Iowa

The earliest inhabitants of Iowa were an ancient people known as the Effigy Moundbuilders. This culture extended across the Upper Mississippi River region during the Late Woodland Period (1400 B.C. to 750 B.C.) and is characterized by the impressive earthen mounds they left behind. Shaped like bear, birds, deer, bison and other sacred animals, the mounds may have been used to track celestial events and for ceremonial purposes.  

When European explorers first made contact with Native Americans in Iowa in the 17th century, the largest tribes were the Ioway and the Sioux. Sadly, nearly all of Iowa’s Indigenous groups were driven from the state by the mid-19th century and resettled on reservations in Kansas and Oklahoma.  

One exception is the Meskwaki (or Fox), a tribe that purchased its own land along the Iowa River in 1857 and lived independent of government control. The Meskwaki Nation remains the only federally recognized Indian tribe in Iowa with nearly 1,500 enrolled members.  

In 1673, Father Jacques Marquette and fur trader Louis Joliet set out to explore the Mississippi River and see if it continued all the way to the Gulf of Mexico. The two Frenchmen became the first white explorers to step foot in Iowa in the summer of 1673. In their journals, they described the land at the junction of the Iowa and Mississippi Rivers as lush, green and fertile.  

A century later, a young French-Canadian named Julien Dubuque was entrusted by the Meskwaki to mine the rich lead deposits on their land along the Mississippi. Lead was a valuable metal for making ammunition for muskets and cannons. With the cooperation of the Meskwaki, Dubuque established the successful “Mines of Spain” near modern-day Dubuque, Iowa, and shipped finished lead bars down the Mississippi to be sold in St. Louis.  

After Dubuque’s death in 1810, the U.S. Army took over the mines and pushed out the Meskwaki. This sparked a “Lead Rush” in the 1820s attracting thousands of new settlers to eastern Iowa. 

In the mid-19th century, a surge of pioneers crossed Iowa on their long westward journey. Settlements and towns sprung up along the Mississippi River to serve the travelers and increasing numbers decided to stay and farm the state’s rich topsoil.  

After the Homestead Act of 1862, there was a flood of new settlers in Iowa who quickly claimed prized land in the Mississippi River valley, where trees were abundant. Beyond eastern Iowa, however, the territory was mostly open prairie covered in tall grasses. There, settlers couldn’t log timber to build houses, so they constructed homes out of prairie sod.  

Sod houses (or “soddies”) were made from thick strips of mud plowed from the prairie soil. The sod was cut into bricks that were stacked to create humble homes complete with windows and chimneys. The thick sod walls kept settlers cool in the summer and warm in the winter.  

When Iowa became a territory in 1834, its borders extended far north into Minnesota and the Dakotas. Slavery was outlawed in the Iowa Territory, but the national debates over slavery played a role in Iowa statehood. Because of the Missouri Compromise, Iowa could only be added as a free state if Florida was also added as a slave state. 

Iowa became the 29th state on December 28, 1846. Its borders were shrunk to their current dimensions to make room for the addition of more free states West of the Mississippi. When the Civil War broke out, Iowa fought for the Union. More than 76,000 Iowans fought in the war and more than 13,000 died, mostly from disease.  

Railroads transformed life in Iowa after the Civil War. Iowa farmers could transport their commodities to Chicago, and from there to East Coast cities. The railroads also fueled the creation of Iowa food giants like Quaker Oats and Sinclair Meat Packing, both from Cedar Rapids.  

Council Bluffs, Iowa, was chosen as the eastern terminus of the Union Pacific Railroad, making it a critical link in the first transcontinental railroad. By the turn of the 20th century, even small Iowa towns ran multiple passenger trains a day, making year-round travel affordable and convenient for the first time.  

In 1869, Iowa boosters published a 96-page booklet titled “Iowa: The Home of Immigrants” that was translated into German, Dutch, Swedish and Danish. German immigrants made up the largest contingent of new arrivals in the late 19th century and settled throughout the state.  

Coal mines in central and southern Iowa attracted immigrant laborers from Ireland, Italy and Eastern Europe, as well as Black Americans migrating north after the Civil War. While Black coal miners were originally only hired as strike breakers, they eventually became an integral part of Iowa coal communities.  

By 1900, the mining town of Buxton, Iowa, was the largest unincorporated town in America. Of its 5,000 residents, more than half were Black. The racially integrated town was home to prominent Black physicians and attorneys like George H. Woodson, one of the founders of the Niagara Movement, a predecessor to the NAACP.  

The connection between Iowa and corn can be traced back to the establishment of Iowa State Agricultural College (now Iowa State University) in 1868. While relatively few Iowa farmers had the resources to attend college, the school organized meetings across the state to educate farmers about improved practices for better yields and higher earnings.  

James "Tama Jim" Wilson was a professor at Iowa State who pushed for Iowa farmers to move away from wheat as their primary crop and plant corn instead. Corn allowed farmers to diversify their operations by feeding it to pigs, cattle and sheep. Generations of Iowa farmers followed Wilson’s formula to great success. Wilson went on to serve as Secretary of Agriculture under three U.S. presidents.  

There were hard times for Iowa farmers, too. After World War I, wartime farm subsidies were lifted and many Iowa farmers struggled to pay off their debts. Then came the Great Depression, when prices plummeted for commodities like corn and pork. In 1931, the state passed a new law requiring all cows to be tested for tuberculosis. Farmers erupted in protest, even physically assaulting veterinarians. The National Guard had to be called in to quell the so-called “Cow War.”  

Since 1972, Iowa has kicked off the presidential primary process by holding the nation’s first caucuses. When a largely unknown Jimmy Carter won the 1976 Democratic caucus in Iowa, the national attention he received ultimately helped him to win the presidency—and solidified the importance of the Iowa caucuses.  

Date of Statehood: December 28, 1846 

Capital: Des Moines 

Population: 3,190,369 (2020)   

Size: 56,273 square miles 

Nickname(s): Hawkeye State 

Motto: Our liberties we prize, and our rights we will maintain 

Tree: Oak 

Flower: Wild Rose 

Bird: Eastern Goldfinch 

Sergeant Charles Floyd was the only member of the Lewis and Clark Corps of Discovery to die during the historic expedition to chart the American West. On August 20, 1804, he succumbed to infection caused by a ruptured appendix. A 100-foot obelisk marks his final resting place in Sioux City, Iowa. 

George Washington Carver, the famed agricultural scientist, attended Simpson College in Iowa, where he studied art. One of his teachers, learning about his interest in plants, encouraged Carver to attend the Iowa State Agricultural College, where he earned a degree in botany.  

Girl’s six-on-six basketball was an institution in Iowa for 60 years. In this unique style of basketball, each team had six players — three who played exclusively offense and three who played exclusively defense. The dividing line was halfcourt. The game, invented in 1934, was designed to be less physical than the men’s game and grew to become one of the most popular high school sports in the state. The last girls six-on-six state championship was held in 1993.  

Iowa is the largest producer of corn in the United States. In 2024, Iowa farmers harvested more than 2.5 billion bushels. The total amount of corn planted each year is estimated at 12.9 million acres.