Kickapoo Valley Reserve

In the late 1960s and 1970s, the federal government launched a project to dam the Kickapoo River near La Farge, intending to control the valley's frequent flooding by creating a large reservoir. Families were bought out and moved, farms were emptied, and construction on the dam began, but environmental concerns and doubts about the project halted the work before the dam was ever completed.

For years the acquired land sat in limbo, its future uncertain, a valley of abandoned farmsteads and half-built works. Eventually, rather than let it be lost, the state and federal governments turned the land into a public reserve, one of the largest such stretches of protected Driftless country. The valley that was nearly drowned became instead a place kept wild and open to all.

The reserve lies within the ancestral homeland of the Ho-Chunk Nation, and today a portion of the land is held by and co-managed with the Ho-Chunk, whose ties to this valley reach back countless generations. Their partnership in caring for the reserve honors that deep connection and shapes how the land is understood and protected.

This shared stewardship makes the reserve more than a recreation area. It is a place where the story of the land, its Native history, its farming families, the failed dam, and its rebirth as public wild land, is told with unusual honesty. Visitors are invited not just to play here but to learn the layered history of the ground beneath them.

The Kickapoo River is the reserve's spine, a slow, brown, spring-fed stream so winding that a short straight-line distance can mean many miles of paddling. It is a favorite of canoeists and kayakers, drifting beneath sandstone cliffs and overhanging forest through some of the prettiest river scenery in the Midwest, though its curves and current reward attention.

Around the river rise the steep ridges and deep hollows of the Driftless Area, the region the glaciers missed, where erosion has cut a rugged, un-Midwestern landscape of bluffs and coulees. Miles of trail climb through these hills for hikers, bikers, and riders, past rock outcrops and overlooks, with wildlife from deer to eagles at home in the quiet.

Compared with the state's busier parks and tourist towns, the Kickapoo Valley feels remote and uncrowded, a place for people who want solitude and a sense of wildness. There are no crowds to fight, only the river, the ridges, and the shifting light on the sandstone, and the small towns nearby move at a slow, rural pace.

That quiet is part of its gift. The reserve rewards those who come prepared and unhurried, whether for a long paddle, a ridge-top hike, or simply a slow drive through the valley. It is one of the truest expressions of the Driftless, a landscape and a story worth the trip off the beaten path.

The closest Boutel™ stays, so you can turn this stop into an overnight. Each is an independently owned, editorially selected place to stay.