Statewide Iowa — Tuesday is statehood day. Iowa became a state on December 28th, 1846 — Iowa’s 175 anniversary, but Iowa hasn’t always been the word residents have used to refer to the state.
You hear this word in the lyrics of the Iowa Corn Song. The song was written in 1912. Leo Landis, curator at the State Historical Museum, says Ioway was not only spoken and sung, but it was printed in newspapers. “Ioway was almost as common if not a more common pronunciation for our state into the early 1900s,” Landis says. “I’ve seen a Cedar Rapids Gazette article talking about that transition in the 1920s, where you stop hearing, ‘Ioway.'” Landis says many states are named for native peoples. Albert Miller Lea, the soldier and engineer who conducted a survey of an area of the Midwest in the 1830s referred to the Iowa District of the Wisconsin Territory. “That’s how the Ioway Nation, indigenous peoples to our state, get associated with the land that we know as Iowa today,” Landis says. Iowa was first proposed as a state in 1844, with a northern border that would have extended up to an area that is today known as the Minnesota Twin Cities.
While Iowa was admitted to the union in 1846, there was a dispute about the southern border with Missouri.
Landis says the first big celebration of Iowa’s statehood was held in Muscatine on July I4th, 1888. It marked the 50 years of Iowa as a U.S. territory, then as a state. Newspaper accounts from the time described the day’s promising beginning and Mother Nature’s intervention at the end.
The Iowa legislature appropriated $10,000 for a celebration of the 50th anniversary of Iowa’s statehood. It was held in Burlington, in October of 1896, and Landis says newspaper accounts described what happened during the opening day’s parade.
Landis says celebrations on the actual date of statehood are uncommon because Iowa’s weather on December 28th is often less hospitable for gatherings. Landis says there are some important items in the State Historical Museum from the state’s territorial and early statehood period.
An exhibit at the State Historical Museum titled “You’ve got to know the territory” includes materials from Territorial Governor Robert Lucas and his wife, Friendly Lucas.
