Iowan magazine

Cowboys Ride on Big Dreams

Style Endures

Riding the Waves

All-Iowa Dish

Bacon!

The Mission of The Iowan
Celebrating the people and communities, the history and traditions, the ideas and events that make up this captivating place called Iowa.

In This Issue
July/August 2009
A Word from the Editor

Back to The Future

Catherine Bay operates a successful 21st-century ranching operation near Albia, yet her biannual cattle roundups recreate scenes from the 19th-century Wild West. Jeri Angelone began welcoming visitors to her acclaimed bed-and-breakfast in Bonaparte in 2006, its rooms adorned with vestiges of the building’s textile history. Scott Moats held open the trailer door last fall as a bison cow bolted toward her companions waiting in a 130-acre pasture — much-anticipated evidence that Broken Kettle Grasslands Preserve is returning to its centuries-old self. Mike McQuiston of Urbandale earns a living in the fast-evolving world of high tech, but when he snaps a simple 9-volt battery onto connector wires attached to a breath mint tin, he recaptures the magic of Morse code and communication in a simpler time.

Our structures, our landscape, our technology, even our dreams are inextricably intertwined with our shared past here in Iowa. A little bit of the state’s heritage creeps into every issue of The Iowan, but our July/August issue flaunts it boldly. Driving along the Lincoln Highway, designing menus and festivals to celebrate bacon, honoring immigrants in mosaic tile, preserving music 6,000 years old, awakening the dragon, developing emerging industry, producing pants and gloves, driving cattle, spotting storms, welcoming home bison — all chapters, old and new, in the ever-unfolding story of Iowa. Use our 8th annual Heritage Tourism Guide, beginning on page 25, to discover and rediscover even more.

— Beth Wilson, Editor

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