state, United States
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- Iowa - Children's Encyclopedia (Ages 8-11)
- Iowa - Student Encyclopedia (Ages 11 and up)
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Also known as: Hawkeye State
Written by
Rex D. Honey,
Neil E. Salisbury•All
Fact-checked by
The Editors of Encyclopaedia Britannica
Last Updated: •Article History
Iowa, constituent state of the United States of America. It was admitted to the union as the 29th state on December 28, 1846. As a Midwestern state, Iowa forms a bridge between the forests of the east and the grasslands of the high prairie plains to the west. Its gently rolling landscape rises slowly as it extends westward from the Mississippi River, which forms its entire eastern border. The Missouri River and its tributary, the Big Sioux, form the western border, making Iowa the only U.S. state that has two parallel rivers defining its borders. Iowa is bounded by the states of Minnesota to the north, Wisconsin and Illinois to the east, Missouri to the south, and Nebraska and South Dakota to the west. Des Moines, in the south-central part of the state, is the capital. The state name is derived from the Iowa Native American people who once inhabited the area.
See article: flag of Iowa
Seal of Iowa
The eastern goldfinch is the state bird of Iowa.
Iowa's state flower is the wild rose.
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- Capital:
- Des Moines
- Population:
- (2020) 3,190,369; (2023 est.) 3,207,004
- Governor:
- Kim Reynolds (Republican)
- Date Of Admission:
- Dec. 28, 1846
- U.S. Senators:
- Joni Ernst (Republican)
- Chuck Grassley (Republican)
Iowa is one of the leading U.S. states in number of farms. More than nine-tenths of its land is devoted to agriculture, making it one of the top states in agricultural production. With rich soils, gently rolling hills, and ample precipitation, the state is particularly suitable for mechanized agriculture and has become a national leader in agribusiness. Traditionally most of Iowa’s industrial enterprises were tied to agricultural production; however, economic downswings and the collapse of land values in the 1980s made it essential for the state to diversify its economy as well as its workforce. By the end of the 20th century, more emphasis had been placed on banking, insurance, biotechnology, and research and development.
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Iowans are particularly proud of what their state offers: four seasons, open land, effective health care, a low crime rate, and a congenial social environment. Moreover, Iowa plays a unique role in the U.S. presidential election process, becoming the focus of national attention every four years when it kicks off the presidential primary season by holding its “first in the nation” caucuses, the statewide local political gatherings at which attendees express their preferences for presidential candidates. Iowa residents’ pride in their heartland lifestyle is given imaginative expression in the answer to the question posed in the motion picture Field of Dreams as the ghosts of baseball players past cavort on the diamond cut into a cornfield: “Is this heaven?” “No, it’s Iowa.” Area 56,273 square miles (145,745 square km). Population (2020) 3,190,369; (2023 est.) 3,207,004.
Land
Relief
Most of Iowa’s landscape is gently rolling hills or flat plains. The state’s elevation generally increases from east-southeast to west-northwest. The lowest point is within the city of Keokuk, in extreme southeastern Iowa where the Des Moines River enters the Mississippi, at just 480 feet (146 metres) above sea level. The highest spot, Hawkeye Point, is in northwest Iowa at 1,677 feet (511 metres) in elevation.
Britannica QuizU.S. State Capitals QuizThe state’s terrain and rich soils are the products of the continental ice sheets that periodically covered the state during the Pleistocene Epoch (about 2,600,000 to 11,700 years ago). The Illinoian ice sheet covered a small area of southeastern and extreme eastern Iowa, and in so doing it diverted the Mississippi and created a valley along its western front that can still be seen. Some 20,000 to 25,000 years ago the Wisconsin ice sheet moved southward in a lobe that ended at about the site of the present city of Des Moines. The Des Moines lobe began its final retreat about 13,000 to 14,000 years ago. Accompanying the last two stages of glaciation were extensive deposits of windblown silt, or loess. Over the millennia, the prevailing west winds carried the loess from the western plains into Iowa as the glaciers retreated. In extreme western Iowa the loess deposits accumulated to form what are known today as the Loess Hills, a line of bluffs 100 to 200 feet (30 to 60 metres) above the Missouri River valley. Across much of the rest of the state, lesser amounts of loess amassed. The combination of loess and prairie grasses generated an unusually fertile soil across most of Iowa.
The most varied relief anywhere in Iowa is the Driftless Area, a dry upland that was bypassed by glaciers, near the Mississippi River in northeastern Iowa. There tributaries of the Mississippi cut deeply into the underlying bedrock. The Mississippi bluffs stand 300 to 400 feet (90 to 120 metres) above the valley, and the network of tributaries creates a scenic and hilly landscape.
Drainage
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Most of the state is drained by the Mississippi River; only the extreme western and south-central areas are drained by the Missouri. Both of these rivers flow quite gently, while the upper Iowa and Turkey rivers in the Driftless Area generally have more rapids. Most of the state is underlain by pre-Illinoian drift, which has been eroded for at least a few hundred thousand years by a relatively dense network of streams. The geologically brief time since the Des Moines lobe retreated was insufficient for natural drainage networks to develop before the onset of farming in Iowa in the 19th century. The northwestern part of the Des Moines lobe retains a number of lakes, used mainly for recreation. Aside from these, the lakes and swamps that were left by the glaciers have been drained by a combination of natural erosion and tile drainage.
Soils
Most of the soils of Iowa, formed under prairie vegetation, are thick, dark in colour, and rich in organic matter and minerals. Only in the Driftless Area and along the dissected river valleys of the south and southeast are there lighter-coloured and less-fertile forest soils.
