Driftless Area Ice Age Refusal

The Driftless Area is a rugged region in the upper Midwest United States that glaciers somehow skipped during the last Ice Age, even as ice sheets covered the surrounding land multiple times. Because the ice never scraped it flat, the landscape kept its steep valleys, sandstone bluffs, and cold spring-fed streams, creating a pocket of unique geology and ecology. Rare plants, trout streams, and carved coulees all survive there as living relics of an older landscape. Today, habitat destruction, agriculture, and soil erosion threaten to wear down what the ice itself once left untouched.

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