This week in Indianola
About Indianola
Indianola was laid out in 1849 close to the middle of the brand-new Warren County so it could serve as the county seat, and it borrowed its name from a Texas town its founders had read about in a newspaper. Eleven years later a Methodist seminary opened its doors, and it grew into Simpson College, where a young George Washington Carver took art lessons in the attic of the turreted brick hall that now carries Henry A. Wallace's name. In 1970 hot air balloon pilots arrived for the national championship and the event went so well that the championships stayed for 18 years; since 1989 the National Balloon Classic has filled the summer sky over Memorial Balloon Field for nine days, and the National Balloon Museum, built in the shape of a balloon basket, keeps the sport's story. Summer also belongs to the Des Moines Metro Opera, started by two Simpson music professors in 1973, whose offices sit in the town's 1904 Carnegie library at Buxton and Boston. Today close to 16,000 people live here, with the gazebo and gardens of Buxton Park Arboretum beside campus and the Summerset Trail heading north toward Carlisle.