Loess Hills Scenic Byway

The Loess Hills were made at the end of the last ice age, when great sheets of ground-up rock flour were left behind by melting glaciers and carried by rivers to the Missouri Valley. As the exposed silt dried, powerful winds lifted it and dropped it along the valley's eastern edge, layer upon layer, over thousands of years, until it stood in tall, steep hills.

Loess is a peculiar material. It holds together in near-vertical faces when dry, yet it erodes quickly once water gets into it, which is why the hills are so sharply cut, ridged, and gullied. That instability shaped everything about the landscape, from the steep bluff faces to the narrow, winding roads the byway follows along the ridgeline.

The dry, sun-baked, west-facing slopes of the Loess Hills hold some of the best remaining dry prairie in Iowa, a tough community of grasses and wildflowers adapted to thin soil and hard sun. Because the steep hills resisted the plow, patches of native prairie survived here that were lost across most of the state.

These prairies shelter plants and creatures found in few other places in Iowa, some of them more typical of the dry lands farther west. Preserves along the byway protect the best of it, and a walk up a bluff-top trail in summer or fall reveals a prairie world most travelers never expect to find in Iowa.

The Loess Hills and the Missouri Valley below are homeland to Native peoples of the region, including the Ioway, for whom the state is named, and the Sauk, whose long presence in this country runs deep. Their ties to the river, the bluffs, and the prairie are living and continuous.

In the early 1800s the Lewis and Clark expedition passed up the Missouri along the foot of these hills, and the valley later filled with river towns, farms, and rail lines. Small overlooks and interpretive stops along the byway tell pieces of that layered history, from the Native homeland to the steamboat and railroad eras.

Spring greens the hills and brings a first wave of prairie bloom, while migrating birds move up the Missouri flyway below. Summer is lush and warm, the prairies at their fullest, though midday haze can soften the long views. Early and late in the day the light is best.

Fall is the classic time to drive the byway, when the prairie grasses turn gold and copper, the hardwoods in the draws light up, and the low autumn sun rakes across the ridges. Winter strips the hills bare and reveals their sculpted shape, a stark, quiet beauty for a slow drive.

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