Expedition to Determine the Fate of the Peace Tree

In 1822, General William Ashley published an ad in the Missouri Gazette recruiting adventurers into the American Fur Company for the purpose of exploring the headwaters of the Missouri River for beaver:

Enterprising Young Men

The subscriber wishes to engage ONE HUNDRED MEN, to ascend
the river Missouri to its source, there to be employed for one,
two, or three years. For particulars enquire of Major Andrew
Henry, near the Lead Mines, in the County of Washington, (who
will ascend with, and command party) or to the subscriber at
St. Louis.

Wm. H. Ashley

In 2013, I employed his advertising style (while updating cultural assumptions about qualifying ages and genders) in an email to recruit adventurers into the Red Rock Armada (a fellowship of area kayakers) for the purpose of exploring the upper part of Lake Red Rock to determine the fate of the "Peace Tree", a local landmark associated with the frontier history of Iowa:

Enterprising Not-Quite-So-Young Men and Women

The subscriber wishes to engage TEN MEN AND WOMEN, to ascend
the reservoir Red Rock to its source, there to be entertained for one,
two, or three hours. For particulars enquire of Doctor Brian
Lange, near the Canoe & Kayak Launch, in the County of Marion, (who
will ascend with, and command party) or to the subscriber at
Indianola.

J.A. Pearson

Our foray was prompted by rumors among the natives that the Peace Tree had finally fallen, fatally injured by ice and old age. During a reconnaisance to the Painted Rocks last week, our scouts had scanned the last known vicinity of the Peace Tree with binoculars, spotting a mysterious, ice-draped object far across the strait.  Unable to identify it from long distance, they had recommended an on-site survey by boat.  Answering the call, eleven enterprising kayakers mustered at the Elk Rock trailhead on Saturday morning. Our "Expedition to Determine the Fate of the Peace Tree" was now assembled and ready for action.

Mist veiled the landscape, rendering familiar landmarks into indiscernible blobs and enhancing our sense of exploring a strange new country. Strapped to the deck, my GPS recorded our route as we paddled across Teter Bay, rounded the headland, passed under the Mile Long Bridge, and curved away from the coast to approach the mysterious object we had scoped from shore the week before.  

As we neared, a dark, tombstone-shaped stump loomed out of the mist. Familiar but strange at the same time, it was the remains of the Peace Tree: still present but much diminished from its former grandeur. Its woody girth resembled the diameter of the tree trunk we had come to know over our years of visiting, but its top was scarcely above the eye level of a kayaker, completely unlike the look-up-at-me aspect of the tree we had known.  I paddled up to the stump and grasped its edge. Recognizing the now tilted surface of a formerly flat platform just above the waterline, I acted on the impulse to climb onto the stump, retaining my paddle as a staff.  Brian shepherded my boat away as I stood up and surveyed the scene (top photo).

If I was the hero of a Hollywood movie, this would have been the point at which I suddenly clutch my forehead as a swarm of alien images - accompanied by weird, unsettling music - swirls through my confused brain: ancient visions of an undammed river, a tall sycamore emerging above unbroken forest, Indian villages, a string of blue-coated soldiers, treaties and trading posts, upheaval, sorrow, a new world, big floods, more upheaval and sorrow, deepening water... and a giant, dead tree slowly dismembering with ice and old age.  It would have been the memories of the Peace Tree pouring into my mind.  Rendered into slow motion, tickmarked by year and age, the tree's life would unfold like this:

1500 - (tree age 0) - Peace Tree seed germinates, then grows uneventfully for over three centuries.  Native Americans hunt in the surrounding forest, traveling up and down the Des Moines River waterway.

1835 (tree age 335) - "One summer day, the Indians beheld a long line of white men on horseback.  They were U.S. Dragoons, a cavalry unit sent out to explore the Sac and Fox lands preparatory to buying them..." (quote from Harriet Heusinkveld, "Ghost Towns of the Des Moines River Valley", Take This Exit, 1989).

1842 (age 342) - Treaty of 1842, Sac and Fox tribes cede land to United States Government (pink zone in above map); Red Rock Line established as temporary interior boundary for phased withdrawal (north-south red line within pink zone).  

1843 (age 343) - Indians vacate lands east of the Red Rock Line; town of Red Rock established quarter-mile east of Line. Although not an official point of reference for the Red Rock Line, the Peace Tree (standing immediately west of the boundary) becomes a local landmark approximating its location. (See map in this weblink.)

1845 (age 345)- May 1st: Indians vacate land west of Red Rock Line, relocating to Kansas; October 10th: "At midnight, white settlers in wagons and on horseback line up at the Red Rock Line awaiting the shooting of guns to be fired by the Dragoons to announce that they could go in and claim the land." (quote from Huesinkveld)

1851 (age 351) - Big flood submerges town of Red Rock.

1947 (age 447)- Big flood submerges town of Red Rock; Army Corps of Engineers begins planning flood control reservoir to be named Lake Red Rock in keeping with its tradition of bestowing the reservoir with the name of the nearest downstream town.

1969 (age 469) - Big flood submerges town of Red Rock, but this pool is permanent. Between 1947 and 1969, the Army Corps decided to move the location of the proposed dam 8 miles downstream to Howell Station (thus capturing the large inflow of Whitebreast Creek). The town of Red Rock ends up on the wrong side of the dam although the Army Corps retains the previously chosen name of "Lake Red Rock" (evidently eschewing "Lake Howell"). The Peace Tree is killed by lake water rising 2 feet above its roots.

In the 1960s, 87-year-old Maude Thomason Scarbrough (lifelong resident of Red Rock)  wrote (quoted in Rogers 1992): 

"This giant tree at shoulder height measures 22 ft.-ll in. in circumference, has lived for hundreds of years on the Des Moines river bottom in Marion County near, where the town of Red Rock, Iowa, used to be... The age of the giant tree is unknown.... but it is certain, however, that it watched the parade of historic Indians, the Sioux, Iowa's Pottawattamie, Winnebagos, as well as the Sacs and Foxes, as they passed in war and peace from the Red Rocks on the Des Moines River, from which the old tree springs, are well known in the tales and legends of these people who lived in the town of Red Rock, Iowa... Prior to 1842, John Jordan's trading post, in the shade of this big tree, exchanged gun powder, trinkets, and whiskey, for the Indian's fur catch.... It watched the settlers cross the Red Rock line at Midnight October 11th, 1845, when the territory was opened to white settlers...It watched the settlement of Red Rock become a bustling river town where, saloons, murder, robbery, were quite commonplace." 

1992 (age 469 + 23) - Lake level is raised 8 feet to offset loss of volume from siltation.  Kayakers can now paddle up to the Peace Tree by water.  The lower bole of dead Peace Tree is submerged in 10 feet of water, initially leaving ~25 feet standing above the new pool level, but decay and breakage incrementally reduce its stature over the subsequent decades. Anticipating the disappearance of the Peace Tree, boaters in 2006 and 2007 decorate the tree with commemorative tapestry.

2006, standing ~15 feet above normal pool

2011, standing ~6 feet above normal pool

(Photo by Deb McKnight)

2009, temporary 8-foot drawdown exposed lower bole

(photo by Diane Michaud Lowry; also three following plus topmost)

2013 (age 469 + 44) - Another segment of the Peace Tree snaps off during winter; remaining short stump severely tilted.

           

   Summer 2012,

          ~6 feet above normal pool

Spring 2013,

~3 feet above normal pool

                                               

The visions cease as suddenly as they began as I snap out of my Hollywood alter-ego.  There are no ancient forests, Indian villages, or historians, just me standing on the stump of the Peace Tree, enjoying a day of kayaking with my friends.  Remembering our collective persona as explorers, I pose for a "summit photo" with our Red Rock Armada flag and record in my journal that "the Expedition to Determine the Fate of the Peace Tree was a success!  Tilted and diminished, but still present."

As we paddle away from the tree, however, something in the back of my mind tells me to check out the history of the Peace Tree when I get home.  There might be an interesting story there.

*******

Literature cited:

Heusinkveld, Harriet. 1989. Ghost towns in the central Des Moines River valley, pp. 229-247 in Sayre, Robert F. (ed.), Take This Exit: Rediscovering the Iowa Landscape. Iowa State University Press, Ames, IA. 331 pp.

Rogers, Leah. 1992. Assessment of the Old Red Rock Indian Line Tree, Lake Red Rock, Marion County, Iowa.  With Fred A. Finney and Stephen C, Lensink.  Contract Completion Report 328, Office of the State Archaeologist, Iowa City, IA.  Available as download: http://www.dtic.mil/cgi-bin/GetTRDoc?AD=ada255372

Growing AWAREness of Rivers

Iowa does not have large blocks of wilderness, but it does have long, narrow strips of wild land along its many rivers.  Scenic countryside, outdoor recreation, and biological diversity are packed into these skinny riparian corridors.  In our agriculturally dominated state, no other landscape setting retains so much of its natural character or enables expeditions measurable in dozens of days or multitudes of miles.  In our tamed and tilled landscape, rivers are our last big bastions of wildness, biodiversity, and outdoor adventure.

Exploring and restoring the wild beauty of Iowa's rivers is what draws hundreds of volunteers - including many returnees from previous efforts - to Project AWARE each year.  This year we paddled 90 miles of the Iowa River between Dows and Marshalltown, plucking a record-breaking 1400 tires and 60 tons of metal and plastic junk from its bed and banks.

Drought conditions this summer meant that streamflow was low, exposing "rock gardens" of glacial boulders in many places in the river. But even where large rocks were absent, our canoes often grounded on shoals.  On the first day, our false expectation that deeper water was only a short distance in front of us led us to "pole" the canoes with our paddles like gondoliers, but we soon realized that that gut-wrenching technique was more exhausting than simply stepping out of the boat and dragging it to the next pool.

Riverbanks were everywhere bursting with purple monkeyflowers, more than I have ever seen.  Tumbling from their parent plants, senescent blossoms accumulated on the shoreline and floated in flotillas on the river.

For the first two days (from Dows to Iowa Falls), we paddled, poled, and dragged our canoes through a muddy stream draining the flat, farmed surface of the ground moraine left by the last glacier.  Through swampy forests of silver maple flanking its winding course, we glimpsed views of row-cropped fields extending to distant horizons.

  

But on the following three days (Iowa Falls to Eldora), we paddled, poled, and dragged our canoes on a clear stream through a deepening valley tightly flanked by bedrock walls capped with steep upland woods of oak, hickory, maple, and basswood.  With its upstream load of sediment trapped behind the dam at Iowa Falls and protected from new sources of sedimentation by rocky, forested slopes, the water in the river was remarkably clear - clear enough to see its sandy and gravelly bottom, clear enough to see our feet as we stumbled in search of junk and deep water, clear enough to spot subtle black arcs of submerged and half-buried tires, clear enough to watch fish dart to unchurned water and mussels slowly carve trails in golden sand.  Clear enough to raise our hope that clear water is even possible in our soil-shedding state.

Everywhere along the river - in water muddy or clear, on beds of sand, silt or rock, along shorelines vertical or flat, beneath forests of silver maple or oak, on days sunny or rainy - the perennially cheerful army of AWARE volunteers plucked plastic, manhandled metal, and tugged tires from the river...

sometimes singly...,

sometimes in small groups...,

and sometimes in very large groups!

In all cases, the junk was loaded onto canoes pressed into service as barges and carried downstream to established drop-off points.

Sometimes the junk was not "junk" at all, but historical relicts.  One morning we discovered a horse-drawn plow buried in the mud of a silty backwater and donated it to the Hardin County Historical Society that evening.

River restoration and outdoor recreation in an environment of camaraderie, discovery, and education is the chemistry of Project AWARE.  Coordinator Brian Soenen summed it up for everyone: "Sometime between breakfast, getting out on the river - getting extremely dirty - and another exhausting day, the magic happens ...Looking back at what you've done, feeling the pain from all the work... people internalize that.  There's something about it that gets in your blood and keeps you coming back."

The effect of Project AWARE river clean-ups extends beyond the riverbanks in the form of motivation, education, and experience carried by participants into the larger world.  At the moment, AWARE volunteers cannot remove the silt, nutrients, and bacteria that presently bedevil our streams (although there is no doubt in my mind that they would remove it all by hand if they could), but they will be vigilant for solutions, now and in the future.

Modern Lake, Ancient River

Bluffs of the Elk Rock Cliffs formed in erosion-resistant sandstone

deposited as sandbars in the riverbed of an ancient stream

Most boaters on Red Rock Lake realize that they are traveling on the old course of the Des Moines River, impounded by the Red Rock Dam constructed by the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers in 1969.  Few, however, realize that they are also traversing another river, one whose flow ended 300 million years ago.  Its ancient riverbed now stands above the modern lake in the form of tall sandstone bluffs admired by passing boaters while its ancient floodplain reclines in low-lying beds of mudstone and shale, its unremarkable topography ignored by nearly everyone. 

Low-lying muddy shore

 formed in soft shale and siltstone deposited in ancient floodplain

Photo by Diane Michaud Lowry

During the Pennsylvanian era of geologic history, the river flowed swiftly westward, transporting water and sediment from the high and rising Appalachian Mountains to the proto-Pacific Ocean whose embayment occupied what is now Wyoming and Nebraska.  Dropping its sand-rich load at low flow, the river constructed new sandbars on top of previously deposited sandbars and were later buried by still newer sandbars.  Loose sand pushed over the top of bars by currents formed slanting cross-beds draped across their downstream ends.  Compressed by successive burials and cemented with mineral-rich groundwater, the stack of sandbars ultimately lithified over millenia into sandstone, their downstream-pointing crossbeds enabling modern geologists to deduce the direction of flow of the ancient river.  Iron-rich groundwater percolated unevenly through the bedrock, staining the sandstone red in places, becoming the namesake of Red Rock Lake.



Cross-bedded sandstone at the Cliffs of Cordova

Cross-bedded sandstone with iron staining

The floodplain of the ancient river also received successive layers of sediment, but of muddy silt and clay instead of sand, deposited whenever the river overflowed its banks.  Forests of now-extinct trees grew prolifically in the swampy flats of the floodplain.  As they died, their organic matter decomposed only partially in the anerobic swamp water, eventually turning into coal.  Traces of the long-vanished trees, preserved as casts and impressions in the rocks, represent a fossil forest that thrived some 300 million years ago.  The low, muddy shores of Red Rock Lake hide the remains of the Pennsylvanian coal swamps where fossils of the ancient trees slowly weathering out of their encasing rocks are sometimes discovered by attentive beachcombers. 

Cast (left) and impression (right)  of Lepidodendron scale tree

Photo by Diane Michaud Lowry

Cast (left) and impression (right) of Sigillaria tree

Impressions of seed ferns, scale-trees, and

other Pennsylanian plants in black shale

Cast of Pennsylvanian log weathering out of sandstone.

Fossils are generally not preserved in riverbeds, but this one

likely became buried under a sandbar following a storm

 300 million years ago



Kayaking on Red Rock Lake can be a time-bending experience if you appreciate the full range of features displayed along its shoreline, including rugged bluffs and deceptively subtle lowlands.  Both represent the ruins of the same ancient landscape of swamp forests flanking a swift river on its way to a nearby sea.  To me, it is like exploring the labyrinth of an exhumed temple, discovering relics in newly found chambers.  I have found them high on the bluffs where I lifted my boat onto sandstone outcrops and in the soft, wet quicksands of shale-footed beaches, hidden in plain sight.  The world is a big and interesting place, made bigger and more interesting by the presence of past worlds alongside the present one!



Photo by Diane Michaud Lowry