Iowa is known for its tall grass prairies
woodlands and fertile black farming soil,
but near Muscatine you'll find a special
place that breaks the mold. Really unique
to the Midwest especially to Iowa
because even though it's a sand prairie
and we do have other sand prairies at
each sand Prairie is a little bit unique
has its own characteristics this one is
very much more like what you would find
in the southwest then you would find in
Iowa. The mound was built by about 20,000
years ago due to outwash coming from ice sheets to the north and depositing their
sand and gravel and silt loads as they
went. After that time period when the ice
age ended there was lots of water from
melting surging down the Mississippi
River Valley and it removed a lot of
that sediment and so by about 17,000
years ago the Big Sand Mound was in
place as a unique structure. There were
other sand mounds in the area and there
still are other sand fields but this is
one of the biggest single mounds I
believe remaining. The sand on these
dunes is deep core samples show sand
goes down 136 feet.
