November 13, 2000

Loess Hills in Western Iowa
threatened by urban sprawl

Seth Harrington
digital•iowa staff reporter
Drake University

DES MOINES, Iowa --The Loess Hills are threatened by urban sprawl from Omaha and Council Bluffs, said Bill Leonard, who has spearheaded a campaign on behalf of the hills for national park status.

The Loess Hills are a string of hills that run from the southern border of the state to Sioux City. The name comes from the clay-like mineral, loess that forms them.

A hearing is set to discuss management options for the area in Des Moines on Nov. 16 at the Embassy Suites Hotel. The hearing is the fourth in a series of five, all in Iowa. At this point, the highest recognition the area might receive from the National Park Service is "national monument" status, which, officially, is something less than being a "park."

"They want to determine whether it is unique; well, yes it is," Leonard said. "The National Park Service has said 'Yes, they are unique.' Secondly, they want to determine whether it is worth preserving -- yes it is -- and then, whether it is worth the time and and the taxpayers' efforts." Leonard said the other purpose of the hearings was "an attempt to get more public interest."

The third question, the feasibility question, seems to be presenting the most trouble. A special resource study, prepared by the Loess Hills Special Resource Study team, says that "To be feasible as a new unit of the National Park System, the area must be of sufficient size and appropriate configuration to ensure long-term protection of the resources and to accommodate public use." In addition to looking at physical and economic concerns, the NPS also questions whether there is communal interest in "acting to protect" a certain area. The study team's report will be submitted to Congress early next year. "The National Park Service has said they are unique," Leonard said. "The reason for that is loess is all over the Midwest, but what makes the Loess Hills unique is they ARE loess. The hills over in Nebraska that they call 'loess hills' have maybe an inch of loess on the surface; with ours, the loess goes down at least 200 feet."

Leonard will be at the hearing, even though he is retiring from his job as a Des Moines Register editorialist and his position at the head of the campaign. "I think personally that they are too important to be hauled away for fill dirt," he said. "Right now they are a target of urban sprawl out of Omaha. I wish more people would take a look. It's sad how many people don't -- my God, even Iowans didn't know about this place. We wait till there's a tiny remnant left and build a fence around it, and that's not the way to do it."

Thomas Rosburg, assistant professor of biology at Drake University, also said the hills were special. "The microclimates are part of what makes it special," he said. "Because it's so dry, it supports organisms that are normally found much farther west. What the Loess Hills are is an arm of a western, Great Plains-type habitat reaching into Iowa." The hills also represent virtually all of the remaining prairie in the state. "The kinds of plants and animals you find there, they need a prairie habitat to survive," said Rosburg, "and most of the prairie in Iowa has already been turned into corn and soybean fields."

Rosburg said the Loess Hills are also valuable because of the Native American artifacts they contain. At this time, there are three state parks, Waubonsie, Preparation Canyon and Lewis and Clark, and five state monuments in the stretch covered by the hills. If a national monument is built in the hills, it will probably be at about the center, including both the Turin and Little Sioux/Smith Lake sites. An additional landmark site would be built on the archeological complex near Glenwood, Iowa. It would be the third national monument to be established in Iowa. The other two are Herbert Hoover's birthplace and Effigy Mounds National Monument, which is named for the animal-shaped Native American burial mounds there, which are thought to have been built before 1300.

According to mainstream geological thought, the hills were formed by a glacier 35,000 years ago when large amounts of loess, which was thinly spread over Iowa's plains, were picked up and deposited in the western part of the state. The hills are characterized by steep drop-offs and deep gorges, thanks to loess's high erodability. "They want to set aside the most significant parts of the hills," Leonard said. "They used to say 'we're taking this land off the market.' Since then they've simply bought the land from willing sellers."

About 95 percent of the Loess Hills is in private hands, Rosburg said. "A lot of people are coming out from Omaha and Sioux City, looking for nice ridge sites on which to build these $400,000 homes," Rosburg said. He said that humans and the habitat of the Loess Hills might be able to coexist "if there was just one house within, say, 20 acres. Beyond that, with sewer needs and water needs and garbage pickup, I think a residential system would really hurt the environment."

However, Rosburg said, some of the people living in the hills are helping the environment. "This Saturday, some students and I are going out to work at a small cabin (in the Loess Hills)," he said. "The guy that lives there is trying to restore the prairie, which is ... being lost. The people that would improve the land up there, most of them need help."