Celebrate the Hawkeye State: Effigy Mounds, Herbert Hoover and the Silos & Smokestacks NHA. Both Lewis & Clark and the Mormon Pioneers traveled through too.
Iowa in Photos
Iowa
Completed
Silos and Smokestacks National Heritage Area
[At the bottom of the web post, there’s a short video surprise! No peeking until after the story!]
Once upon a time, not far from the Black Forest in Germany, where many old fairy tales began, there were two friends, Johann and Eberhart, who believed that being inspired by God should be a personal experience. They shared their views with others, and many joined them, meeting under an old castle, happily. But other people were angry with them for being different, so some of their followers got on a boat and traveled to a new country, where people were free to believe whatever they wanted. The first place they settled grew too crowded and busy for them, so they moved again, to a magical land between two great rivers, where their friends and families settled in seven tiny villages in the middle, along the much smaller, but pretty little Iowa River.
Their way of speaking (High German) was difficult for others to understand, so they decided to call their first village Amana, since it was easy to say. The law made them buy a village called Homestead (near the train), but they decided to call their other villages High Amana, Middle Amana, South Amana, West Amana and East Amana. They really liked the name Amana, and others just called all their villages the Amana Colonies.
The Amana colonists worked hard, but kept to themselves. Like the other farms in Iowa, they kept some of the food they grew in Silos, that look like giant tin cans. Everyone in the villages worked together, cooked together, ate together and prayed together, happily. They learned to speak the language of their new country, but they also kept up with their old language. After many years, they spoke three languages: new, old and a mix of both that they invented themselves. They didn’t have much need for money, since mostly they stayed in their own village. But curious people would visit them to buy the interesting things they made, like eggs dyed dark brown with golden flowers on them (see picture).
Then, there was a dark time in the new country, when 1/4 of the people could not find work, and the President, who grew up in a Quaker village nearby, lost his job too. The village was worried that no more curious visitors were coming to buy their golden flower eggs, so they decided that some people should go out into the outside world and work for money. Unlike their friends the Amish, the Amana community believed in technology. One, named George, was very smart and invented a machine to keep food cold for a long time, so the village added a factory next to the river with Smokestacks to build his machines. Later his company made many other machines you may have in your home, like a magic machine for cooking food very quickly. George’s Amana household appliances became known around the world.
The people in the village were very happy. If they wanted to go outside the villages, they could go anywhere. But many villagers loved Amana and chose to stay. Every Sunday at 8:30 am, they have a church service in their old language, and at 10 am in the new language. They enjoyed preserving their old way of life and kept many of their old buildings just like they were over a hundred years ago. You can still go into the old general store in High Amana and even buy a dark brown egg with beautiful golden flowers. But the villagers also built some newer stores for all the curious people who came back to see their pretty little villages, like a toy store, an ice cream store, a chocolate store, and a store that only sells old-fashioned Christmas ornaments. They have restaurants too that cook food and special drinks just like they had in the old country.
And, on the first weekend in May, the ladies of the village dress up in their fanciest dresses, that their mothers and grandmothers saved and taught them how to make, put flowers in their hair, sing in their old language, and dance in the middle of the Main Street, pulling on long colorful ribbons tied to the top of a pole, just like their ancestors did in the old country many, many years ago to celebrate Spring. And do you know what? This whole story is actually and completely true, and not a fairy tale at all! The End.
[And, no, I haven’t had a stroke, yet. If you think you’re too old for my favorite fairy tale post, then find a kid, and read it to them.]
Effigy Mounds National Monument
On the Iowa side of the Mississippi River looking across from the high bluffs toward Wisconsin, there are over 200 hundred mounds, round, linear, bird and bear shaped. They are in clear lines straight out from the river, and they date back roughly 1,000 years, evidence of cultural traditions that continued for hundreds of years. Although these sites typically do not make the connection, there are similar sites along the Mississippi and other rivers at overlapping time periods with evidence of trade between them. Bird symbols in particular are found in both modern and ancient Native American culture. Many similar mounds were flattened and plowed under after the land was stolen.
The hiking here is excellent, with many overlooks, including Fire Point above and Third View which looks upriver. The hillock to the right of the path is one of the mounds, first in a long line into the woods. A pair of hawks soared high above. If you can make it a few miles, your chances of seeing deer and other wildlife improve. Since it is a sacred site, please stay on the trails and do not walk over the mounds.
Herbert Hoover National Historic Site
Hoover may have been a Stanford graduate who made his fortune working on foreign mine extraction projects, but he grew up poor in this tiny house in a rural Iowa Quaker village. Note the outhouse in back and his father’s blacksmith shop on the right. His hardworking father died of heart failure and his even harder working mother later died of typhoid and pneumonia. Herbert’s relatives took him and his two siblings in, and he grew up in a school principal uncle’s house in Oregon.
I also visited his Presidential Library & Museum next door, run by the National Archives. They go to great lengths to rehabilitate Hoover’s reputation, since he was widely blamed for the Great Depression. They point to his conservation efforts for example, but neglect to mention that his 5 million acres are not as much as Teddy Roosevelt’s 150 million acres. The museum helped convince me that Hoover was a generous humanitarian who saved many lives in Belgium, Russia and elsewhere by running food aid programs, who was elected with extremely high expectations, and who implemented a variety of positive programs (not just the dam). I genuinely think he was a smart and nice guy.
But, Hoover was an ardent believer in solving social problems with volunteerism and without government intervention. Even though he had warned Coolidge about the dangers of stock speculation, Hoover was all about efficiency, not reform. Hoover had seen massive, desperate social failure all around the world, including being trapped in the foreign enclave during the Boxer Rebellion with his wife (see movie, ’55 Days at Peking’). But he still believed that if government supported business leaders and capitalists, then everything could be solved with goodwill and determination.
He was wrong. FDR crushed him and immediately implemented massive social programs including unemployment payments, government work programs, and Social Security. In retrospect, Hoover should have been able to look at his own family’s struggle with poverty and the tragedies of his parents’ deaths and consider that maybe government intervention would have helped them in their hour of need. Instead, he shared the common views among the ruling elites, that government programs like military protection for foreign business interests in China are good but that government programs like unemployment relief are bad.
Zero Carbon Travel 