Iowa, town by town

Open now

Iowa’s Squares

Ames, Iowa · since 1864 The Ames Square Step inside Photo: Tony Webster, CC BY 2.0 Cedar Rapids, Iowa · since 1849 The Cedar Rapids Square Step inside Photo: ArtisticAbode, CC BY-SA 3.0 Council Bluffs, Iowa · since 1854 The Council Bluffs Square Step inside Photo: Smallbones, CC0 Dubuque, Iowa · since 1833 The Dubuque Square Step inside Photo: Coalfather, CC BY-SA 4.0 Iowa City, Iowa · since 1839 The Iowa City Square Step inside Photo: Farragutful, CC BY-SA 4.0 Sioux City, Iowa · since 1854 The Sioux City Square Step inside Photo: Bkell, Public domain Waterloo, Iowa · since 1845 The Waterloo Square Step inside Photo: WeaponizingArchitecture, CC BY-SA 4.0 West Des Moines, Iowa · since 1893 The West Des Moines Square Step inside Photo: Iowahwyman, CC BY-SA 3.0

Made in Iowa

Iowa firsts

• 1869
  The first woman lawyer in the U.S. Mount Pleasant

  Arabella Mansfield was sworn in at Mount Pleasant in 1869, making Iowa the first state to admit a woman to practice law. Source

• 1872
  The Delicious apple Peru

  The apple the world knows as the Red Delicious began as a tree on Jesse Hiatt’s farm near Peru, in Madison County; he called it the Hawkeye. Source

• 1901
  A founding mill of Quaker Oats Cedar Rapids

  The Stuart family’s cereal mill in Cedar Rapids was one of four oat mills that joined to form the Quaker Oats Company in 1901. Source

• 1921
  The Eskimo Pie Onawa

  An Onawa schoolteacher and candy-shop owner, Christian Kent Nelson, came up with chocolate-coated ice cream bars, introduced as the Eskimo Pie in 1921. Source

• 1925
  Ice Cream Capital of the World Le Mars

  Le Mars calls itself the Ice Cream Capital of the World, a claim built on the Wells family’s plant there, home of Blue Bunny since 1935. Source

• 1930
  The American Gothic house Eldon

  Grant Wood sketched a small house in Eldon and made it the backdrop of American Gothic; today you can visit it and pose for your own version. Source

• 1939
  An early electronic computer Ames

  In a basement at what is now Iowa State, John Atanasoff and Clifford Berry built a machine that a 1973 federal court ruling credited with first inventing the automatic electronic digital computer, a title historians still debate. Source

• 1960
  The first National Historic Landmark Sioux City

  The obelisk honoring Sergeant Charles Floyd, the only member of the Lewis and Clark Expedition to die on the journey, became the nation’s first registered National Historic Landmark. Source

• 1989
  The Field of Dreams Dyersville

  The ballfield cut into a cornfield near Dyersville for the 1989 movie still draws visitors, and in 2021 it hosted a major league game. Source