Accessibility

Accessible Resources

The visitor center, museum, auditorium, and park store are accessible to wheelchairs. In addition, a one-mile round trip boardwalk trail is wheelchair-accessible. Although most Native American mound groups involve hiking along relatively long and steep trails, three conical burial mounds located adjacent to the visitor center can be viewed from an accessible trail.

Visitor Center

• The visitor center, museum, auditorium, and park store are accessible to wheelchairs.
• There is a park-owned wheelchair available to borrow at request.
• Automatic door openers at the visitor center entrance.
• There is a 1:12 slope ramp in the museum.
• Information brochures available in Norwegian, German, Spanish, and Braille. Please contact staff at the visitor center for additional information or call (563)-873-3491 ext. 123.
• There is a tactile mound shape board available at the visitor center upon request for visitors with sight impairments.

Service Animals

• Service animals are permitted on Effigy Mounds National Monument property and in all public facilities while performing their work.
• “Service animal means any dog that is individually trained to do work or perform tasks for the benefit of an individual with a disability, including a physical, sensory, psychiatric, intellectual, or other mental disability.” – Americans with Disability Act.
• A service animal must be under the control of its handler. Under the ADA, service animals must be harnessed, leashed, or tethered, unless the individual’s disability prevents using these devices or these devices interfere with the service animal’s safe, effective performance of tasks. In that case, the individual must maintain control of the animal through voice, signal, or other effective controls.
• Service animals are working animals, not pets. The work or task a dog has been trained to provide must be directly related to the person’s disability. Dogs whose sole function is to provide comfort or emotional support do not qualify as service animals under the ADA.
• All dogs that are not service animals, as defined by the ADA, must follow park pet regulations: Pets – Effigy Mounds National Monument (U.S. National Park Service)

Three Mounds

Three conical mounds located north of the visitor center can be accessed just over a 65 foot concrete bridge and a 105 foot wheelchair accessible boardwalk.

Yellow River Boardwalk Trail

• The Yellow River Boardwalk Trail is approximately 0.4 miles one way. This out-and-back trail is wheelchair accessible along a boardwalk made of recycled planks out to the Yellow River bridge.
• The trail takes visitors down through a wetlands environment with opportunities to see various species of trees, plants, and animals.
• Just before the Yellow River bridge, there is a grass path the leads up a hill to two linear mounds and one conical mound.