Few states are defined by water as is Wisconsin. The state’s entire eastern border is the shoreline of Lake Michigan. Lake Superior fronts northwestern Wisconsin, which wears Michigan’s Upper Peninsula like a hat separating lakes Superior and Michigan.
The Mississippi River rises in Wisconsin’s western neighbor, Minnesota, and forms much of the border between the two states, along with the border between southwestern Wisconsin and Iowa. A major tributary of the Mississippi, the St. Croix River continues Wisconsin’s western border northward towards Lake Superior. Wisconsin’s driest border separates it from Illinois on the south.
From the highlands of northern Wisconsin, the land slopes gently downward in all directions. During the Ice Age, the Superior Lowland that lies north of the highlands lie under a much larger Lake Superior. Swift streams now etch deeply into the land as they race northward towards Lake Superior.
Bordering the Northern Highlands on the south is the curving, sandy Central Plain. Between the Central Plain and Lake Michigan is the Eastern Ridges and Lowlands region, which stretches south to Illinois. Here are limestone cliffs, rock formations that were carved into streamlined hills called drumlins, and moraines - piles of rock that were bulldozed by glaciers.
North America’s fourth and last major glacial invasion was first studied in detail in Wisconsin. The Wisconsin Glaciation flattened much of the Midwest and gouged great chunks out of the ground. The glaciation ended just 10,000 years ago, leaving much of the northern Great Lakes states covered with glacial debris—boulders and gravel left by retreating glaciers. Fossils of western bison, woodlands muskoxen, mastodons, and other animals that followed the retreating Wisconsin ice sheet into extinction lie scattered across the state.
Do you want to see what Wisconsin looked like before it was flattened by the Wisconsin Glaciation? Visit the Wisconsin Driftless Area, which covers most of the Western Upland in southwest Wisconsin. Untouched by the Wisconsin Glaciation, this region boasts some of Wisconsin’s most rugged scenery. The Driftless Area is the only region without lakes in a state where more than 8,500 have been charted.
In the Driftless Area, streams have carved narrow ridges and deep, steep-sided valleys out of the limestone as they dug through the evidence of earlier Ice Age glaciers, back more than 65 million years to the Cretaceous Period. These streams have uncovered poorly preserved leaf impressions and petrified wood from a time when dinosaurs stalked the land.
The Shock Doctrine: The Rise of Disaster Capitalism - 
