National parks of Iowa

If you like the great outdoors, there’s almost no better place to experience it than a national park. The state of Iowa is home to many national parks, each with its own attractions and benefits. Here, you will find out more about some of the national parks of Iowa and what they have to offer.

Effigy Mounds National Monument

There are prehistoric mounds dotting the landscape from the Atlantic Seaboard to the Midwest, but only in this area of Iowa are they arranged in the shapes of reptiles, birds or mammals. The Effigy Mounds monument encompasses almost 1,500 acres, with 191 mounds (twenty-nine of which are effigies). The mounds were built by the Eastern Woodlands Indians starting in about 500 BC; in the park, there are also prairie lands, wetlands, rivers and forests.

Herbert Hoover National Historic Site

The buildings and grounds are maintained by the National Park Service as a commemoration of the life of the thirty-first president of the US. Here, visitors can see the tiny cottage where Hoover was born, as well as a period blacksmith shop like the one owned by Hoover’s father. There is also the West Branch schoolhouse, along with the Friends Meetinghouse, the Presidential Library, a tallgrass prairie, and the site where Hoover and his wife are buried.

Lewis and Clark National Historic Trail

This historic site is a celebration of the Corps of Discovery, which was led by Merriwether Lewis and William Clark. They, along with thirty-three others, traveled into the great unknown from what is now Illinois in 1804. They reached the Pacific in 1805, returning in 1806.

Mormon Pioneer Historic Trail

Starting in 1846, thousands of Mormons moved to Iowa in an effort to escape religious persecution. They wintered in Council Bluffs, Iowa as well as Omaha, Nebraska before moving west along the Oregon Trail to Wyoming, where they then moved southwest before coming to a stop in the Great Salt Lake area.