Author’s Note
In the late 1980s, I picked up arrowhead fragments and beads from where Concrete Products was mining sand from Gotch Park. When I dropped off these treasures at the County Conservation Board Office, I was informed that in the 1920s or so, archeologists from University of Iowa had excavated portions of Gotch Park. What’s more Gotch Park had served as a trading post not only between early hunters and settlers and the Indians, but between Indian tribes as well.
The Iowa Office of State Archeology replied to my inquiry about this excavation which they have records that date the Gotch Park excavation from the early 1930s:
Our office was not involved in any excavations; the site was recorded by Charles Keyes, one of the first archaeologists working in Iowa, and unfortunately all we have is a brief description of the event in his field notes.
Attracting People for Thousands of Years
Gotch Park sits at the confluence of the West and East Branches of the Des Moines River. It is easy to see why First Peoples were drawn to this area. Our rivers attract abundant wildlife and provide excellent fishing. Even after decades of mining the uplands and farming the lowlands, Gotch Park retains its beauty.
Paleoindians 13,500 to 10,500 years ago (11,500 BCE to 8,500 BCE)
Caste your mind back to a time 11,000 years ago, a mere thousand years after our area was covered in a continental glacier. This part of Iowa was a cooler, wetter forest, where oaks and elms dominated. Archeological evidence, or lack of it, from this time leads us to believe that they were big-game hunters. Imagine a band of hunters stopping at Gotch Park to butcher a wooly mammoth. Archeologist think it would have a temporary stop, because these people didn’t leave evidence of dwellings.
Archaic Period 10,500 to 3,000 years ago (8,500 BE to 800 BCE)
The people who frequented Gotch Park in the Archaic Period left us arrow heads and stone tools that indicated that they were hunting deer and other game and grinding nuts and wild grains for food. We still don’t have evidence of permanent dwellings or large burial sites in this part of Iowa. We assume that means that these people moved from place to place to, following their available food sources.
The Iowa Office of the State Archaeologist has recorded evidence of cooper tools in our part of Iowa. The copper in these tools, they surmise, came from the Great Lakes region. Does that mean that a Gotch Park band of Archaic peoples moved annually–or even occasionally–from what is now Gotch Park to Lake Superior? Probably not. Archeologist believe that this indicates a vast trading system between Archaic peoples. Just like the campers in today’s Gotch Park, our Archaic people liked shiny, unique things from afar.