The Marquette-Jolliet diorama recreates the morning of June 17, 1673 from the 500-foot high bluffs overlooking the Mississippi River in what is now Pike's Peak State Park in Clayton County, Iowa. Two Ioway natives watch the approaching canoes bearing French fur-trader Louis Jolliet and Jesuit priest Jacques Marquette along with five companions.

The explorers had left the St. Ignace Mission, on the northern shore of Lake Michigan, on May 17 and crossed Wisconsin via the Fox and Wisconsin Rivers. They were searching for the large river rumored to be in the West which they hoped would take them to the Pacific Ocean.

Marquette and Jolliet traveled down the Mississippi for another month before turning homeward. Though their stay in Iowa was brief, the journals they kept and impressions they carried back with them from their epic journey had a profound effect on European attitudes about native people, the land and its resources.