Iowa’s roads in the 1850s were challenges for horses, oxen or humans regardless of the season. Other states had experimented with plank roads and found them to be quite satisfactory — they were sturdy, almost impervious to bad weather, and they could be money makers.
That was a question asked by farmers in 1920. And scientists at the Iowa State University (ISU) agriculture experiment station at Ames had an answer. Scientists at the facility tested several soil types throughout the state to find an answer to the critical question that was on farmers’ minds at the
In 1911 a group of State University of Iowa (University of Iowa) alumni started a petition to oppose the appointment of the new president of the university. John Gabbert Bowman was only 33 years old and was about to become the youngest college president in the country. The alumni petition failed, an
In the morning of September 25, 1913, Leon, Iowa Sheriff F. L. Lorey received a phone call from Deputy Sheriff Bob Craig in Shenandoah. Craig had gotten word from authorities in Fremont County, Nebraska, that a horse thief was hiding out near his town. Help came in the form of a neighbor listening i
It was a lovely summer day in June 1901 when Caroline Jarvis’s heroic actions near the Coralville Dam caused her to make history at the University of Iowa in Iowa City where she was a student — a member of the class of ’02.
"The sun-kissed walls/ Are things of awful might;/ I may but look beyond, above/ With eyes that fill with tears." The poet who wrote those words, James Gordon Stell, knew quite a bit about walls and could only dream about the world beyond them. He was known as the “Prison Poet.”
A “place of enchantment” that promised to “bewilder attendees with its surpassing beauty” and “compel the admiration of all who see it.” Those flattering words described the Louisiana Purchase Exposition of 1904 or as most people called it — the St. Louis World’s Fair.
In April 1910 the US Census Bureau reported 2,400 Iowa farmers raised over 20,664 goats and kids on their farms. But only 266 of those reported producing goat hair or mohair. If they weren’t raising the goats for the fleece, why did so many Iowa farmers have the animals?
It was an early spring morning in 1895 when two strangers in a buggy made their way into town at Adel just west of Des Moines. By the time they left, two town folk lay close to death and the bank was short an undetermined amount of cash.
Newspapers called her “a dauntless woman in a ferment” and a “militant temperance advocate.” Carrie Nation described herself as “a bulldog running along at the feet of Jesus, barking at what he doesn’t like.”
In 1936 when the children's storybook Farm on the Hill was published, most Iowans knew Grant Wood as a famous Midwestern artist who was born on a farm near Anamosa in 1891, grew up in Cedar Rapids, and gained instant fame after painting “American Gothic” in 1930, a portrait of a stern looking couple
Summertime in Iowa means countless community celebrations and parades throughout the state. Many of today’s Brat Days, Corn Days, and 4th of July festivities had their roots in 19th and 20th century events and continue in the 21st century. That’s a long tradition of summer fun across the Hawkeye sta
