What is the Driftless Area?

Drift is defined as a deposit of clay, sand, gravel, and boulders transported by a glacier or by running water from a glacier. The Driftless Area of Wisconsin is famous the world over because it is completely surrounded by glaciated territory, yet these hills and valleys remained drift-free. It preserves a large sample of what the rest of Wisconsin, as well as northern and eastern United States, were like before the Glacial Period. Writing in 1854, Edward Daniels, the first state geologist, eloquently described the Driftless Area:

About one-third of the surface is prairie, dotted and belted with beautiful groves and oak openings. The scenery combines with every element of beauty and grandeur, giving us the sunlit prairie, with its soft swell, waving grass and thousand flowers; the somber depths of primeval forest; and castellated cliffs, rising hundreds of feet, with beetling crags which a Titan might have piled for his fortress."