Fish Farm Mounds State Preserve

Fish Farm Mounds State Preserve is a 3-acre prehistoric cemetery (mound group) located in the southern portion of Fish Farm Mounds Wildlife Area. It is located seven miles north of Lansing in Allamakee County, in the Paleozoic Plateau landform region of northeast Iowa. The burial mound group was given to the state in 1935 by the Fish family, after whom the preserve is named. The area that contains the mounds was dedicated as an archaeological state preserve in 1968, and has geological sig­nificance as well. In 1988, the preserve was listed on the National Register of Historic Places. 

About the Land

The area contains a cluster of thirty conical mounds of various sizes. Most are twenty to forty feet in diameter and resemble some of the conical mounds at nearby Effigy Mounds National Monument. The ancient mounds were built by Middle and early Late Woodland peoples from 100 b.c. to a.d. 650. Earthen mounds are believed to have been constructed primarily for religious, ceremonial, and burial purposes. Conical-shaped mounds were built by basket loads of soil placed over one or more bodies lying either on the ground or on a specially prepared surface. On occasion, additional burials were later added to a mound, increasing the size of the earthen feature. Some individuals were buried with funerary offerings. 

Directions

1. From Lansing, take Highway 26 north for 6 miles to Fish Farm Mounds Wildlife Area, on the west side of the road (sign: Fish Farm Mounds Wildlife Management Area). 
2. To get to the preserve from the parking lot, climb the wooden steps to the mounds.

Geological Significance

The mound group sits on a wooded alluvial terrace above the modern floodplain of the Mississippi River, in the Quad-State Region of the Upper Mississippi River Valley. The terrace is underlain by sandy river sediments deposited during an earlier stage of the valley’s evolution, when the Mississippi River floodplain was nearly 100 feet higher than it is now. This remnant of the former floodplain surface probably dates from glacial meltwater discharges of the past 10,000 years. Renewed down­cutting and erosion by the river left this feature sheltered in this small side valley. The terrace is situated below towering 300-foot bluffs of much older, Cambrian age sandstone bedrock (500 million years old). 

Historical Records

The site was recorded as early as 1887, and was mapped by Ellison Orr of the Iowa Archeological Survey in 1910. Additional mapping was conducted in 1988. 

Burial mounds are protected by law. 

Other sites in Iowa with archaeological mounds include Catfish Creek, Gitchie Manitou, Hartley Fort, Little Maquoketa River Mounds, Malchow Mounds, Slinde Mounds, Toolesboro Mounds, Turkey River Mounds, and Woodland Mounds State Preserves and Effigy Mounds National Monument.