We left Hannibal around noon taking Hwy 61 north to US 218 into Iowa City.  Our campground, Colony Country Campground, was located just north of Iowa City and Coralville in North Liberty.

Eastern Iowa was quite a surprise to us.  We, like most folks, always thought that the state was a sea of flat cornfields.  WRONG!  There are, indeed, lots and lots of cornfields and they are absolutely beautiful this time of year.  I’m sure that as summer wears on, the fields will become brown and dry and lose their beauty.  But for now, the landscape is beautiful.  There are many hills and huge trees and the farmhouses and accompanying silos and red barns are straight out of a Norman Rockwell painting.  And the people – everywhere we have been, we have found warm and friendly Iowans.

Our first stop was Iowa City and we were pleased to learn that there is much to see and do in the area.  We decided to begin with the Herbert Hoover Presidential Library located in his birthplace, West Branch.  The library is in a beautiful setting on 78 acres of huge old trees and immaculate grounds.  There is a reclamation project on much of the land surrounding the library grounds and historic area to return it to its natural state as a tall grass prairie.  The wildflowers were gorgeous!   At the time it was settled, 85% of what is now known as Iowa was tall grass prairie.  Trees were scarce until planted so timber to build homes and other structures, including the little two-room cottage where Hoover was born, had to be imported.  We know that rabbits love the tall grasses because we saw three of them on our walk around the grounds!

Hoover was the 31^st president, the first president born west of the Mississippi and Iowa’s only president.  He was raised as a Quaker and among the buildings in the historical area surrounding the library was an 1857 Quaker Meeting House (known to us as a church).  We learned that there were no preachers in the Quaker religion.  Instead, the congregation would sit quietly until God spoke through one of the members.  Those members, through whom God spoke, were called “recorded ministers”.  Hoover’s mother was a recorded minister.  Women and men sat on different sides of the aisle.

The Presidential Library was most interesting and we left with a much greater respect for old Herbert.  He was orphaned when he was 10 and was sent to live with a stern uncle in Oregon.  In 1891, he entered the first class of Stanford University and graduated with a degree in geology.  Not long after graduating, he took a job as a mining engineer in Australia.  At age 25, he married his college sweetheart, Lou Henry, also an Iowa native.  He was so talented that he quickly became very rich.  In fact, by the time he was 28, he was said to be the highest paid individual in the world at his age.  He was a millionaire ( a lot of money in those days) by age 40.  “Bert” and Lou spent about 12 years living abroad, as Bert worked for various foreign companies and subsequently started his own firm of engineering consultants based in London.  However, having been raised in the Quaker traditions of being humane and generous to others, Hoover needed more.  Money was not enough.  He wanted to be in public service and got that chance when, in 1914, he was asked to organize the effort to help Americans, who were stranded in Europe at the outbreak of World War I, get home.  The following years brought other opportunities for public service at the request of Presidents Wilson, Harding and Coolidge.  In 1929, he was inaugurated as the 31^st president.  He was the only president, except Kennedy, who returned his salary to the government coffers.

Of course, the stock market collapsed in October of his inaugural year and triggered the Great Depression.  Hoover was blamed.  His Quaker roots emphasized individualism which called for private institutions to provide relief, but his humanitarianism called for federal aid.  As a result, Hoover is reported to have done more than any previous President to relieve the widespread distress, paving the way for the anti-depression New Deal measures.  However, he did not win a second term.

Hoover continued his life of service to others until his death in 1964.  He regained much of the respect he had lost and became a revered elder statesmen around the world.  President and Mrs. Hoover are buried on the grounds.  In keeping with their Quaker roots, the graves are very simple.  There is no Presidential seal – only the names and dates.

On Wednesday, July 12, we visited the Amana Colonies, just west of Iowa City.  The colonies consist of seven villages established by German immigrants.  Seeking religious freedom, the early settlers of the Amanas left Germany in 1842, settling near Buffalo, New York, calling their community the Ebenezer Society.  They, like the Quakers, did not have ministers.  Their belief was that God, through the Holy Spirit, may inspire individuals to speak.  This gift of inspiration or prophecy was the basis for a religious group that became known as the “Community of True Inspiration”.

By 1855, more land was needed and the “Community of True Inspiration” moved west, forming their first village along the Iowa River, which they called Amana, meaning “remain faithful”. Eventually, 26,000 acres were purchased and six more villages were settled – Middle Amana, High Amana, West Amana, East Amana, South Amana and Homestead.  The Amana Colonies would become one of America’s longest-lived and largest religious communal societies remaining essentially unchanged for 89 years.

The community adopted the communal way of life based upon Christian teachings.  Called the Amana Society, the group shared the property and businesses of the seven Amana villages.  Families were assigned living quarters and each person over school age was assigned tasks in the kitchens, fields, factories or shops.  Over 50 communal kitchens provided three meals daily to Colonists.  These kitchens were operated by the women of the Colonies and well supplied by the village smokehouse, bakery, icehouse and dairy and by huge gardens, orchards and vineyards maintained by the villagers.  Farming and the production of wool and calico supported the community, but village enterprises, everything from clock making to brewing and winemaking, were vital.