Preparation Canyon and the Loess Hills overlook

The Loess Hills are one of the rarest landforms on Earth. Loess is a fine, wind-blown silt, and at the end of the last ice age, glaciers ground rock into powder and outwash rivers spread it across the Missouri valley floor. Prevailing winds lifted that dust and piled it into deep drifts along the river's eastern edge, where over thousands of years it hardened into the steep, sharp-crested hills you see today.

Deposits this thick are found in only one other place in the world, along the Yellow River in China. The soil holds a near-vertical face when dry but slumps and erodes readily when wet, which is why the ridges have their distinctive knife-edge crests and steep, timber-and-prairie sides. Preparation Canyon offers some of the best foot access into the wild heart of this landscape.

In 1853 a Mormon leader named Charles B. Thompson led a small group of followers to this canyon and founded a settlement he called Preparation, a place where they meant to ready themselves for what they believed was coming. Thompson governed the colony tightly and asked members to sign their property over to a common trust under his direction.

The arrangement did not hold. By the late 1850s the settlers, feeling misled about the promises made to them, turned against Thompson, who fled the colony. The dispute over the property the members had given up went to the courts, and Preparation eventually faded away entirely. Nothing of the town remains but the name it left on the land, now attached to one of Iowa's most peaceful parks.

Preparation Canyon is a hiker's park. Foot trails climb the ridges and dip into the wooded draws, and the backcountry campsites are scattered along them, reached only by walking in. It is a rare thing in Iowa, a place where you can pitch a tent well out of sight and sound of any road, with the hills to yourself.

The reward for the climbing is the overlooks. From the high points the Loess Hills spread out in wave after wave of steep, timbered ridge and open prairie remnant, with the broad Missouri valley beyond. The nearby Loess Hills State Forest and the scenic byway that threads these hills make it easy to build a longer day around the park.

The Loess Hills are a meeting place of eastern woodland and western prairie, and the mix shows in the wildlife. White-tailed deer, wild turkeys, and songbirds fill the timber, hawks ride the ridge winds, and the dry, sun-warmed prairie slopes hold plants and insects found almost nowhere else in Iowa. Spring wildflowers and fall grasses are both worth timing a visit around.

Spring and fall are the finest seasons here, with cool air for climbing the ridges and long, low light on the hills. Summer is green but hot and buggy on the exposed slopes, and winter strips the timber bare and opens the long views, though the loess trails can be icy and treacherous when snow melts and refreezes.

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