Iowa Posters, Prints, Photographs, Maps, & Calendars
for educators and home schoolers; themed decor in studio or office.

Perhaps no state better symbolizes the nations cornucopia heartland than Iowa. A fourth of all the highest-grade topsoil in the United States spreads over the state; 94 percent of its area is devoted to agriculture, and only California ranks ahead in total cash farm income.

Wooded hills and river bluffs in the northeast break the state's highly visible carpet of corn and soybeans; lakes dot the northwest with sites for summer resorts and winter sports. But even where the deep-green fields stretch to infinity, there is beauty to behold. In spring the upturned acres roll like seas of black velvet. Winterset, in Madison County near the center of the state, is the heart of a lovely rural region noted for its 19th-century covered bridges.

Iowa farm life has changed vastly since West Branch produced Herbert Hoover and Van Meter sent Bob Feller to the Big Leagues. You can sample that life with a vacation on a farm; a number around the state offer guests sheer relaxation, recreational facilities, or a chance to help with chores if they like.

Highways and byways known as the Great River Road follow the Mississippi where the Iowa border marks one of the most dramatic stretches of the river's entire length. On soaring bluffs north of Marquette, Effigy Mounds National Monument preserves traces of Indian culture with centuries-old mounds shaped like birds, snakes, and bears. Nearby Pikes Peak State Park draws tourists with colorful sandstone cliffs, falls, a cave, Indian mounds. Becoming a country lane, the Great River Road meanders toward Dubuque, where a paddle-wheel steamer runs excursions.

Near Cedar Rapids the seven Amana colonies function as the last surviving branch of a Pietistic sect founded in Germany in 1714. The Amana Society aboandoned its strict communalism in the 1930s. Visitors today can tour a shop making handcrafted furniture, an appliance factory, a woolen mill, and wineries, or eat at German-style inns and take part in the annual Oktoberfest.

Factories sprout alongside cornfields throughout the state; Iowa's industry outranks its agriculture in value of output and produces items from tiny electronic parts to mammoth earthmoving machinery. Des Moines, the state's biggest city, began as a river fort in 1843 and today dominates Iowa's industrial and financial picture. In mid-August the city erupts with a colorful state fair.

(poster text about Iowa)

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Native American Cultures - Northeast Poster

Northeast Native American Cultures -
The northeastern part of the U.S. and Canada includes coastal lands, rivers, the Great Lakes, valleys and mountains. before the arrival of European settlers, this region was mostly one vast forest. In these woodlands teeming with deer, bear, rabbit, and other animals, most of the Indians were hunters and gatherers. They also fished in the lakes and rivers. In wet marshy areas Indians gathered wild rice. And in the summer, some tribes planted crops of corn, squash, and beans. ...
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Keokuk
b. c. 1767
d. 1848 in Kansas; buried in Keokuk, Iowa

Keokuk, the namesake of Keokuk, Iowa, was noted for his policy of cooperation with the U.S. government. Chief Keokuk, who had not opposed the advance of the white men and voluntarily moved west of the Mississippi River from present day Illinois, was then removed again to a reservation in Kansas, although a four hundred square mile strip surrounding his village had exempted from the 1832 Black Hawk Purchase. Keokuk position was in conflict with Black Hawk who led part of their band into the Black Hawk War.

American Gothic, a painting by Grant Wood, is seen as a depiction of steadfast American pioneer spirit. Wood had seen a small white house built in the Carpenter Gothic architectural style in Eldon, Iowa and decided to paint the house along with “the kind of people I fancied should live in that house.”

Grant used his sister Nan (1900–1990) to model the woman, putting her in a “colonial print apron mimicking 19th century Americana”. Wood's dentist, Dr. Byron McKeeby (1867–1950) from Cedar Rapids, Iowa was the male inspiration.

FYI - The models never stood in front of the house, Wood painted each element (house and the people) separately.

Roseman Covered Bridge, Iowa, USA

Nobel Peace Prize, 1970,
Norman Ernest Borlaug (b. 3-25-1914; Cresco, Iowa
d. 9-12-2009; Dallas), an agricultural scientist and humanitarian, has been called the “father of the Green Revolution”.

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Herbert C. Hoover Speaking at His 80th Birthday Celebration, Photographic Print

Herbert Hoover (R)
(31th President, 1929-1933)
b. 8-10-1874; West Branch, IA
d. 10-20-1964; NYC

Herbert Hoover quotes ~
• “About the time we can make the ends meet, somebody moves the ends.”
• “Blessed are the young for they shall inherit the national debt.”
• “Economic depression cannot be cured by legislative action or executive pronouncement. Economic wounds must be healed by the action of the cells of the economic body - the producers and consumers themselves.”
• “It is just as important that business keep out of government as that government keep out of business.”
• “Older men declare war. But it is the youth that must fight and die.”
• “Wisdom consists not so much in knowing what to do in the ultimate as knowing what to do next.”

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The Music Man
Meredith Willson
b. 5-18-1902; Mason City, IA
d. 6-15-1984

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James Van Allen
b. 9-7-1914; Mt Pleasant, IA
d. 8-9-2006; Iowa City

The torus of energetic charged particles (plasma) held in place by Earth's magnetic field were confirmed by the Explorer missions directed by Van Allen, a space scientist at the University of Iowa.

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Captain James T. Kirk
b. 2233; Riverside, IA, Earth

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