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In June 1835, a First US Dragoons company, led by Colonel Stephen Watts Kearny, conducted a surveying expedition across what later became Iowa. One member of the party, topographer Lt. Albert Miller Lea, published an account of it a year later. It inspired a wave of settlers to move to the area.
Retracing the Dragoon Trail in Iowa: Environmental Transformation along the Des Moines River, by Kevin T. Mason, recounts the expedition and follows the original Dragoon Trail in the 21st Century. It presents the dramatic changes that have occurred over the intervening years.
In 1835 Iowa was bog and forest. It had agricultural promise, but was untamed. Today it is rolling farmland. The forests have been cut, the bogs drained. It is gridded with roads and railroads. Mason poignantly explains how this transformation occurred.
He tells how the whites moved in, and the Indians were forced out. Only a few returned, whose success depended on claiming and settling land in the manner of the whites. He also describes the skirmishes fought by the unsuccessful ones.
The book is filled with colorful characters. Nathan Boone, Daniel Boone’s son, appears. So do Black Hawk (Mahkatêwe-meshi-kêhkêhkwa) Keokuk, and Wapello for the Indians. Julien Debuque, John Frémont, Grant Wood, Henry A. and Henry C. Wallace, and Perry Holden (the Corn Professor) take their place on the stage.
Mason shows how Iowa’s industries evolved. There are surprises. In the mid-1700s Iowa yielded ten percent of the world’s lead supply. He follows the rise and decline of Iowa’s coal industry and its evolution from a state best known for its wheat and oats to a powerhouse of corn and pork.
He also shows how, after over a century of transforming its land to farms, Iowans are now returning parts to the state in which it existed prior to the Dragoon Trace. Not in large amounts, but enough to show residents what it once was like.
It is common to think of Iowa’s history as boring. There were no major battles there, no Earth-changing events. Yet Retracing the Dragoon Trail in Iowa shows it to be anything but. Its history since 1835 has high drama, tragedy and triumph blended together. Mason highlights both Iowa’s bright points and low spots. His language is lyrical and descriptive. His love for Iowa is obvious, all culminating in a book worth reading.
“Retracing the Dragoon Trail in Iowa: Environmental Transformation along the Des Moines River,” by Kevin T. Mason, Michigan State University Press, April 2026, 320 pages, $69.95 (Hardcover), $34.95 (Paperback), $34.95 (E-book)
This review was written by Mark Lardas, who writes at Ricochet as Seawriter. Mark Lardas, an engineer, freelance writer, historian, and model-maker, lives in League City, TX. His website is marklardas.com.
Discussion (2)
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I had never before heard of the Iowa wetlands that were transformed into agricultural land referred to as bogs. Bogs have a different water chemistry. Ireland has a a lot of peat bogs, or former peat bogs that are now dry. Iowa had prairie marshes left by retreating glaciers. I realize that not every lay reader would know or care about the difference, but I'm a bit surprised that a book published by a university press wouldn't be more precise.
My wife's family has a story of one of her great-great grandfathers who came from a part of Germany where the land had been reclaimed from the sea. He came to north central Iowa which was mostly wetland, took a look at the land that was mostly underwater, and announced that he could farm that. And he did, draining the wetlands, doing the work along with many others. When we were first married the average price of row-crop land in her county was the highest in the nation for a while. We were out there a few weeks ago for a 60th anniversary reunion of her high school class, and as usual when driving from place to place I remind myself that most of the places where we were driving had once been under water. From the lay of the land and comparing the basins with the high ground between them, one realizes that the lower parts of the basins had had some significant depth, too.
We've been driving back and forth along I-80 for 56 years now on visits to family, driving between the Quad Cities on the Mississippi River and Des Moines. It is striking how the the grassy hillsides have become wooded over those years. This year on the way there we took a more northerly route along US-30, the old Lincoln Highway. We've done it a couple of times before, when time permitted. It's not as fast as I-80, but it looks a little more like the Iowa we remember from the 70s, and is not so infested with trees.
I'm not from Iowa but was born and spent my early childhood in a prairie state that is also now infested with trees. I like the Michigan woodland where we now live, where the farm fields are surrounded by trees, but it can get a little claustrophobic at times. It's good to now and then get out where trees don't obstruct one's view of the countryside.
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One of my grandmother's family came from Germany and settled in Sweetwater, Ohio, sometime before the civil war. It looks to me like Sweetwater is now a suburb of Columbus.