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Although at
times serene, and almost always verdant,
nothing about IOWA truly stands out:
this 55,000-square-mile chunk of the Great
Plains doesn’t even manage to be
completely flat, it just wobbles up and down
a little. The state is the very essence of
smalltown America, close to the geographical
center of the mainland US, and coming 25th
out of fifty states in size, population and
level of personal income. Even the cities
seem at times to be merely villages grown
large.
Iowa’s history, too, has been
relatively uneventful. It was opened for
settlement after the Black Hawk Treaty of
1832, a one-sided exercise in negotiations
with the Sauk, conducted after many of them
had been chased down and slaughtered in
neighboring Wisconsin and Illinois. The
northern European migrants who replaced them
made agricultural development their prime
concern, turning Iowa into the “Foodbasket
of America” – a role it usually
achieves with scrupulous efficiency,
although the severe floods of 1993 saw the
entire state declared a disaster area.
Tourist attractions in Iowa are few and
far between; its most visited destination is
the throwback Germanic enclave of the Amana
Colonies. However, the state does also
hold a few oddball sites, such as the
original locations for the movies The
Bridges of Madison County (in south
central Winterset, birthplace of John
Wayne) and Field of Dreams (near
Dubuque in the northeast). You can also see,
but not enter, the original house that
featured in Grant Wood’s much-parodied American
Gothic painting (at Eldon in the
southeast, and now owned by the state).
Click here to go to Iowa State
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