Driftless Center in Iowa gives visitors ‘look at the underside of the Mississippi’

Lansing, Iowa — Through the picture windows of The Driftless Center, visitors can look out over the Mississippi River. Now, with a 16-foot-long, 1,250-gallon aquarium filled with local fish species, including bass, bluegill, and northern pike, it will be like guests can look below the water, too.

“There are 125 different species of fish in the Mississippi River,” said Ross Geerdes, director of The Driftless Area Education and Visitor Center, which sits on the Iowa side of the river, about 85 miles north of the Illinois state line. “We can’t have all of them, but we’d like to have a dozen or maybe more. People want to look at the underside of the Mississippi River.”

The Driftless Area, a topographical region that includes the northwest corner of Illinois, southwestern Wisconsin, southeastern Minnesota and northeastern Iowa, was never covered by glaciers during the last ice age and doesn’t have the silt, gravel and rock – called drift – the glaciers left behind.

The Driftless Area has a more rugged landscape than the rest of Illinois, Iowa, Wisconsin, and Minnesota with caves, sinkholes, springs and cold streams ideal for trout fishing.

On a recent Friday, local visitors mixed with a junior high field trip from Chicago.

Since the center opened in August 2017, it has hosted nearly 76,000 visitors, including people from all 50 states and 53 countries, Geerdes said. The 10,000-square-foot center is the hub of the Allamakee County Conservation Board and holds staff offices, but it also draws school and community groups from across the Midwest.

Geerdes, who was the center’s naturalist before transitioning to the director position this spring when Jim Janett retired, said staff match programming to the group visiting the center.

“If they are younger people, we get animals out,” he said. The center has seven kinds of snakes, reptiles and amphibians. “If they are older and studying about glaciation, we’ll talk about The Driftless Area and why it’s so special,” he said.

Education about the Mississippi River is core to the center’s mission, Geerdes said. One of the challenges facing the river is invasive fish and plant species that threaten native species.

“With the expansion of Asian carp in northern part of the river it’s very important to have those species in the aquarium as well,” he said. “I think it’s a wonderful idea to display those and educate people about the negative impacts they have on the environment.”

While the carp can out-compete native species for food in the river, staff will be feeding fish in the aquarium minnows, worms and waxworms from River N Ridge Outdoors in Lansing. “They (carp) wouldn’t be that detrimental in our aquarium because we’re feeding them,” Geerdes said.

Staff will keep the aquarium about 60 degrees year-round and change the filter every couple of weeks. They will start with young fish to allow them time to grow in the tank, which is equipped with faux rocks and plants that mimic the Mississippi River.