Clinton Prairie SNA
Willa Cather's description of a "rolling open country like the sea" could easily have been written for Clinton Prairie SNA and its topography of gently rolling ground moraine with broad, rounded swells and shallow depressions. The mesic blacksoil prairie here is exceedingly rare in the state's cornbelt, where row crops occupy nearly all of the upland soils built by prairies over the centuries from the raw material of calcareous (lime-rich) glacial drift from the Des Moines Lobe.