The Garden of Eden
Location: Northern Driftless Area
Lost Civilizations / Ruins
by @wisconsinwizard
One of the most beautiful parts of Wisconsin is known as the Driftless Area, the portion of the State in the Southwest which was completely untouched by the glacial drift during the Ice Age. This gives the Driftless a unique, otherworldly beauty with distinct geography found nowhere else in Wisconsin.
In fact... maybe it's just a bit _too_ beautiful...
That's what Reverend D.O. Van Slyke, thought at least.
Van Slyke was a Methodist minister who settled in Galesville, Wisconsin, and was struck by the unnatural beauty of Wisconsin's Driftless Area. The more and more he explored the land around him, and the more and more he compared it to his Bible, the more and more Van Slyke became convinced that he had located the original location of the Garden of Eden. To this day, this part of the Driftless is commonly called "God's Country" due to Van Slyke's theory.
Van Slyke argued that the rivers in the northern area of the Driftless, the Trempealeau River, Black River, La Crosse River, and espeically the Mississippi, matched up with the four rivers in the Garden of Eden as described by the Bible. He further argued that the bluffs surrounding the area of the Northern Driftless around La Crosse and Trempealeau constituted the "garden wall," and mapped out the geography of Eden within this area.
Van Slyke even used Wisconsin's prominent dairy production statistic to (rather convincingly) argue that Wisconsin was a literal "land of milk and honey."
But at the end of the day, Van Slyke's main argument for the Driftless being Eden boiled down to: "Just look at it!"
And frankly, that's a pretty darn good argument if you've ever seen it!
Sources