Pony Creek Park, Davis Oriole Earthlodge

Beneath the surface of Pony Creek Park in Mills County, under a few feet of Iowa soil, lies one of the best-preserved prehistoric earthlodges known anywhere on the Great Plains. The Davis Oriole Earthlodge Site is many centuries old, built by Plains Indian peoples long before European contact, and it earned National Historic Landmark designation in twenty twelve.

Earthlodges were substantial permanent structures, timber frames covered with layers of brush, grass, and packed earth, that housed extended families through harsh Great Plains winters. The park was listed on the National Register in nineteen seventy-one for at least two such lodges, and the site was relocated and studied later, and the fact that they sat on public parkland gave them a measure of protection unavailable to most buried sites. For travelers passing through southwest Iowa, this quiet county park carries a thousand years of human history just beneath the grass.