Casey's Paha State Preserve

Casey’s Paha is a 175-acre preserve that highlights a half-mile portion of a 2.5-mile-long elongated hill known as a “paha.” It is located within Hickory Hills Recreation Area in northeastern Tama County, 13 miles south of Waterloo. This 665-acre area was purchased in 1974 by the Black Hawk County Conservation Board. The western third was dedicated as a geological state preserve in 1989 and named after the Caseys, an Irish family that originally settled in the area. 

About the Land

The gentle paha hills provide most of the topographic relief in a region of the state known as the Iowan Surface landform region. The accumulation of wind-blown silt (loess) topping the narrow elongate ridges reaches forty feet deep in places. An interpretive sign, located at the edge of the beach parking lot, tells of the paha’s meaning: 

Paha is a Dakota Indian word meaning “hill” or “ridge.” It was first used in 1891 by geologist W. J. McGee to describe elongated hills capped with wind-blown silt (loess) and sand in northeastern Iowa. Paha are isolated, northwest- to southeast- oriented ridges that rise above the surrounding plain. These landforms are characteristic of the southern portion of a major landform region known as the Iowan Erosion Surface. Research drilling on this paha in the 1960s was instrumental in establishing that these features are erosional remnants of a higher, once-continuous glacial plain. The deposits beneath the loess in paha are all that remain of these older glacial materials, which are still widespread in southern Iowa. 

Directions

1. From the intersection of Highway 20 and Highway 218 on the southeast side of Waterloo, take Highway 218 south to County Road V37 (Dysart Road). 
2. Turn south (right) and go 11.5 miles to Hickory Hills County Park entrance (sign: Hickory Hills County Park) on the west (right) side of the road. 
3. The preserve is in the far western portion of the county park (sign: Casey’s Paha State Preserve). 
4. Park in the beach parking lot. 
5. From the sign, follow the trail west and south to the preserve.

Vegetation

Paha soils indicate that forests, first coniferous then deciduous, were the native vegetation for several thousand years prior to settlement. These prominences were wooded islands in a sea of prairie grasslands. A perched water table, common on paha, may have helped the woodlands survive in these locations. The trees, in turn, may have had some effect on trapping the 30,000- to 17,000- year-old wind-borne silt and sand that cap the paha. Casey’s Paha is also the “type locality,” a standard geological field reference, for the Hickory Hills Till, the approximately 500,000-year-old glacial deposit that forms most of the paha’s interior. 

Vegetation in the preserve is mostly hardwood forest, but includes a large disturbed open area that is to be restored to prairie. An archery trail is located in the southern portion. Several large old trees are found in the southern portion of the preserve along the trails. The oldest tree, a white oak, is nearly 240 years old, and can be found east of the western portion of the archery trail. 

Hunting is permitted; another natural area in the vicinity is Mericle Woods State Preserve.