Driftless Area

Environmental-education center on the Mississippi River at Marquette, Iowa, focused on the wetland and floodplain ecology of the Driftless Mississippi River corridor. Operated as a regional partner of the Upper Mississippi River National Wildlife Refuge. Holds interpretive exhibits, hosts school programs, and provides public-facing access to the refuge's interpretive content.

An equity-forward, anti-diet-culture strength-and-yoga studio on the third floor of Impact Coffee in downtown Decorah, Iowa — the directory's first wellness anchor in the Driftless Area. Owner-led by Laree Schouweiler (E-RYT 500). Suggested $18 drop-in, but the studio's stated commitment is that 'no one will be turned away for lack of funds' — a community-funded sliding-scale model unusual for a small-town fitness operation.

An acupuncture and Traditional Chinese Medicine clinic in the renovated Hotel Fortney in downtown Viroqua, Wisconsin, run by Rebeca Ratté, L.Ac (licensed in Wisconsin and Minnesota). Treats anxiety, depression, stress, digestion, headaches, pain/injury, PTSD, chronic disease, fertility, and women's/men's health using acupuncture, electric stimulation, acupressure, and Tui Na medical massage. Once-monthly sliding-scale clinic ($30–55 new patients) keeps the practice accessible across the Driftless's small-farm economy.

Tribal museum and cultural center operated by the Ho-Chunk Nation — the original Indigenous nation of much of present-day Wisconsin and the Driftless Area. Holds historical and contemporary exhibits on Ho-Chunk history, culture, language, and sovereignty; functions as a community gathering and language-revitalization center; and serves as a public-facing knowledge-care institution for Ho-Chunk continuity in the bioregion. The Ho-Chunk (formerly known by the imposed name 'Winnebago') were forcibly removed from Wisconsin five times in the 19th century by the U.S. government — and returned, each time, to the land they understood as ancestral. Today the Wisconsin Ho-Chunk are a federally-recognized sovereign nation with land, citizens, and institutions across the Driftless and the surrounding upper Midwest.

8,569-acre state-managed reserve along the Kickapoo River in the heart of the Driftless Area, co-managed by the Wisconsin Department of Natural Resources, the Ho-Chunk Nation, and the Kickapoo Reserve Management Board. The reserve's history is a parable of conservation by reversal: the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers spent two decades (1962–1975) acquiring this valley by eminent domain to build the La Farge Dam, displacing 149 families and bulldozing dozens of farms. Federal funding collapsed before the dam was built. The land sat unused for twenty-five years. In 2000, Congress transferred the land — 1,200 acres to the Ho-Chunk Nation, the rest to Wisconsin — and the Reserve was formed. Today: restored prairies, oak savannas, hemlock-birch ravines, 60+ miles of trails, an environmental-education visitor center, and one of the most ambitious public-land co-management partnerships between a state and a tribal nation in the upper Midwest.

400-acre nature preserve, Norwegian-American heritage site, and environmental-education center in the Bekkum Coulee outside Coon Valley, Wisconsin. Founded 1979 by descendants of the Norwegian immigrants who settled the Driftless coulees in the mid-19th century. Holds a working homestead reconstruction (Skumsrud Heritage Farm) with translocated period log structures, an arboretum, restored prairie and hardwood forest, and a year-round program of public events — Midsummer, Syttende Mai, the autumn Norwegian harvest, traditional-craft workshops. Coon Valley is also the site of the 1933 Coon Valley Project, the first large-scale watershed restoration project in the United States and the template for the entire Soil Conservation Service approach.

Oneota Community Food Co-op — a strictly-organic shop or eatery verified in OpenStreetMap. See the Why-its-listed section for the directory's canonical reason.

A nonprofit, founded in 2014 by plant breeders, farmers, and seed-system advocates, that releases new plant varieties under an OSSI Pledge committing the variety and any derivatives to the seed commons in perpetuity. Modeled on open-source software licensing (GPL, copyleft principles), the Pledge is a moral and legal commitment that the seeds will not be patented, copyrighted, or otherwise restricted from use, breeding, or sharing. As of 2024, the OSSI catalog contains 100+ varieties from dozens of breeders, with new releases each year. The most-developed institutional alternative to corporate-controlled plant breeding.

The largest farmer-owned organic cooperative in the United States. Founded 1988 by seven Wisconsin farmers in the Driftless region as the Coulee Region Organic Produce Pool (CROPP); rebranded as Organic Valley in 1990. Today a $1.2B+ business with 1,800+ member farms across 34 states and 4 Canadian provinces, producing organic milk, butter, cheese, eggs, produce, and meat under the Organic Valley brand. The cooperative remains farmer-owned: every member is also a part-owner, with one farmer/one vote governance regardless of farm size. The single most important substrate-builder in the American organic-agriculture economy and the existence proof that cooperative regenerative ag works at national scale.

97-acre Wisconsin State Natural Area protecting one of the southernmost remaining stands of native eastern white pine in the upper Midwest. The pines here are post-glacial relicts — survivors of the cooler climate that followed the retreat of the last Pleistocene ice sheet, persisting in the cool sandstone-walled gorges of the Driftless Area while the surrounding broader landscape warmed beyond their tolerance. The site is small but ecologically priceless: one of the clearest physical pieces of evidence that Driftless ecology is genuinely older than the ecology of the surrounding glaciated upper Midwest.

The largest non-governmental seed bank in the United States, founded in 1975 by Diane Ott Whealy and Kent Whealy in Decorah, Iowa. Maintains a collection of more than 25,000 heirloom varieties on its 890-acre Heritage Farm headquarters, with both backup-storage seeds and active-growing field collections. Operates a member-to-member seed exchange program, a public retail catalog, an apprenticeship program, and ongoing education on seed-saving, heirloom preservation, and plant-genetic diversity. The institutional anchor of the heirloom-revival movement in North America.

Family-operated apple orchard in Gays Mills — the apple capital of Wisconsin — at the western edge of the Driftless Area. Operating since the early 1900s on Crawford County coulee terrain that the apple industry recognized as some of the best apple-growing ground in the upper Midwest. Today: 50,000+ trees across multiple orchards, 30+ varieties, packing operations supplying regional grocery, an on-site farm market, and a fall pick-your-own season that draws visitors from across the upper Midwest. A working substrate-builder anchor for the Driftless directory cluster.

Frank Lloyd Wright's home, studio, and architectural school, built into a Driftless hillside above the Wisconsin River outside Spring Green. Wright began the building in 1911 on land that had been his maternal family's homestead since the 1860s; he expanded and rebuilt it across decades — survived two devastating fires (1914 and 1925) — and lived and worked there until his death in 1959. Today operated as a public museum and architectural school by Taliesin Preservation Inc. UNESCO World Heritage Site (2019, as part of the 'Frank Lloyd Wright's 20th-Century Architecture' inscription). The architectural lens through which the Driftless reads itself: Prairie-style architecture is a Driftless-shaped response to Driftless terrain.

Adrian White's bioregional-herbalism practice rooted in native Iowan plants — based in rural Clayton County, northeast Iowa, in the heart of the Driftless Region near Elkader. The mission is to *'use as much of our immediate native Iowan plants in my practice of herbalism as I can'* and to assemble an Iowan Materia Medica. Distinguishes itself by sustainable harvesting from pristine Driftless protected areas and explicit refusal to harvest endangered species (goldenseal, ginseng).

240,000+ acre national wildlife refuge stretching 261 miles along the Upper Mississippi River from Wabasha, Minnesota to Rock Island, Illinois — the longest refuge in the lower 48 states. Established 1924 to protect the upper Mississippi flyway's migratory waterfowl, today the refuge is one of North America's most important migratory bird corridors and the western boundary of the Driftless Area bioregion. Annual migrations include 40% of all North American waterfowl, hundreds of thousands of tundra swans, and significant populations of bald eagles (the refuge holds one of the country's largest concentrated wintering populations along the open-water reaches near lock-and-dam structures).

An 'evolving laboratory of arts and ecology' based on a working farm in Reedsburg, Wisconsin — running an artist-residency program, the Farm/Art DTour (a touring driving event interweaving farm sites with site-specific installations), the Fermentation Fest, and a publication program. The Driftless's most-distinctive institution for the arts-meets-agriculture axis.