The Glacial Trail Scenic Byway is a 36-mile loop intersecting O'Brien, Clay, Buena Vista, and Cherokee counties.

Noted for its natural beauty, this section of Iowa was shaped by glacier activity over thousands of years, leaving behind a distinctive landscape characterized by rolling hills and fertile soils.

In the southeast corner of O'Brien County, near the town of Peterson, the Prairie Heritage Center serves as a beacon of education and preservation, celebrating the rich cultural and natural history of the region.

Wilson: This whole entire landscape around here is due to that glacial activity 12,000 to 14,000 years ago.

It's a very unique landscape through the Little Sioux River Valley.

It has the most remnant prairie beyond the Loess Hills.

The Little Sioux Valley along the Glacial Trail has a large amount of remnant prairie along these steep hillsides and slopes along the valley.

They were too steep to plow.

If anything, they've only been grazed.

And so you'll find a lot of biodiversity there that you don't see elsewhere in the state.

A lot of different plants and animals that require this kind of remnant virgin prairie ecosystem.

Kohlsdorf: Visitors can explore miles of hiking trails, which wind through the surrounding prairie and oak savanna landscape, offering breathtaking views of native flowers, grasses, and wildlife.

Inside the center, interpretive exhibits showcase the intricate relationship between humans and the prairie environment through history, from the Indigenous tribes who first inhabited the area, to the European settlers who transformed it into farmland.

In this main level, we have a lot of the different people groups, time periods, kind of that sort of thing.

We do some field trips, bringing kids up.

We talk about the prairie animals.

And then downstairs is kind of where we do a lot of our activities.

Kohlsdorf: Since 2006, nearly 100,000 travelers have pulled off the Glacial Trail Scenic Byway to immerse themselves in the history, ecology, and beauty of the tallgrass prairie ecosystem.