Wildcat Den trails lead upward into wind- and water-sculpted sandstone glens.
The boy and his father were tossing bits of pea gravel past the railing of an overlook platform at Wildcat Den State Park. As Dianne and I approached, the dad laughed and explained they were aiming for the hollow in a tree trunk just a few yards beyond the railing. We picked up a few sandy bits from the trail ourselves and tried our luck: it was harder than it looked!
What isn’t hard is finding sand and pea gravel in southeast Iowa’s Muscatine County. From the heights of Wildcat Den to river-bottom Deep Lakes Park, Muscatine is awash in the sands of time connecting the past and present.
* * *
By the multitude of lake names alone, we might have thought we were bicycling in the lake country of northern Wisconsin or Minnesota. The bike trail slid between and among Turtle Pond, Lake Ivy, Goose Pond and Lake Chester. But one name, Haul Road Pond, offered a clue that Deep Lakes Park, with its dozens of canoeable and fishable ponds, is a 435-acre recreational site salvaged from depleted sand and pea-gravel quarries. A few short decades ago, the site was crawling with end loaders and dump trucks preparing sand and gravel for road construction sites.
Muscatine County and surrounding areas of southeast Iowa are known for their sandy soils. But the sandy, gravelly soil that today nourishes famous Muscatine melons and is quarry-mined was laid down by glacial meltwater. During the Illinoian glacial period 100,000 years ago, an ice dam formed downstream on the Mississippi River, backing up a glacial lake across parts of southeast Iowa. At the bottom of these silent and still waters, the Mississippi dropped fine sand and gravel it had been carrying down from the north. When the ice dam broke and the backwaters subsided, today’s Muscatine County was left with a deep, sandy, gravelly, outwash bottom from the ancient lake.
At Deep Lakes, located in the river valley about half a mile inland from the Mississippi, the spent quarry pits eventually filled with rain, snowmelt, and groundwater. With some additional sculpting and shaping, Deep Lakes became a Muscatine city park in 2013. The 435-acre park includes 120 acres of pond and lake surface, some with depths up to 30 or 35 feet. Boat ramps and access paths allow for canoes, kayaks, and small motorless boats. A handful of rental cabins sit among the lakes, and Lake Chester offers a swimming beach.
The glacial story is ever-present. Mounds of sand and fine gravel line the bike trail, which in turn connects with the Muscatine city bike trail system. Hiking paths wind among the dunes and sand prairie. Short cedars and woody bushes tolerant of this type of soil predominate. In this early spring bike ride, we stopped at the lakes’ access points and peer through the leafless branches to more distant ponds.
I shook my head when we reached the end of the trail. At the edges of the park today, quarrying continues. “More ‘Deep Lakes’ for the future,” I joked, and then marveled at the reclamation of an industrially scarred landscape.
* * *
In 400 feet of climb from stream base to the heights of the park, Muscatine County’s Wildcat Den tells an even older story of sand and other layers of bedrock. At base level, Pine Creek tumbles over a mill dam in the limestone bottoms. An 1848-constructed four-storied grist mill still graces the side of the dam. From the railing of an 1878 steel bridge long retired from vehicle traffic, Dianne and I admired the brown-stained, immaculately maintained mill and watched Pine Creek spill over the dam and speed away beneath the bridge. In drought, the limestone base of the creek had been laid bare at its edges, dry and exposed to sunlight for one of its rare periods in the 375 million years since the Midwest sat at the bottom of an ancient sea.
We set off on what we intended as a short hike that turned out to be an hour and a half of climb and descent. As we ascended, a thin band of shale, 315 million years old, crumbly and containing minutes layers of coal coated the tops of the limestone outcrops.
But farther back and higher up in the park we encountered the sandstone glens that define the park. This is an older story of sand than lay at the Mississippi bottom. At 310 million years old, these sands were laid down where ancient rivers met the sea. The twisting, turning trail led us deeper into hidden glens and shelters naturally hewn into the sandstone that must have harbored more than a few wildcats’ dens.
The layered, swirling, multi-colored bands in the sandstone were sculpted over time by the sea bottom itself, by the pressures of uplift, by wind whistling down through the glens, and by newer waters that still pour over the upper ledges during snowmelt and after torrential rains. The Devil’s Punchbowl—dry most of the year—fills when water cascades over its lip during such events.
Our descent offered warning of a trail closure ahead. We’d spent more time hiking than we’d allotted, so we decided to check what the enclosure entailed. A simple downed tree had fallen across the trail where it descended from the upland glens. A few over-and-under’s and a misstep or two finally brought us tripping to the base of the sandstone bluffs. Here we encountered Devil’s Lane, a narrow squeeze-way where a slump of sandstone had broken free from the ledge, and Steamboat Rock, a hundred-foot wall of sheer bedrock rising from the trail.
When we plied at Steamboat Rock’s sandstone ledge, our fingertips came away…with particles of sand.
And the cycle of the sand story at Muscatine started anew.
-- May 2024
What isn’t hard is finding sand and pea gravel in southeast Iowa’s Muscatine County. From the heights of Wildcat Den to river-bottom Deep Lakes Park, Muscatine is awash in the sands of time connecting the past and present.
* * *
By the multitude of lake names alone, we might have thought we were bicycling in the lake country of northern Wisconsin or Minnesota. The bike trail slid between and among Turtle Pond, Lake Ivy, Goose Pond and Lake Chester. But one name, Haul Road Pond, offered a clue that Deep Lakes Park, with its dozens of canoeable and fishable ponds, is a 435-acre recreational site salvaged from depleted sand and pea-gravel quarries. A few short decades ago, the site was crawling with end loaders and dump trucks preparing sand and gravel for road construction sites.
Muscatine County and surrounding areas of southeast Iowa are known for their sandy soils. But the sandy, gravelly soil that today nourishes famous Muscatine melons and is quarry-mined was laid down by glacial meltwater. During the Illinoian glacial period 100,000 years ago, an ice dam formed downstream on the Mississippi River, backing up a glacial lake across parts of southeast Iowa. At the bottom of these silent and still waters, the Mississippi dropped fine sand and gravel it had been carrying down from the north. When the ice dam broke and the backwaters subsided, today’s Muscatine County was left with a deep, sandy, gravelly, outwash bottom from the ancient lake.
At Deep Lakes, located in the river valley about half a mile inland from the Mississippi, the spent quarry pits eventually filled with rain, snowmelt, and groundwater. With some additional sculpting and shaping, Deep Lakes became a Muscatine city park in 2013. The 435-acre park includes 120 acres of pond and lake surface, some with depths up to 30 or 35 feet. Boat ramps and access paths allow for canoes, kayaks, and small motorless boats. A handful of rental cabins sit among the lakes, and Lake Chester offers a swimming beach.
The glacial story is ever-present. Mounds of sand and fine gravel line the bike trail, which in turn connects with the Muscatine city bike trail system. Hiking paths wind among the dunes and sand prairie. Short cedars and woody bushes tolerant of this type of soil predominate. In this early spring bike ride, we stopped at the lakes’ access points and peer through the leafless branches to more distant ponds.
I shook my head when we reached the end of the trail. At the edges of the park today, quarrying continues. “More ‘Deep Lakes’ for the future,” I joked, and then marveled at the reclamation of an industrially scarred landscape.
* * *
In 400 feet of climb from stream base to the heights of the park, Muscatine County’s Wildcat Den tells an even older story of sand and other layers of bedrock. At base level, Pine Creek tumbles over a mill dam in the limestone bottoms. An 1848-constructed four-storied grist mill still graces the side of the dam. From the railing of an 1878 steel bridge long retired from vehicle traffic, Dianne and I admired the brown-stained, immaculately maintained mill and watched Pine Creek spill over the dam and speed away beneath the bridge. In drought, the limestone base of the creek had been laid bare at its edges, dry and exposed to sunlight for one of its rare periods in the 375 million years since the Midwest sat at the bottom of an ancient sea.
We set off on what we intended as a short hike that turned out to be an hour and a half of climb and descent. As we ascended, a thin band of shale, 315 million years old, crumbly and containing minutes layers of coal coated the tops of the limestone outcrops.
But farther back and higher up in the park we encountered the sandstone glens that define the park. This is an older story of sand than lay at the Mississippi bottom. At 310 million years old, these sands were laid down where ancient rivers met the sea. The twisting, turning trail led us deeper into hidden glens and shelters naturally hewn into the sandstone that must have harbored more than a few wildcats’ dens.
The layered, swirling, multi-colored bands in the sandstone were sculpted over time by the sea bottom itself, by the pressures of uplift, by wind whistling down through the glens, and by newer waters that still pour over the upper ledges during snowmelt and after torrential rains. The Devil’s Punchbowl—dry most of the year—fills when water cascades over its lip during such events.
Our descent offered warning of a trail closure ahead. We’d spent more time hiking than we’d allotted, so we decided to check what the enclosure entailed. A simple downed tree had fallen across the trail where it descended from the upland glens. A few over-and-under’s and a misstep or two finally brought us tripping to the base of the sandstone bluffs. Here we encountered Devil’s Lane, a narrow squeeze-way where a slump of sandstone had broken free from the ledge, and Steamboat Rock, a hundred-foot wall of sheer bedrock rising from the trail.
When we plied at Steamboat Rock’s sandstone ledge, our fingertips came away…with particles of sand.
And the cycle of the sand story at Muscatine started anew.
-- May 2024
An 1840s four-story grist mill still graces Wildcat Den State Park's bottomland.
A retired 1870s bridge at Wildcat Den State Park now serves pedestrians and admirers of Pine Creek.
Depleted sand and gravel quarry pits have been transformed into more than a 100 lakes and ponds at Deep Lakes Park at the edge of Muscatine, IA.