve, Monona County , Cat-Steps typical of the Loess Hills, Loess Hills Scenic Byway Spine and Excursion Loops , The Seasons of the Loess Hills