I'm afraid that Iowa's claim to have cornered the non-Chinese market on loessial
hills is quite a provincially myopic overstatement!
Loess is a light brown to buff-colored eolian (wind-deposited) soil. It covers
the western two-thirds of Illinois; eastern, southern, and western Iowa;
southeastern Minnesota; northwestern Missouri; the southeastern half of
Nebraska; north-central, northwestern, and southwestern Kansas; far eastern
Colorado, the Oklahoma panhandle; and much of the Texas panhandle. A notable
band of loess 20 to 40 miles wide also extends southward from Illinois through
Kentucky, Tennessee, Mississippi, and slightly into Louisiana along the east
sides of the Mississippi River and Yazoo River valleys. There are other
loessial deposits in southeastern Washington and neighboring areas of Idaho and
Oregon.
Most of these loessial areas are relatively flat, so loessial hills are indeed
rarer than loess. However, practically all of the bluffs along the Mississippi
River are loessial hills, including the famed bluffs of Memphis, Vicksburg, and
Natchez. The Palouse region in the State of Washington, etc. is also an
important area of loessial hills.
The thing that makes loess form such impressive hills and bluffs (where it's not
flat) is a near vertical angle of repose. This means that a very steep slope,
bluff or cliff will be stable. In fact, an artificially cut slope will
naturally erode to vertical. This is why you will see that highway and railway
cuts in loess country are made vertical from the beginning.
Lowell G. McManus
Leesville, Louisiana, USA
----- Original Message -----
From: "aletheiak" <aletheiak@...>
To: <BoundaryPoint@yahoogroups.com>
Sent: Friday, October 29, 2004 1:07 PM
Subject: [BoundaryPoint] sidney ia
>
>
> have just been decompressing from all the recent loony eclipse fun
> etc in st louis
> by dead reckoning toward the greater iamone area here on back roads
> which means mainly the lettered highways in missouri
>
> these offer a rare opportunity
> equalled i think only by the byways of wisconsin
> for trying to create words as you go
>
> it isnt as easy as it sounds
>
> rather like playing scrabble with an impossibly bad hand
> plus
> not being allowed to rearrange your tiles
>
> so far my longest word has been keno
>
> i know thats not too impressive yet
> but at least it is the name of something else you can play if you
> prefer
>
> i would like to try for a full sentence next
>
> but make that next time around
> as i have just emerged into iowa
> where this rare literary opportunity no longer exists
>
> what they do have around here is a loess hills scenic byway
> for back roading between riverton & i think akron
>
> & this has caught my fancy too
> so long as the incredibly hard south wind seems to be blowing me
> that way anyway
>
> if i got the story right
> this long strip of western iowa has the only loess hills of any
> significance anywhere outside of central asia
>
> i think the loess must be the smooth milk chocolaty stuff under all
> this corn
>
> for more details & examples of the prevailing dreamscape
> http://www.byways.org/browse/byways/2187
>
> the only question is
> will i blunder into any of the 34 tertiary megapoints of iowa by
> going this way
>
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>
> Yahoo! Groups Links
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