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  Pearls: A Midwestern MarvelWhen most people think of pearls, they imagine cracking open an oyster somewhere on a sandy, tropical beach to find the gem inside. But surprisingly, you can find freshwater pearls right here in the rivers and lakes of the United States. Pearls have a particularly long history in the Midwest. Excavations in the Ohio River Valley revealed fabulous quantities of pearls belonging to the people of the ancient Hopewell culture (200 B.C.-A.D. 500).  And in the early 1900s, Muscatine, Iowa, became the “Pearl Button Capital of the World,” supplying the globe with mother-of-pearl buttons made from freshwater pearl mussels. Today, these same mussels provide the beads used for implantation during the pearl culturing process.continue to The Pearls of Ancient Peoples |
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