USA Guide
The Great Plains
Iowa
Boasting undulating hills, and acre upon acre of verdant pastures, Iowa lacks the glitz and glamour of America's more popular tourist traps. While nothing about the state truly stands out, that's not to say there aren't a few places worth pulling off the highway to see. Iowa is the very essence of smalltown America, close to the geographical center of the mainland US, and ranking decidedly average in size, population, and level of personal income.
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 negotiation with the Sauk Indians, conducted after many of them had been chased down and slaughtered in neighbouring Wisconsin and Illinois. The Northern European immigrants who replaced them made agricultural development their prime concern, turning the Iowa countryside into the rolling corn farms so common today.
The state's most visited destination is the throwback Germanic enclave of the Amana Colonies. However, Iowa does 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).
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