The Hawkeye State gets its own day? Really?
It turns out that the State of Iowa really does get it’s own day, and it’s February 8th this year. Who would have even thought there was such a thing as Iowa day?
I was born in Iowa, back some 60 years ago, give or take a few months. I was brought into the world in the one part of the “Hawkeye State” that could be considered a resort destination, the Okoboji lake region. OK, so maybe it’s only considered to be a “resort destination” by the Iowans who know about it, but it’s what we have.
I think I read somewhere that Iowa had saved less of it’s wildlands than any other state. On the level of the acreage that’s been protected, that’s not necessarily true, the winner is Rhode Island, not Iowa.
However, when I went to look up the percentage of wildlands per state, neither Iowa nor Rhode Island made that list. That’s right, Iowa was left off of a list of wildlands per state. We have none, there is no wilderness worth mentioning in Iowa.
I had to go to France to appreciate Iowa.
Grant Wood
Iowa Has No National Parks – National Iowa Day
I am from Des Moines, Iowa – not even the city but out in the country. I don’t have a lot of trappings, I think, in my personality. I’m just a simple person with a silly bone.
Cloris Leachman
I’m not sure there’s anywhere in Iowa that could be considered to be true wilderness. We are even without a National Grassland, let alone anything like a National Forest or National Park. But we have State Parks, something like a total of 83 different parks or recreation areas.
A google search shows Lake Macbride State Park is the largest of the parks with something around 2,180 acres1. That’s not exactly a big park by the standards of other states, but it’s huge compared to our smallest park – Pillsbury Point State Park. That park’s only 6.5 acres.
Just to give a little frame of reference, that’s far smaller than our average farm, which checks in at 359 acres. Something around 85% of Iowa is farmed, so, Iowa is very much an agriculture dominant state. That is driven home by even our television commercials. If you’ve never seen a “Boar Power” commercial, you just haven’t lived.
At least that’s the way an Iowan would likely see it. Agriculture2 commercials are ubiquitous in the Mississippi Valley region of Iowa/Illinois, if you watch any local television you’ll see plenty of them. One winter’s full is probably enough for most people’s lifetime.
The word of the day is “monoculture” – National Iowa Day
It’s not the Grand Canyon. It’s not mountains. Its native plants growing on a gently rolling topography – not a dramatic topography or scenery. But be impressed with the sheer number of plant species on the property.
John Pearson – Iowa DNR
Iowa’s claim to fame isn’t the Iowa Great Lakes, another name for the Okoboji Lake region, in fact it’s not a feature at all. It’s that whole agriculture thing, it’s the fact that Iowa grows.
We don’t grow much actual food, to be honest. Out two greatest crops are corn and soybeans. The corn was once used for livestock feed, but now a lot of the corn is used for ethanol production. We grow fuel. That’s why beef is so expensive, corn that used to feed the cows we ate is now being used for fuel.
We make ethanol to fuel the tractors that are used to to harvest the corn to be turned into ethanol so we can fuel those tractors again so they can grow more corn to make more fuel.
If that sounds a bit like the old commercials that said, “I do coke so I can work longer. So I can earn more. So I can do more coke…” that is exactly what I’m getting at. Ethanol isn’t the panacea the government would have you believe, it takes a lot of energy to produce alcohol fuel. Almost as much energy as the ethanol produces.
See the problem with that?
I ate apple pie and ice cream—it was getting better as I got deeper into Iowa, the pie bigger, the ice cream richer. There were the most beautiful bevies of girls everywhere I looked in Des Moines that afternoon—they were coming home from high school—but I had no time for thoughts like that…So I rushed past the pretty girls, and the prettiest girls in the world live in Des Moines.
Jack Kerouac
Taking a scenic route in Southeast Iowa is like talking about a good Barry Manilow album. You have to make certain allowances.
Bill Bryson
Happy National Iowa Day, I can hardly wait until next year…
I grew up castrating hogs on an Iowa farm, so when I come to Washington, I’ll know how to cut pork.
Joni Ernst
- Wikipedia lists Big Creek State Park as the largest of Iowa’s State Parks at 3550 acres ↩︎
- Often shortened to simply ‘ag’ ↩︎
