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Leaving Red Wing we drove south along the Great River Road. The name is a bit of a misnomer as it is not one continuous road, instead it consists of numerous small highways and byways in the ten states that border the Mississippi River. We started out that morning on the Minnesota side of the Mighty Miss, crossed over to the Wisconsin side around lunchtime, and finished the day on Iowa’s section of the Great River Road. It was Labor Day weekend and the river was crawling with people recreating—from canoes and kayaks to fishing boats to speed boats to barges, the Mississippi even had room to spare.

We spent our afternoon exploring the remnants left behind by a group of long-ago people. We toured the north unit of Effigy Mounds National Monument where we walked among the amazing hand-sculpted piles of dirt. Around 2,500 years ago members of what archaeologists call the Woodland culture began heaping baskets-full of earth over their burials, creating conical mounds. Through time the design and purpose of the mounds changed, conical mounds were connected into long compound ones, linear mounds, and even animal shapes were built. Though some mounds continued to be used for burial, most were used for other purposes.

By the time the Woodland culture disseminated, some time around 1200 AD, thousands of mounds dotted the landscape of the Mississippi Valley. Though mound building had ceased, the area was still inhabited, this time by a culture group that archaeologists call the Oneota. Whether they were descendants of the moundbuilders or recent immigrants is uncertain, for they left no written record. By the time of European contact in the late 1600s the Oneota had either split into, or been replaced by, several separate yet linguistically connected tribes such as the Dakota, Ho-Chunk, Otoe and Ioway. Of course, it is from the latter group that the state derives its name. Interestingly, the only tribal group that remains in the state is not one of the aforementioned but one that was pushed from the east by the U.S. government.

I’ll finish that thought in a minute but first a quick bit of history: in 1673 the French were the first Europeans to claim the area that is now Iowa, in 1783 they ceded the land to Spain who did very little with it, the Spanish signed it over to Napoleon Bonaparte in 1800 and in 1803 Iowa became part of the United States through the Louisiana Purchase. A few years later the U.S. attempted to assert its rule over the land only to be thwarted by the local tribes who sided with the British, their longtime trading partners. After the War of 1812 the American government took firm control and signed multiple treaties with the various tribes. The idea, though they did not comprehend it at the time, was that the native people had sold their land and would need to move west of the Mississippi River once settlers arrived.

In the 1830s Americans flooded into the area and it became time for the tribes to relocate. Many of the native people were shocked by the provisions of the treaties; they protested them as invalid. Most of the Sauk or Meskwakie people, who at the time lived in present-day Illinois, packed up their belongings and moved across the river to avoid an unwinnable war. A group of roughly 1,500 men, women, and children chose to stay. They were led by the warrior Black Hawk who had proved his battle skills while fighting alongside the British during the War of 1812.

The Black Hawk War, the only one in U.S. history named after an individual, lasted just four months. By August of 1832 it was over, the U.S. military had won and in retaliation the government demanded that all native people move even further west into Indian Territory. No Indians were allowed to remain in what is present day Iowa. Two decades later a small group of Meskwakie moved back into Iowa and surprisingly, they were allowed to stay. Thus the state’s only Native American settlement is not that of one of its original populations.

Since Iowa was no longer considered Indian Territory, it too was open for settlement. Things progressed quickly for Iowa, the tallgrass prairie soil was incredibly fertile and perfect for agriculture while the Mississippi River was an excellent transportation route, just as the native people had known for thousands of years. In 1838 Iowa became a territory and by 1846 it was a full-fledged member of the Union. American settlers chose the same great places to live that the ancient people had and for many of the same reasons: access to water, good soil, tall trees, and plenty of game. In the process of clearing and plowing the land (once John Deere invented a plow that could handle the thick prairie sod) Iowans destroyed thousands of the mounds that the earlier inhabitants had so carefully crafted.

In the late 1800s a survey mapped over 10,000 mounds in the state, by the time Effigy Mounds National Monument was created in 1949 less than 1,000 of Iowa’s mounds remained. Of the Monument’s 206 mounds (the biggest grouping in the country), thirty one of them are effigies: twenty four bears and seven birds—the animal shapes are distinctive. Mounds have been discovered in almost every state east of the Mississippi, but – excepting two effigy mounds in Ohio – only this area of Iowa (and sections of neighboring Minnesota, Wisconsin and Illinois) are known to have effigy mounds. The creation of these mounds was no mean feat, they average three feet tall, forty feet wide, and eighty feet long.

Some of the settlers who streamed into the state were members of the Society of Friends, or Quakers. They established small villages in this new frontier based on their shared principles of peace, equality, and simplicity. West Branch was one of these communities and there on August 10th of 1874 Herbert Clark Hoover was born. As we wandered through his birth cottage—preserved as part of the Herbert Hoover National Historic Site—it was hard to imagine a family of five living there. Hoover’s childhood was disrupted after his parents died within a few years of each other which made him an orphan at the age of ten. Different relatives took in Hoover and his two siblings, eventually Hoover was sent to live with an uncle in Oregon.

In 1891 Hoover enrolled in Stanford University where he was a less-than-stellar student though he quickly proved his merit. Since Hoover didn’t make the baseball team as he had hoped, he became its manager. After a game in 1894 Hoover discovered that someone had failed to pay so he confronted the person, word has it that Benjamin Harrison (yes, that Harrison, former President of the United States) promptly paid his quarter. A year later Hoover graduated with his geology degree. His first job in the field was less than enjoyable, he hauled ore out of a mine by hand for very poor wages.

Hoover was not easily discouraged, perhaps there is something to the “Iowa Stubborn” label that Iowans use to describe themselves. Hoover grew a beard, bought a new suit and presented himself to a British mining company who was hiring “a man of at least thirty-five with a lifetime of experience”—he was twenty-three at the time. Hoover landed the job and with hard work and his exceptional organizational skills he soon shot to the top of the company. Hoover’s mining career met with much success, he was a millionaire by the time he was forty.

Life took a dramatic turn for Hoover in 1914 with the outbreak of war. Over a hundred thousand Americans were living in Europe at the time and had no way to return home. Hoover stepped in, arranging ship transport and lending money. Then he turned his prodigious skills to feeding the Belgians who were under siege. In recognition of Hoover’s hard work President Wilson named him head of the U.S. Food Administration. Thus began Hoover’s long career as a public servant.

Later President Harding selected Hoover as his Secretary of Commerce, a fairly new and poorly defined position. Hoover attacked the job with great energy, and he set about organizing and standardizing a variety of industries. Soon milk bottles, nuts, bolts, auto parts, and lumber all across the country were manufactured to the same dimensions. Roads? Radios? Construction sites? Dams? Corn fields? Hoover was there, clearing out inefficiencies, improving safety, and increasing profits—the press described him as “the Secretary of Commerce… and Under-Secretary of Everything Else.”

In 1927 the Mississippi River Valley experienced the most destructive flood in U.S. history. Over 27,000 square miles were under at least thirty feet of water. Residents in seven states were displaced: over 700,000 were homeless and hungry and 246 people died. Hoover led the relief effort and by the end of the year everyone across the country had not only heard of him but most admired him. For the first time in his life, Hoover ran for elected office, and in 1928 he became the thirty-first President of the United States. His Presidency was not nearly as successful as his previous ventures—less than a year into his term the stock market crashed.

The market crash coupled with a severe drought sent the country into the Great Depression. As President, Hoover set in motion some policies to help, but the suffering of the American people turned to anger. Needless to say, he did not get reelected, though some of Hoover’s plans were continued as part of President Franklin Delano Roosevelt’s New Deal programs. A tidbit that we discovered as we toured his Presidential Library and Museum: Hoover never took his Presidential salary, he either gave it back to the Treasury or donated it to charity. Hoover’s Presidential record was stained but he retains two distinctions; he was the first President born west of the Mississippi River and the only one thus far from the state of Iowa.

During our time along the eastern edge of Iowa we were forced to revise some of our perceptions of the Hawkeye State. Although over 60% of the state is covered in fields it isn’t just corn fields and pig farms, agriculture amounts to less than half of Iowa’s economy. Though Iowa is squarely in the Corn Belt of America’s Heartland we wouldn’t have known it since we were tucked amongst rolling hills along the Mississippi riverfront. In keeping with the theme of our trip we focused most of our forays along the river (with a few exceptions, like our visit to West Branch).

After all it was the river that was pivotal in the early days, Des Moines may be the capital and the state’s largest city but the port town of Dubuque is the oldest. While there we visited the National Mississippi River Museum and Aquarium which celebrates the river’s magnificence while also warning about its capacity for destruction (as evidenced by the Great Floods of 1927 and 1993). Fittingly, the museum is located on the edge of Ice Harbor in the building that once housed the acclaimed Dubuque Boat and Boiler Works.

We might as well end our Iowa story with a few things we picked up from an exhibit created by Iowans. They have an odd sense of humor! I-O-W-A stands for “Idiots Out Walking Around” (their words, not ours). An old-time saying was, “Mush is rough, mush is tough, thank the lord, we’ve got enough.” These days it’s more like this, “I hate to break it to you buddy, but my tractor is worth more than your Porsche.” And then there’s that trait they affectionately call “Iowa Stubborn.” All silliness aside, our Iowa experience was a pleasant one.

Photos: View the photographs from our Eastern Iowa Explorations.

Dates: We stayed in Iowa from 09/08/09 to 09/13/09.