I wrote about going camping over Memorial Day weekend at New Germany State Park in Maryland. The area was settled by Germans moving south from a trail that ran through Pennsylvania and Maryland. 

That trail was later used by General Braddock in the French and Indian War (the Seven Years War?) and then probably by George Rogers Clark on his way west. It eventually became part of US Route 40, the first road constructed by the new United States Government in the early 1800’s. 

The settlers in New Germany are said to have arrived in the early 1700’s. They thought the area looked like home which says quite a lot about what the place they came from looked like. Lots of steep hills and valleys, and a few, mostly flat, places for cultivation. Currently, the area is heavily forested and I imagine that when the settlers got there it was also heavily forested, but in between, I wonder. 

There is a monastery in eastern Iowa set up by the Trappists. It is on a road called, helpfully, Monastery Road. However, if you are trying to reach the main highway, after a visit to this amazingly quiet and beautiful place, one of the roads you will use is called Swiss Valley Road. It is a bit like New Germany in the ups and downs, but this area is still heavily farmed, so these steep hills have cows and crops. It is very scenic in a very settled way. It is also a great surprise if you think, as I did, that Iowa is flat. 

Many destinations in Iowa are reached by flying into the Minneapolis airport and driving south. You can see some of the lakes Minnesota is famous for as you land. But when you drive south there is a boundary of some kind, somewhere, and then the landscape takes a particular form. 

For the most part, it is flat and treeless. Enormous fields are being cultivated, but they aren’t usually above your view. Instead, that view reaches for miles and miles, and here and there, in those miles you will see a row of trees. Thirty eight years ago when I first saw the trees on the horizon, they were a windbreak for a fifty foot tall silo, and shorter grain bins, a house and barn, and maybe some random sheds. Nowadays, a lot of people have given up the silos, using gigantic plastic tube/bags to store their crops horizontally rather than vertically. The silos are slowly being brought down, but the trees and houses and random buildings still form a line on the horizon showing where someone lives. 

Eastern Iowa with its hills and valleys is something totally different. I have never seen the church of Our Lady of Liechtenstein, though it is somewhere in Eastern Iowa. We went looking for it once because it is supposed to be very beautifully decorated. In fact, a quick Google doesn’t admit it’s there, but I hope it is… And Liechtenstein is described as flat land along a river and then hills and more hills above the river (with, of course, valleys in between the hills…). 

So why is Eastern Iowa so different? A great part of Iowa was covered by ice sheets that advanced from Canada, one hundred thousand years ago, but a portion along the current Mississippi River was never buried. To the east and west, the ground was scraped down into relative flatness and whatever had been there was ground up and dumped elsewhere, but not in this one area. Two general results of this were that the area is full of hills and valleys, and that lead mines were found both in Iowa and in Wisconsin in this area. Elsewhere, whatever geologic formation had produced the lead was ground up and thoroughly mixed the rest of the accumulated layers of earth. 

Early miners, who lived below ground, are supposed to be the origin of the term Badgers for Wisconsinites. The lead mines were a great draw for the area. Galena, Illinois, across the river from Dubuque, is named for a really pretty lead crystal. The Wisconsin border is just north. Dubuque was settled around the lead mines, at least partly. I’ll have more to say about that later.