What Is The Driftless Zone?

The terrain varies from wide gentle valleys, THEY WERE TWO MILES THICK!      The Ice Age had a profound impact on the world. During the past 2 1/2 million years. The globe was repeatedly gripped by colossal ice sheets — perhaps 15 times.

And Meandering Rivers     Glaciers sculpted, as if by the hand of a potter, about one-third of the earth's land mass.    It's hard to imagine the immensity of the Ice Age continental glaciers. They were sometimes two miles thick and stretched from Long Island, New York, to Montana, and from Ohio to Hudson Bay, Canada. The mountain glaciers we see today in Alaska or the Swiss Alps are tiny by comparison.      Wisconsin is the best place to witness many of the landforms created by continental glaciation. Indeed, the most recent period of the Ice Age, which slowly ended only about 10,000 years ago, is known as the Wisconsin Glaciation.

Huge Rock outcroppings are in the area. Notice the red arrows, Those are People!

     An Ice age is a period of time—usually millions or tens of millions of years—when vast glaciers, called ice sheets, cover much of the Earth’s land surface. Several ice ages have occurred throughout our planet's history. The latest ice age began about 2.5 million years ago. During this time, giant ice sheets have advanced and retreated many times in North America and Europe. But in Southwest Wisconsin there is a small region that the glaciers never were able to sculpt.

     As seen here, the last three Ice Age Advances just never quite made it here into Southwestern Wisconsin. It is an area known as the "Driftless Region" or "Driftless Zone" meaning never glaciated and therefore has spectacular ridges, majestic bluffs, lush green valleys, and gorgeous rolling hills.