Although known for its majestic views of the Mississippi River, Pikes Peak State Park is also one of the premier destinations in Iowa particularly for viewing ancient mounds. This state park preserves many separate mounds.

However, mound are not the only reason why many come to this state park as it has numerous other features attracting visitors. In fact the park is located on a national scenic byway, it has 11 miles of trails replete with scenic bluffs and valleys. There are also walk-hike trails including the half-mile trail to see Bridal Veil Falls, hike to Point Ann overlooking the nearby town of McGregor or walk up to a atop a 500-foot bluff to see where the Mississippi and Wisconsin Rivers meet. This park is truly a hiker’s delight and one that is located in the most picturesque regions in the entire state of Iowa.

The eastern half of the United States has a wide variety of ancient and historic earthen mounds, most of which are burial mounds. The types of mounds range from simple conical mounds to large platform mounds and complex concentric circles. All of these earthen mound structures were built by many different indigenous Americans groups over the course of several thousand years.

In the Midwest, effigy mounds built in the shapes of bears, birds, panthers, snakes and water spirits were a prominent type of mound structure. These effigy mounds are primarily found in southern Wisconsin, northern Illinois, eastern Iowa, and southeastern Minnesota. They date to as early as about 650 CE and were most likely built by the ancestors of the Ho-Chunk, Chiwere, Ioway, Oto, Misuria, and Winnebago, who were the easternmost extension of the Siouan Language tribes.

The types of burial mounds include: conical, compound, effigy, linear and platform.

There are 63 Native American burial mounds in the park, many in mound groups, such as the Hickory Ridge Mounds and the Deer Ridge Mounds. Of the different types of burial mounds Pikes Peak State Park has mostly conical, about a dozen linear, and three effigies, which are three in the shape of bears.

Yes, this state park was named after the same Zebulon Pike as the mountain in Colorado was named after. He was sent west in 1805 to explore the Mississippi River Valley and find good spots for military posts to defend the Nation′s newly acquired Louisiana Purchase.

Upon arriving at these 500 foot bluff on the Mississippi, he thought that the top of a 500 foot bluff was a good place to build a military post. The government agreed with him, however, the post was not built on the bluff, but on the other side of the river on the prairie near what is now Prairie Du Chien, Wisconsin.

Several years later, Zebulon Pike was sent west again and wound up out near Pike′s Peak in what is now known as the state of Colorado.

What I have found out is that Zebulon Pike was not the first European to arrive on these bluffs overlooking the Mississippi, but it was Father James Marquette and Louis Joliet, who in 1673 arrived in canoes by way of the Wisconsin River and thus were the ones who discovered the Mississippi River.