Backbone State Park
Subnational Park · Strawberry Point, Iowa
Iowa's oldest state park, dedicated on 28 May 1920, covering just over two thousand acres in the valley of the Maquoketa River in Delaware County. It takes its name from the Devil's Backbone, a narrow steep spine of dolomite bedrock left standing when the river cut a loop around it — an unexpected piece of terrain in eastern Iowa, with cliffs over eighty feet in places. Two Civilian Conservation Corps camps built the cabins, trails, dams and bathhouses between 1933 and 1942, and much of that work is still in use.
Backbone State Park, Strawberry Point, Iowa, United States
FREE for day use, including parking, as at every Iowa state park, and open year round. ⚠ ROCK CLIMBING AND RAPPELLING REQUIRE A PERMIT from the park — cliffs here run over eighty feet and this is one of the few genuine climbing venues in the state, but visitors routinely arrive without arranging it. Sort it before travelling. CAMPING AND THE 1930s CCC CABINS ARE BOOKED THROUGH THE IOWA DNR RESERVATION SYSTEM and the cabins go early for summer weekends. Trout fishing needs an Iowa licence and a trout fee. ⚠ THE DEVIL'S BACKBONE RIDGE IS NARROW AND EXPOSED WITH DROPS ON BOTH SIDES and the dolomite is slick when wet or icy — it is short but it is real. ⚠ NO POSTCODE IS RECORDED: the park is 2,001 acres with no street address and OpenStreetMap returns none, so the field is left empty rather than estimated.
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