Hartley Fort State Preserve is a 2 acres (8,093.7 m²) Iowa state preserve located on the Upper Iowa River

Upper Iowa River

The Upper Iowa River is a tributary of the Mississippi River in the upper Midwest of the United States.Its headwaters are in southeastern Minnesota, in Mower County near the border with Iowa. It then flows through the Iowa counties of Howard, Winneshiek, and Allamakee, and finally into the Upper...

 in the Driftless Area, in Allamakee County

Allamakee County, Iowa

-2010 census:The 2010 census recorded a population of 14,330 in the county, with a population density of . There were 7,617 housing units, of which 5,845 were occupied.-2000 census:...

 of Iowa

Iowa

Iowa is a state located in the Midwestern United States, an area often referred to as the "American Heartland". It derives its name from the Ioway people, one of the many American Indian tribes that occupied the state at the time of European exploration. Iowa was a part of the French colony of New...

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Geography

Hartley Fort State Preserve sits on a terrace about 80 feet (24.4 m) above the Upper Iowa, seven miles (11 km) upstream of the confluence with the Upper Mississippi River

Upper Mississippi River

The Upper Mississippi River is the portion of the Mississippi River upstream of Cairo, Illinois, United States. From the headwaters at Lake Itasca, Minnesota, the river flows approximately 2000 kilometers to Cairo, where it is joined by the Ohio River to form the Lower Mississippi...

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Native Americans

The site is notable for remains of a fortified Native American effigy mound settlement. The mound builder peoples era ruins seem to be associated with the Woodland period

Woodland period

The Woodland period of North American pre-Columbian cultures was from roughly 1000 BCE to 1000 CE in the eastern part of North America. The term "Woodland Period" was introduced in the 1930s as a generic header for prehistoric sites falling between the Archaic hunter-gatherers and the...

 Oneota

Oneota

Oneota is a designation archaeologists use to refer to a cultural complex that existed in the eastern plains and Great Lakes area of what is now the United States from around AD 900 to around 1650 or 1700. The culture is believed to have transitioned into various Macro-Siouan cultures of the...

 and Cahokia

Cahokia

Cahokia Mounds State Historic Site is the area of an ancient indigenous city located in the American Bottom floodplain, between East Saint Louis and Collinsville in south-western Illinois, across the Mississippi River from St. Louis, Missouri. The site included 120 human-built earthwork mounds...

cultures.

Access

The Iowa Hartley Fort State Preserve land is privately owned, and there is no public access currently.

Sources

• Iowa Preserves Guide - see Hartley Fort State Preserve, pg. 35
• Minutes of State Preserves Advisory Board, June 13, 1994
• Federal Register, March 25, 2004 (Volume 69, Number 58) Retrieved July 16, 2007
• Theler, James L. and Boszhardt, Robert F. "The end of the effigy mound culture: The late woodland to Oneota transition in southwestern Wisconsin", Midcontinental Journal of Archaeology, Fall 2000, Retrieved July 16, 2007
• http://sargasso.gis.iastate.edu/preserves/preserve.asp?Preserve=34 - Iowa Department of Natural Resources - Retrieved July 16, 2007 -