Iowa Heritage Illustrated

Yearly Index, Iowa Heritage Illustrated, v.84 2003

Schaefer, Matthew

Iowans Who
PHOTOGRAPH COURTESY OF HERBERT HOOVER PRESIDENTIAL LIBRARY-MUSEUM
The American Relief Administration’s efforts in I 9 I 9 fed these Polish children. The work was overseen by Herbert Hoover. Iowa 
has played a major role in combating world hunger, through wartime relief, scientific advancements, and farm production.
50 loiva Heritage Illustrated
I
owa has a well-earned reputation as the world's 
foremost producer of food. The state's soil and 
climate and the industry of its farmers have won 
Iowa the enviable title of the world's bread­
basket. Less well known, however, is the role played 
by individual Iowans in sustaining the rest of the 
world. George Washington Carver, Herbert Hoover, 
Henry A. Wallace, and Norman Borlaug all made 
significant contributions to improving food production 
and distribution in the 20th century.
Food is among the most compelling of human 
needs, yet it has always been a struggle to feed the 
world. We have developed high-yield grains and 
worldwide distribution networks, yet one billion of 
the world's population of six billion still suffer from 
chronic malnutrition. With global population increas­
ing by 100 million each year, ensuring adequate food 
for all people will be a continuing challenge.
Wars, revolutions, and climatic changes have often 
disrupted networks of food production and distribu­
tion. Throughout the 20th century, famines have 
developed in times of crisis. In these crises, Iowans 
have stepped up to meet the challenge of feeding the 
world.
George Washington Carver's work enabled 
southern farmers to shift from single-crop farming to 
diversified agriculture. Herbert Hoover led relief
efforts that fed one billion people during and after 
two world wars. Henry A. Wallace developed hybrid 
seeds and worked to make them available to all. 
Norman Borlaug devoted his professional life to 
creating high-yield, disease-resistant grains. These 
four men epitomize what Iowa has done for the 
world.
The following four essays relate the contributions 
of these four Iowans in their historic contexts. But this 
is more than a look back at past achievements. It is 
also a clarion call to the next generation of Iowans 
and Americans to step up and relieve world hunger. It 
is our duty to act on the legacy we have inherited 
from Carver, Hoover, Wallace, and Borlaug, and to do 
what we can to ensure the equitable distribution of 
food throughout the world.
—by Matthew Schaefer
M atthew Schaefer is an archivist at the Herbert Hoover Presidential 
Library-Museum in West Branch, Iowa. Our thanks to the Hoover 
Library-Museum for permission to publish the following four essays, 
first presented at its October 2002 symposium, "Four Iowans Who 
Fed the World." (Copyright held by the Hoover Library-Museum.)
— The Editor
Summer 2003 51


English

Four Iowans Who Fed the World

Horton, Loren N

Iowa's Barns: Form & Function

Wikert, Kathryn Webb

daunting rofe offamiCy archivist
“Who will put together the Stageman history?” 
worried my mother in her final days.
“I can do that,” I replied.”You’re almost 
finished, aren’t you?”
“Well, yes . . .” she answered.
And, so, the torch was passed, and I became 
the fifth-generation caretaker of the green 
wooden writing box brought with the Christo­
pher and Mary (Dring) Stageman family from 
England in l840.The responsibility transferred 
from Christopher to James to Mark to Ruth 
had now been given to me.
Opening the roughhewn box for the first 
time after my mother’s passing, I felt as if I were 
lifting the lid of a treasure chest. An air of 
anticipation surrounded me as summer sunlight 
exposed the contents. First I carefully removed 
the English ledger filled with entries written in 
Christopher Stageman’s own hand.Then I gently 
lifted out the stack of family letters from the 
19th century. I leafed past the familiar gold rush 
letters and then gasped with excitement at 
discovering Sarah’s Salt Lake City letters, written 
in a fine hand, the ink now faded. I had forgot­
ten these letters existed. As I shuffled through 
the thin, blue stationery, out fell Christopher’s 
pocket-sized list of personal possessions, the 
value of each assigned in English pounds. Was 
this a list of items brought with the family from 
England, where Christopher had been employed 
by SirWastel Brisco on his Crofton Hall estate? 
Or were they items brought from Fairhill, 
Maryland, to Kanesville, Iowa, as the family 
followed the Mormon movement?
Recognition sank in. The history of the 
Stageman family was nowhere near finished. 
There were too many pieces of the puzzle yet 
to be solved. My mother knew that, I suddenly 
realized. Now, almost nine years later I can 
more fully appreciate being entrusted with the 
daunting role of family archivist.
Pursuing the pieces to the family puzzle 
through clues provided by this treasured collec­
tion of letters has led me on a personal journey 
of discovery and opened up a world of people, 
places, and opportunities I could never have 
imagined. Transcribing the letters from the 
handwritten copies into a word-for-word typed 
text filled a summer and pulled me into the lives 
of the authors. I became entranced by the 
universality of emotions expressed by the letter 
writers.
By the following summer I knew that I 
wanted a deeper sense of the landscapes of 
their lives, and, so, the family history jaunts 
began. Traveling to the sites of origin of the 
letters has led me on delightful trips to the 
rolling pastures of Fair Hill, Maryland; to the 
loess hills of western Iowa, where the houses of 
James and John Stageman still stand; to the 
wagon ruts visible at “parting of the ways” near 
South Pass, Wyoming; to the "rose of the 
desert,” Salt Lake City; across the Great Basin 
on the California Trail to rugged Carson City 
and Virginia City; and finally, on into California 
gold rush country in the foothills of the Sierra 
Nevada Mountains. “Family vacations” have 
taken on new meaning.
Looking beyond the names and the dates 
on my family tree and actually retracing the 
steps of my ancestors have given me a greater 
understanding of my heritage and led me to an 
appreciation of their struggles and joys. I hope 
that you, too, will find the puzzling out of family 
history to be a wondrous journey, with 
bounteous rewards.
— Kathryn Webb Wikert


The Daunting Role of Family Archivist

Lufkin, Jack

Four Iowans & the Nazi Olympics

Briggs, Mary Wear

The Girls 
They Left Behind
by Mary Wear Briggs
I
n the years right before World War II, I taught in a 
small town in northeast Iowa. It was a happy time, 
a carefree time, with few complications. My life was 
relatively simple. I made $90 per month and ate in res­
taurants, along with the Bachelor Club of the town. The 
Bachelor Club was a group of a dozen or so single boys 
who had never left their hometown or who, because of 
the Depression, had returned. Some were college gradu­
ates who lived at home and worked in the bank or their 
father's law office, or hometown sons teaching in the 
high school. Some could only find work as soda jerks 
or meter readers.
At our favorite restaurant, after the supper hour, 
my teacher friends and I often remained to play crib- 
bage or just talk and listen to the jukebox. It was our 
singles' gathering place. At times, with much ado, the 
boys would announce that they were going to hold a 
bachelors' meeting that night. To tease them, we girls 
would go down and bang on the locked door demand­
ing to get in. Their "meeting" was just playing poker 
and drinking spiked Cokes, no doubt.
For recreation, we bicycled, ice skated in winter, 
played bridge, picnicked, dated, and danced. We went 
to every big band around, to Clear Lake, Rochester, 
Waterloo, Spillville—anywhere that had a big ballroom. 
We gathered by the stage and cheered and clapped 
loudly when the bands went on national radio on Sat­
urday nights.
The bowling alley was off limits for teachers as, of 
course, were the pool halls and beer parlors. All female
teachers were, however, expected to belong to the Mon­
day night women's club. When we missed a meeting, 
we heard, "If those teachers would stay home on Sun­
day night, they could get here for the meetings."
On one particular Sunday morning, I had gone to 
church, then crossed town with my friends, Helen and 
Marian, to Marian's family's restaurant. The café was 
in a retired railroad dining car, with an extended kitchen. 
There Marian's mother prepared the best Sunday din­
ners in town. The smell of roast chicken and dressing 
urged us on as we crossed the open lot to the dining 
car. The menu was roast beef or pork, plump country- 
raised roast chicken, garden-grown potatoes with gravy, 
a vegetable, salad, and good homemade pie piled high 
with glistening white meringue capped with peaks of 
gold—all this for 65 or 75 cents.
After we ate, we walked to where I roomed. I read 
the Sunday paper. The front page pictured the Japanese 
peace delegation bowing to President Roosevelt. I de­
cided to take a nap, as I had a date that night.
I awakened to my landlady calling up the stairs, 
"Mary, turn on your radio. Japan is bombing Pearl Har­
bor!" It was December 7, 1941. I listened as the urgent 
news unfolded, not fully realizing then that my secure 
little world had disappeared while I napped, and I 
would never find it again.
Of course, we had all read in the newspapers of 
Hitler's Nazis, as they goose-stepped across Europe. We 
watched the latest newsreels in the movie theaters as 
thousands of Germans gave the " Heil Hitler" salute. We
172 Iowa Heritage Illustrated
hoped we would never have to fight, but deep inside 
us we knew someday we would have to help stop him.
My date that night was on a very low key. We spent 
our time driving around, talking about the war, and lis­
tening on the radio to the hysterical reports coming from 
Hawaii. We both knew he would be called up soon along 
with all of oyr other friends.
In January 1942, a few weeks after the war started, 
a boy I knew dropped out of college and came home. 
He called late that afternoon. "Would you like to go 
skating?" he asked. Although I was not especially good 
at it, I loved to ice skate, and I often spent many hours, 
after 1 had finished mv teaching day, skating on the 
flooded pond across from my school.
" I would love to go, but what are you doing home?" 
I asked.
"I've enlisted. I'm leaving for boot camp in the 
morning."
We went and waltzed together around and around, 
alone on the pond. Darkness came. He was very quiet 
and I'm sure frightened inside. I, too, felt his sadness 
and envisioned his fear of the future. He took me home, 
then he went home to supper. I never saw him again. 
That encounter was my first experience of losing a 
young friend, and it still remains with me.
In the summer of 1942, four of us from northeast 
Iowa went down to a Tennessee camp to see the boys 
we knew. In that small, very southern town, we attended 
a canteen dance every night. Every boy from Iowa tried 
to show us a good time. They took us out to their camp: 
no fancy barracks, no mess hall, no non-commissioned 
officers club. Their tents covered the bluegrass hills and 
valleys in rows and rows. When we lined up to eat with 
them from huge kettles and tin plates, there in that open 
pasture, we learned what the mess in "mess-call" meant. 
Their night hours were indefinite; they told us that all 
they needed to do was crawl through the old farm fence 
and find their tent. They didn't need much; they were 
on their way overseas. By that November they were in 
battle in Africa.
Later one of the boys I had gone to see was killed in 
Italy. Another dancing partner, after fighting in Italy, 
was transferred to the Pacific and came home when the 
war was over with jungle rot to the knees and various 
rare fevers. He was hospitalized for almost a year.
B
y the fall of 1942, all the boys I knew had gone to 
war. I read every new book that came into the 
public library. It was a dull, dull year!
By now, the women's club had become active in the 
Led Cross. We attended classes in home nursing and
first aid and sewed long-sleeved, dull cotton dresses to 
include in "Bundles for Britain" for the children being 
evacuated from London. For the soldiers we knitted 
scarves, which were probably thrown overboard on the 
way to Africa or the South Pacific.
In the spring of 1943, a friend (the junior high prin­
cipal) and I decided to take a more active part in the 
war effort. We resigned our jobs and went to Cedar 
Rapids to join the WAVES (Women's Naval Reserve). I 
didn't pass the eyesight test. Our second choice was the 
WACs (Women's Army Corps). We took a bus to the 
WAC's national headquarters in Des Moines. Hotels 
were taken over by the WACs and boys coming in for 
induction.
We arrived late in the evening. At headquarters, we 
picked up the slips for our "free" reserved room. We 
found the room, in a sleazy, lower east side hotel. Boys 
unable to sleep were going up and down the hall in 
their undershorts to the only bathroom on the floor. 
There were no locks on the doors. We walked into our 
room. There on our bed sprawled a young man sound 
asleep. We spent the night in an all-night breakfast bar.
In the morning, in front of the Hotel Fort Des 
Moines, we climbed aboard a canvas-covered truck, 
among a load of young men, and headed toward the 
induction center. I was given a short, white gown, told 
to strip, put it on, and get in line. Coming to the strip­
ping room, I had passed that line—men carelessly at­
tired in short, white gowns, with plenty of white ex­
posed behinds.
Never having had a physical in a doctor's office, I 
stood pondering the gown. The safest way would be to 
put it on with the opening in the front—I'd have more 
control. I came out and took my place at the end of a 
long line of nervous, white-reared boys.
Finally, I reached the front.
"Mary Lauretta Wear."
I opened the door. There stood three young, very 
bored doctors. I clutched the front of my gown with 
both hands!
"Oh, God, a girl, and she even has it on backwards!"
Again I was told to take it off. I stripped and climbed 
up on one of the unoccupied tables. Another doctor 
walked in, and for an eternity they stood over me, visit­
ing back and forth while I lay there completely exposed, 
studying the ceiling.
My eyesight saved me. To my relief, I was rejected 
from the WACs. My friend signed up that night and 
was sent to an army air base in Texas. She worked in 
the flight tower for the duration.
Five of my friends and I rented a furnished upstairs 
apartment in a house in Des Moines in the summer of
Winter 2003 1 73
I
t
1943. We called ourselves "The Harem." By then, 
women had taken over the factory jobs of the men who 
had gone overseas. Most were young single women or 
women without young children. We were told that it 
was the patriotic thing to do. "Help the War Effort." 
"Help Bring the Boys Home."
U.S. Rubber had just completed a new complex of 
buildings in Des Moines to produce ammunition. They 
were hiring. After being fingerprinted and checked by 
the FBI—a new experience—I was hired. I worked with 
.30-caliber tail-gunner ammunition, loading it into a 
weighing and measuring machine. The job was a long 
way from the soft life I had led as a teacher. I couldn't 
work fast enough, scooping the ammunition by hand 
from large carts, then sorting and rolling it into the 
machine. My machine often shut down for lack of car­
tridges. 1 wasn't too popular with the machinists! My 
back soon ached; my ankles became swollen from stand­
ing ten to twelve hours on the cement. The ends of my 
fingers were calloused and bleeding, my nails worn 
down to the quick. But 1 was making more money than 
I ever had teaching.
W
ork shifts at the factory alternated every six
weeks. By the time my stomach and sleep 
pattern had adjusted, it was time to move to 
the next shift. Many times we worked twelve-hour days, 
seven days a week. Although we were almost as lonely 
as the boys we knew, now in training camps or some­
where overseas, we felt that we were doing something 
worthwhile. We felt proud when our boyfriends wrote 
and said they had used or seen cartridges marked "DM 
43."
Probably one of my greatest shocks, in my educa­
tion, involved the "street" women who came, from ne­
cessity, to work in the plant. Few men were left to pa­
tronize the bars and streetwalkers of the red-light dis­
trict on the lower, shabby side of town. With the streets 
and bars empty, the women came to the factories in their 
skimpy attire, showing generous cleavage, their faces 
heavy with makeup, and their hair in hues of orange or 
red. They were rude, hardened, belligerent women, but 
most of all they spit out curses and gutter language like 
the toughest longshoremen. Some words I had never 
heard before, and until years later 1 didn't even know 
what they meant. They probably enjoyed the shock treat­
ment they gave us! Our machinists were all older men. 
They told us the history of some of the women and ad­
vised us to stay away from them. Now I wonder if these 
women might have had brothers or lovers overseas. But 
we left them alone, so I never found out.
After work at the plant, we were usually too tired 
to go out, and there was little to do when we did. Some­
times, one of the girls would get out her wedding gown 
and dress up for us. She had purchased the gown and 
veil and was on her way to Louisiana to be married 
when her guy was shipped overseas. Another room­
mate had already received word that her boyfriend had 
been killed.
Other times, we would meet downtown in some 
restaurant that had a jukebox and dance together to a 
Benny Goodman record, or perhaps "Josephine," "Don't 
Sit Under the Apple Tree," or "In the Mood." Frances 
Langford's "I'll Be Seeing You" brought tears to our eyes. 
These gatherings didn't drive away the yearning for our 
boyfriends and our past good times. To us, then, it 
seemed that the war would drag on forever.
D
uring the war, Babe's was the top nightclub in 
Des Moines. I believe it was the only club where 
you could buy illegal drinks by the glass. Iowa 
was still dry, to the extent that you bought your bottle 
of liquor only at the state liquor store. One night a group 
of us girls decided to see what went on at Babe's. We 
climbed the stairs, found a table, and ordered drinks, 
mostly favorites of our boyfriends, whiskey sours or 
scotch on the rocks. We talked about our latest V-mail 
letters.
Most of us wrote to several boys. With some we had 
worked out a code to know where they were and 
whether they were in combat. If they wrote of hot sand 
and long marches, they were in the African campaign. 
If they told of beautiful sunsets and the moon reflecting 
on the water, they were in the South Pacific. Always 
large sections of the letters were cut out by the censors, 
with only small parts left for us to reread and dream over.
We left Babe's disappointed. It was filled with WACs 
and middle-aged couples out for a good meal. We didn't 
do any "swinging and swaying." As we went down the 
stairs, we met ten cops on the way up. Babe's was raided 
that night and shut down. We were relieved to be on 
our way home. Babe's was frequently raided, but it was 
always open again in a short time, and the liquor con­
tinued to flow.
In our "harem," war rationing affected us severely. 
As single women, we received our families' ration books 
only after most of the coupons had been removed. Gas 
and tire rationing didn't affect us directly; none of us 
had cars and there was no one to take us places any­
way. But coffee, butter, and sugar were rationed and 
almost nonexistent for us. Canned goods became scarce. 
Fresh chickens soon left the markets. Other meat as we
174 Iowa Heritage Illustrated
knew it could not be found, unless you liked mutton. 
Some thought they could fool us by putting it in ham­
burger, but one whiff, while it was cooking, and the cam­
ouflage was known. On rare occasions of eating out, 
leg of lamb was delicious. A once properous meat mar­
ket near us had a "Gone Fishing" sign hanging on the 
door most of the time.
One of the harem girls' father worked at a German 
POW camp in northern Iowa. Whenever she went home, 
she brought back a package or two of T-bone steaks and 
pounds of butter. We never questioned why the Ger­
man prisoners ate better than we did. We just enjoyed!
One time, a teacher friend was going to Chicago to 
see her college sweetheart off for overseas. She had no 
silk stockings left for the occasion. She would either need 
to go bare-legged or wear cotton hose, as we all had to 
do. I loaned her my last precious pair. Silk stockings 
were very sheer and very delicate. We carefully cro­
cheted the runs to preserve them as long as we could. I 
always smile when I think about what a wonderful last 
night my stockings must have had! When my friend 
returned them, they were completely blown out at the 
knees.
In late 1943 I was transferred to the large-caliber tail- gunner ammunition wing. Each day, I brought in my lunch, changed to coveralls, and remained 
locked in until the end of the shift. I was the only woman 
in the wing. I went from machine to machine every half- 
hour, gathered sample casings loaded with powder, and 
took them back to my glass-enclosed room and weighed 
them on a delicate, glass-enclosed scale. If they weighed 
short on powder I went back and told the operator to 
shut down until he brought the amount of powder up 
to the desired weight.
Each machine had a separate, reinforced cubicle. The 
cubicles stretched down both sides of the wing, prob­
ably twelve to a side. All cubicles had their own escape 
doors to the outside. To eliminate friction, on the half- 
hour the ceilings, walls, and floors of the cubicles were 
washed down.
One day a machine went haywire, and a bullet shot 
through the machinist's chest. Another man was be­
headed when a machine fell from overhead. I seemed 
to have conditioned myself against danger.
On another day, a young government inspector from 
back east stood behind me, checking me as I weighed 
and recorded the powder weight from each machine. I 
tapped the case, as I had previously been shown to do, 
to get out all the remaining powder before weighing. 
He turned chalky white. "Good God, girl, don't you
know that could explode!" He left quickly, and I was 
never checked again.
Soon after D-Day, in June 1944, the company told 
us that we had made enough ammunition to last for 
the next twenty years. We all thought the war would 
soon be over. The plant started to lay off personnel. Some 
departments started to make a new, strange, and very 
smelly product—large sheets of clear plastic.
One of the harem girls left to work in a German 
POW camp. Another went back home to pump gas in 
her father's gas station. As there was no work in Des 
Moines for the thousands of us laid off, my friend Ha­
zel and I decided to try our luck somewhere we had 
never been. Neither of us had seen the mountains. In 
fact, we had hardly traveled out of Iowa. We boarded a 
fast train, the Denver Zephyr, and headed to Colorado.
Mary Wear Briggs, from Missouri Valley, Iowa, wrote this remi­
niscence in 1988, as part of a larger memoir that she compiled in 
1992 and later donated to the State Historical Sociehf of Iowa. 
Her writings on her childhood home in Harrison County and on 
chasing chickens have appeared in earlier issues.
Winter 2003 1 75
v
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SHSI (DES MOINES) SHSI (OES MOINES): DES MOINES REGISTER AND TRIBUNE
Scrambling down a cargo net, WACs at Fort 
Des Moines simulate a landing from a troop­
ship (August 1945).
176 Iowa Heritage Illustrated
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June 1944: Women workers from  the Iowa Ordnance Plant at Burlington and the Sheaffer Pen Company in Fort Madison dance w ith 
soldiers from  Camp Ellis, Illinois.at a USO-operated community center in Flint Hills,a federal housing project in Burlington. First open only 
to ordnance workers. Flint Hills had recently started accepting wives of soldiers w ith children, at reduced rents,“ whose allotment checks 
would provide only skimpy living and probably less desirable quarters elsewhere," said the Des Mo/nes Register. W ith  a population of more 
than 2,000, Flint Hills had its own stores, library, school, playground, and recreation center.
Winter 2003 177
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Home on furlough in August 1942, Merlin 
Garrison watches as R.W. Collins carefully 
paints the names of Franklin County men 
in the U.S. Armed Forces.The memorial arch 
in Hampton’s courthouse square was spon­
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180 Iowa Heritage Illustrated


The Girls They Left Behind

Vogt, Michael W

The Fighting 51st Iowa in the Philippines

Hurt, R Douglas

Norman Borlaug: Geneticist of the Green Revolution

Lana, Eric

Iowa Eldorado
Searching for Gold in 1858
.
À
s Iowans sat down to read their newspa- 
pers in the spring of 1858, a sudden glimmer 
of hope seemed to brighten the hard eco- 
A  nomic times that plagued the nation.
The story began because Iowa farmer Jeremiah 
Hewitt also caught a glimmer of something bright. 
Hewitt was prospecting for coal on his 48-acre farm 
eight miles north of Osceola, in Clarke County. Instead 
of coal he found gold.
"He struck a small vein of black sand and quartz 
rock, which upon examination, was found to contain 
gold/' a Mr. Eldridge wrote to the Burlington Daily 
Hawk-Eye, where the story appeared on March 20. 
Eldridge was certain "there is no humbug about it."
"Several Californians have since visited the place 
and tested it, and pronounce it pure gold. Men are en­
gaged in digging," Eldridge added. "Great excitement 
prevails."
The same day that the story appeared in the Hazvk- 
Eye, the Winterset Madisonian reported discoveries of 
gold in Madison and Adair Counties. Within five days, 
citizens in Davenport and Dubuque were reading the 
exciting news in their own papers.
By mid-April, according to Osceola's postmaster 
Ridgway, "a company of some 50 hands [was] at work 
turning South River" and building a dam and a race. 
"There are others making good wages, digging in the 
hills bordering the streams."
So began the mad scramble for gold in a new 
Eldorado—Iowa.
J
udging from the newspapers, gold seemed to 
be just about everywhere. Twenty-three-year- 
old Benjamin Sears went looking for it along 
the Maquoketa River, about a mile north of his 
family's mill. He found it, a Dubuque paper reported, 
"in every pan of dirt he washed out."
Jonas Keck discovered gold in a slough west of
Sigourney, in Keokuk County. "Mr. Keck spent several 
years in the gold mines of California," papers said, "and 
ever since his return has had an abiding faith that the 
pure metal would be found in many localities in Iowa."
Gold appeared ten miles outside Burlington, on 
Mud Creek. There, some 50 or more eager gold hunters 
wanted to tear down "Hall's old Mill" and look for more 
deposits. The owners resisted; trouble was anticipated.
In Clarke and Madison Counties, gold was show­
ing up "in almost every slough branch."
Farmer Jacob Glass in Marshall County found "a 
fine specimen of gold bearing quartz . . . near his own 
residence." Glass must have been startled to find gold 
there, especially since there were no major waterways 
in his township, and not even a creek on his 160 acres.
Maquoketa mayor Jonas Clark found "yellow shin­
ing particles, very much resembling gold dust, which 
he dug from the bottom of his cellar, beneath his store 
room, immediately under the Excelsior office," the pa­
per reported. "Mr. C. has no doubt but this is the pure 
'rhino,' and he feels quite confident that large quanti­
ties of it may be got by a little more excavation, and by 
sinking deeper. If this discovery should prove to be a 
paying one, we may expect soon to see our streets, al­
leys, and vacant lots dug over into hills and hollows."
In Ottumwa, the same concern surfaced. On a Mon­
day, gold was discovered there. On Tuesday, despite 
near-constant rain, "a hundred men, perhaps more, were 
busy in most of the ravines and gulches. . . .  It would 
seem that here, almost in the heart of our city, in every 
part of our bluff through which a stream penetrates, and 
in all the ravines about us there is gold."
At the diggings in Burlington, "a great many people 
were there, and a great many boys, with their panta­
loons rolled up very high and very tight, prospecting 
with tin cups, dippers, gourds, broken skillets, old shoes, 
cow's horns, broken crockery ware, dilapidated hats, 
&c., &c. Further up, washers, cradles, and other inge­
nious machines were . . . [separating] the shining dust
■
2 Iowa Heritage Illustrated
/
from the common earth__Such a shaking, and scratch­
ing and digging and washing, was never seen since the 
whiteman first crossed the Mississip. Spades, shovels, 
hoes, sharp sticks, &c., were used in tossing over the 
old bones, hair, gravel and sand/'
In Iowa City, ''mechanics, merchants and laboring 
men are making exhaustive preparations to dig them­
selves rich immediately if not sooner."
According to the widespread declarations of gold 
published in Iowa's newspapers, digging and panning 
for gold occurred mainly in two distinct regions: the 
eastern third of the state, and central and south-central 
Iowa. Some editors, skeptical of "dame Rumor," took 
care to attribute their reports of gold to "reliable gentle­
men" or to "returned Californians" (every town seemed 
to have a few forty-niners whose experience 
in the goldfields qualified them as experts in 
identifying gold or likely places to hunt for it).
The cautious Burlington Hawk-Eye reported on 
the "considerable excitement" in town: "Dams 
have been commenced—races dug, and small 
streams turned from their channels." But the 
newspaper still wanted verification from a mint 
in the East, even though "our own citizens [are] 
hardly likely to get into a fever about nothing."
Newspapers carefully described the form 
in which the specimens were found: most of­
ten "mixed with black sand" or associated with 
"rotten" or "decomposed" quartz. But was it 
the real thing?
appealed to the earth, with spade and pick-axe," as the 
Waverly Republican described them.
Sometimes the gold was the size of a grain of wheat 
or the head of a pin. Often it was much smaller. Most 
newspaper reports agreed that successful gold seekers 
were making $2 to $5 a day, "with an occasional 'ten 
strike.' " This was good money, according to historian 
Merle Davis. Harvest laborers in Davenport that year 
were paid $1 plus board for a 15-hour day (half the rate 
earned the previous year); heavy rains ruined much of 
Iowa's wheat and oats, and the hard financial times only 
worsened the situation for Iowans. But like many pa­
pers reporting on the gold discoveriers, the Burlington 
Hawk-Eye often asked the question: "Will it pay for dig­
ging? Ah! there's the bite."
old made its way into Iowa about 
2.5 million years ago. As Paul 
Garvin explains in Iowa's Min­
erals, glaciers from Canada and 
Minnesota "scoured weathered granite out­
crops and brought small amounts of gold along 
with rocks and primarily silicate minerals" like 
quartz and magnetite.
Over time, through weathering and ero­
sion, rocks were slowly broken down and min­
erals swept into waterways. The gold settled 
as sediment along with other material of simi­
lar size and density, such as magnetite (some­
times called "black sand"), creating what min­
ers would call "placer deposits."
So, yes, there was gold in Iowa—and it was 
attracting everyone from "inveterate loafers 
who have never been known to pass an indus­
trious hour at any honest employment" to 
"men of profitable business [who now] have
More Gold Found.—A gentleman yesterday 
afternoon exhibited to us a specimen of gold- 
beariug quartz, picked up near the Catfish, in 
this township. “ If this court is any Judge 
of quartz, and she think she ar,M the golp 
was genuine. Now for a rush to the gold 
diggins! Dubuque, county hat nover been 
behind any of her sister counties in any na­
tural or unnutural productions—tall corn, big 
pumpkins, long squashes, Democratic voters, 
or wild Irishmen—and she will not bo be­
hind any of them in gold. We expect soon 
to hear of the discovery of an immense pla- 
cor where one hundred dollars a day can be 
made with two boys and an old wash pan.
Seriously, however, there is good reason to 
believe that gold in considerable quantities 
is to be found in this county. We have 
long known that upon a certain farm In Jef­
ferson township, owned by a gentleman who 
has worked in the gold regions of other coun­
tries, gold did exist—and we know no reason 
why it should not bo found in other places in
the county. Perhaps the golden age is about 
to dawn again.
Dubuque Daily Times, May 22,1858
Spring 2003 3
The Davenport Daily Gazette answered wryly: "We 
presume no one man has yet found enough to purchase 
a meal's victuals."
S
till, times were hard, following the national 
Panic of 1857, and hunting for gold held prom­
ise. The economic downturn, the extensive cov­
erage by Iowa newspapers, and plain old curi­
osity and hope motivated many Iowans to join the 
search. "We think that there are many persons in vari­
ous parts of the country now out of employment, who 
could make sufficient out of the business [of gold seek­
ing] to procure for themselves the necessaries of life, 
with the chance of making more," a Davenport newspa­
per ventured.
Yet Iowa newspapers also cautioned against the lure 
of easy riches. The Waverly Republican advised, "Let 
those who have nothing to do go to dig, but let no man 
leave his occupation to look after the gold 
diggings." The Republican also reprinted 
advice from a Chicago paper: "We trust 
the good people of Iowa will not run wild 
with the idea that their State is to be a 
rival of California. It would be a misfor­
tune if a country so magnificently en­
dowed for purposes of agriculture 
should have its development retarded by 
a chase after gold, which never, except 
in a few rare cases, pays so well as raising 
potatoes."
As in any gold rush, merchants and 
tradespeople may have had the most to 
gain, especially if it brought new people 
into the state. Some newspapers, playing 
their important role of town booster, 
claimed that it did. "Steamboats arriving 
at [Des Moines] bring with them gold 
seekers from all parts of the country," the 
Waverly Republican said in late May. The 
Marietta Express reprinted reports that "a 
large tide of emigration from Indiana and 
Illinois is pouring into the gold region" 
in Clarke and adjoining counties. An­
other paper reported "hundreds from 
Ohio, Pennsylvania &c."
An influx of people into Iowa would bring a de­
mand for supplies and services, especially important 
after the Panic of 1857 had depressed prices and stalled 
railroad and town development. But Iowa editors ad­
vertised the promise of fertile soil of Iowa much more 
than the lure of gold. "Come to Iowa," a Davenport
4 Iowa Heritage Illustrated
paper enticed its distant readers. "Our soil is rich in ev­
ery respect, and gold can be dug from it in more ways 
than one."
Not everyone wanted a gold rush in Iowa. The 
Waverly Republican foresaw a flood of "adventurers of 
all classes seeking quick and violent fortunes." A 
Dubuque paper worried over a "stampede . . .  of all 
that is least worthy, least desirable." The Clinton Herald 
warned of "fools, mad men, and thieves."
"We mourn for Iowa," the New York Tribune wailed, 
in a story reprinted in Dubuque. "No State in the Union 
has made greater or more rapid advances in popula­
tion, morality, intelligence, thrift than she has. . . . 
Though times are hard with her people, as with almost 
all others, she has an admirable soil and a most indus­
trious, energetic, intelligent people, and was about to 
work gradually and healthfully out of her difficulties.
" But a great trial, a great peril, has suddenly assailed 
her. Her future, but yesterday so hopeful, is now over-
More Gold,
cast and gloomy. Gold has been found on her soil!" Now, 
the Tribune warned, on the "heels ot the digger" w ould  
come "the whiskey-seller, the dicer, the drab."
1 leavy rains and high streams that spring and sum­
mer hindered the search for gold, although, as one pa­
per quipped, "the present is an excellent time for wash-
Wo have previosly noticed the roport find­
ing of gold in Ilardon County, and aro now tat* 
lifted tnosa report* are true. Mr, Stophen G. 
Crane, forraorly of Vinton but now ox Steam­
boat Kook write* us enclosing a specimen .that 
was obtained ft from a einglo pan full of earth, 
and is poet* In comparison with what haa been 
found/' This specimen we hand to Mr# Jhon 
A. Billp.joweler and goldsmith -who subjected 
Is to every known test and pronoces it pars 
gold. Mr. C^ane says a numbor of peaces worth 
25 cents havobeen found, and onenngget worth 
$2.10 dug out a mile abonve the town. The 
existenco of gold in Hardih can no >loger be 
donbted, but in remains to be seen wheathor 
mining for wiil be remunerative.—-[Vinton 
Eagle.
W averly Republican, June 5, 1858
4
ing, as there is an abundance of water pretty much ev­
erywhere." From April through July, 28 inches of rain 
saturated Iowa City, twice the average of the four sur­
rounding years. In Hardin County, "high water is ob­
structing the progress of the miners; . . .  a great many 
say that they are making fair wages, with a prospect of 
doing better as soon as the water subsides."
As summer progressed, reports kept coming in of 
gold in new places: in Lucas, Decatur, Henry, and Dela­
ware Counties. Near Saylorville and Story City. Panora, 
Decorah, Danville, and Adel. Steamboat Rock and 
Strawberry Point. Fort Dodge attorney John Duncombe, 
rowing by Boonesboro and Millford on his way to Des 
Moines, observed "the wild gold excitement here" and 
noted it in his diary. "Every body was hunting gold."
Then he added what all Iowa was finding out: 
"Small particles were found in many places, but not 
enough worth digging for."
I
owa's 1858 gold rush died late that summer— 
barely four months since the first exciting reports, 
and just as gold was discovered in Colorado. "The 
gold excitement in Iowa has lulled as suddenly as 
it started," the Davenport Gazette noted in late July. "No 
one seems to have been injured by it but a few who left 
their homes in the East to become rich without labor by 
digging gold in our fertile State. Now and then we still 
read of small particles being discovered . . .  but in no 
case does it yield as profitably as digging potatoes."
"The 'gold hunters' around Des Moines who were 
going to turn the Coon, or some other river, or creek, 
from its bed, and make an everlasting fortune, have bro­
ken up," the Davenport Daily Morning News observed 
on August 2. "Thus dies one of the greatest 'discover­
ies' of the age. There is more money made at Des Moines 
by turning the stream of State revenue from its channel 
than in any other way."
Maybe the Morning News had said it all back in mid- 
May: "We have gold here in another shape; we have it 
in the agricultural wealth of our rich prairie soil." ❖
Eric Lana is a graduate student in public history at Middle Ten­
nessee State University and has worked at the State Historical 
Society as an archivist and researcher.
NOTE ON SOURCES
Citations and pnnt-outs from Iowa newspapers of 1858 of news items about gold 
discovenes are held in the Iowa Heritage Illustrated production files (SHSI-lowa City). 
Harvest wages in Davenport are from Merle Davis. "Wheat, Work, and Wages: The 
Iowa Experience. 1856-1865" (unpublished manuscript). Other sources include: Paul 
Garvin, Iowa's Minerals:Their Occurrence. Origins, Industries, and Lore (Iowa City: Univer­
sity of Iowa Press, 1998), and William J. Petersen,"Gold on the Prairie," The Palimpsest, 
34:12 (December 1958). 556-55.
Was gold discovered 
in your county in 1858? 
Check the newspapers!
You might say that Eric Lana, the author of this article, had 
something in common with gold-hunting lowans in 1858. 
He, too, was searching for gold— but he was looking for it 
in old Iowa newspapers.
In the last few years, while researching the underground 
railroad in Iowa with researcher John Zeller, Eric Lana has 
pored over dozens and dozens of Iowa newspapers from 
the 1850s. Frequent mention of gold discoveries in 1858 
caught his eye and led to further research. He found well 
over one hundred news items about gold being discov­
ered in Iowa.
O f the 39 counties where gold discoveries were re­
ported, most were in the eastern third of the state: Lee, 
Des Moines, Louisa, Muscatine, Scott, Clinton, Jackson, 
Dubuque, Clayton, Davis, Van Buren, Henry, Wapello, 
Mahaska, Keokuk, Cedar, Johnson, Iowa, Linn, Jones, Dela­
ware, Buchanan, Winneshiek, Bremer, and Floyd Counties. 
The others were in central and south-central Iowa: Decatur, 
Lucas, Clarke, Union, Warren, Madison, Adair, Guthrie, 
Dallas, Polk, Marshall, Story, Boone, and Hardin Counties.
Lana is quick to point out that there may well have 
been gold discoveries reported in other Iowa counties. 
After all, he doesn’t claim to have read every Iowa news­
paper from 1858. In western Iowa, for example, many 
counties were still being organized in 1858, were sparsely 
populated, and had far fewer newspapers.
Although gold was indeed found in Iowa, the real trea­
sure, for those of us who love Iowa history, are the exten­
sive collections of Iowa newspapers at the State Historical 
Society of Iowa’s research libraries in Iowa City and Des 
Moines. Some date as far back as the 1830s and 1840s. 
Those on microfilm can be borrowed through interlibrary 
loan. Make the request through your local library. For more 
information, call 5 15-281 -8741 (Des Moines) or 3 19-335- 
3916. O r check our Web site: www.iowahistory.org/library
Iowa newspapers from the last two centuries are 
goldmines of information about local, state, and national 
events and attitudes. Whether you’re curious about the 
1860s— or the 1960s— you’ll take great treasures,and plea­
sures, from reading newspapers from the past.
— The Editor
Spring 2003 5


Iowa Eldorado: Searching for Gold in 1858

Iowa Heritage Illustrated, vol.84 no.1, Spring 2003