Chapter I: The Birth of Iowa

Iowa is known as a prairie state. Prairie is a French word and signifies meadow. It was the name first applied to the great treeless plains of North America by the French missionaries who were the first white men to explore these regions.

As yet scientists have not been able to explain the origin of the prairies. Different theories have been advanced, but the interesting problem is without satisfactory and conclusive solution.

Agassiz, the scientist, maintained that America is not the "new world." "Hers was the first dry land lifted out of the waters," he wrote; "hers the first shores washed by the ocean that enveloped all the earth besides; and while Europe was represented only by islands rising here and there above the sea, America already stretched one unbroken line of land from Nova Scotia to the far West."

Iowa, also, was born, had a beginning sometime. Just how many years ago this interesting event took place it is difficult to approximate. Prof. Samuel Calvin, state geologist, says that "geological records, untampered with, and unimpeachable, declare that for uncounted years Iowa, together with the great valley of the Mississippi, lay beneath the level of the sea. So far as it was inhabited at all, marine forms of animals and plants were its only occupants."

The soils of the state were produced by the action of the ice in what is known as the glacial period. We are told how by Professor Calvin:

"Glaciers and glacial action have contributed in a very
large degree to the making of our magnificent State. What
Iowa would have been had it never suffered from the effects
of the ponderous ice sheets that successively overflowed its
surface, is illustrated, but not perfectly, in the driftless
area. Here we have an area that was not invaded by glaciers.
Allamakee, parts of Jackson, Dubuque, Clayton, Fayette, and
Winneshiek counties belong to the driftless area. During the
last two decades deep wells have been bored through the
loose surface deposit, and down into the underlying rocks.
The record of these wells shows that the rock surface is
very uneven. Before the glacial drift which now mantles
nearly the whole of Iowa was deposited, the surface had been
carved into an intricate system of hills and valleys. There
were narrow gorges hundreds of feet in depth, and there were
rugged, rocky cliffs, and isolated buttes corresponding in
height with the depth of the valleys.

"To a person passing from the drift-covered to the driftless
part of the state, the topography presents a series of
surprises. The principal drainage streams flow in valleys
that measure, from the summits of the divides, six hundred
or more in depth. The Oneota, or Upper Iowa River, in
Allamakee county, for example, flows between picturesque
cliffs that rise almost vertically from three to four
hundred feet, while from the summit of the cliffs the land
rises gradually to the crest of the divide, three, four or
five miles back from the stream. Tributary streams cut the
lateral slopes and canyon walls at intervals. These again
have tributaries of the second order. In such a region a
quarter section of level land would be a curiosity. This is
a fair sample of what Iowa would have been had it not been
planed down by the leveling effects of the glaciers. Soils
of uniform excellence would have been impossible in a
non-glacial Iowa. The soils of Iowa have a value equal to
all of the silver and gold mines of the world combined.

"And for this rich heritage of soils we are indebted to
great rivers of ice that overflowed Iowa from the north and
northwest. The glaciers in their long journey ground up the
rocks over which they moved and mingled the fresh rock flour
from granites of British America and northern Minnesota with
pulverized limestones and shales of more southern regions,
and used these rich materials in covering up the bald rocks
and leveling the irregular surface of preglacial Iowa. The
materials are in places hundreds of feet in depth. They are
not oxidized or leached, but retain the carbonates and other
soluble constituents that contribute so largely to the
growth of plants. The physical condition of the materials is
ideal, rendering the soil porous, facilitating the
distribution of moisture, and offering unmatched
opportunities for the employment of improved machinery in
all of the processes connected with cultivation. Even the
driftless area received great benefit from the action of
glaciers, for although the area was not invaded by ice, it
was yet to a large extent covered by a peculiar deposit
called loess, which is generally connected with one of the
later sheets of drift. The loess is a porous clay, rich in
carbonate of lime. Throughout the driftless area it has
covered up many spots that would otherwise have been bare
rocks. It covered the stiff intractable clays that would
otherwise have been the only soils of the region. It in
itself constitutes a soil of great fertility. Every part of
Iowa is debtor in some way to the great ice sheets of the
glacial period.

* * * * *

"Soils are everywhere the product of rock disintegration,
and so the quality of the soils in a given locality must
necessarily be determined in large measure by the kind of
rock from which they were derived.

"From this point of view, therefore, the history of Iowa's
superb soils begins with first steps in rock making. The
very oldest rocks of the Mississippi Valley have contributed
something to making our soils what they are, and every later
formation laid down over the surface of Iowa, or regions
north of it, has furnished its quota of materials to the
same end. The history of Iowa's soils, therefore, embraces
the whole sweep of geologic times.

"The chief agents concerned in modifying the surface
throughout most of Iowa since the disappearance of the
latest glaciers have been organic, although the physical and
chemical influences of air and water have not been without
marked effect. The growth and decay of a long series of
generations of plants have contributed certain organic
constituents to the soil. Earth worms bring up fine material
from considerable depths and place it in position to be
spread out upon the surface. They drag leaves and any
manageable portion of plants into their burrows, and much of
the material so taken down into the ground decays and
enriches the ground to a depth of several inches. The pocket
gopher has done much to furnish a surface layer of loose,
mellow, easily cultivated and highly productive soil. Like
the earth worm, the gopher for century after century has
been bringing up to the surface fine material, to the amount
of several tons annually to the acre, avoiding necessarily
the pebbles, cobbles and coarser constituents. The burrows
collapse, the undermined boulders and large fragments sink
downwards, rains and winds spread out the gopher hills and
worm castings, and the next year, and the next, the process
is repeated; and so it has been for all the years making up
the centuries since the close of the glacial epoch. Organic
agents in the form of plants and burrowing animals have
worked unremittingly through many centuries, and
accomplished a work of incalculable value in pulverizing,
mellowing and enriching the superficial stratum, and
bringing it to the ideal condition in which it was found by
the explorers and pioneers from whose advent dates the
historical period of our matchless Iowa."

The last invasion, we are informed, was from 100,000 to 170,000 years ago--somewhat prior to the recollection of the "oldest inhabitant."