Central Iowa’s small farming-community towns seem a world apart—historic and sincere pockets of well-tended homes and businesses, rich in off-the-beaten-path, surprising, one-of-a-kind attractions.
One sunny day, I set off with a friend on a small-town Iowa adventure, driving south from the Twin Cities to Central Iowa, past picturesque farmsteads with precisely planted fields. As we followed Interstate 35 south to visit a cluster of towns roughly west of Des Moines, hunger struck at the outskirts of a town named Dows. The interstate sign promised food, so we exited and headed into town.
On the wide main street, the Down Home Café held 10 tables and a collection of old Pepsi-Cola bottles and cans on high shelves. The menu offerings included chicken gizzards and oatmeal pie.
“Are the gizzards good?” I asked the waitress. “Well, I wouldn’t order them,” she admitted, making a face. “But one woman orders them all the time—to take home to her dogs.”
I did order the gizzards—after all, where else could I get them? They turned out to be chewy (as gizzards tend to be) but tasty. My friend raved about the real mashed potatoes, and we were equally taken with the oatmeal pie—imagine pecan pie without the pecans.
In addition to the restaurant, this town’s population of around 700 sustains a newspaper, grocery store, insurance business, pharmacy, clothing store, florist, seed store, and several museums. The town also hosts Corn Days, with a corn and watermelon feast plus turtle races and a parade, the first weekend in August.
After lunch, we strolled to the Dows Mercantile. Housed in the 1894 brick Fillmore Building, the mercantile holds three floors of antiques, gifts, and crafts, as well as a coffee shop. At the edge of town, outside the Quasdorf Museum, two men in billed caps introduced themselves as museum hosts, and the one wearing blue bib overalls gave us a tour. He pointed out the original, worn floor and tools used by blacksmith Frank Quasdorf when he shod horses, made equipment repairs, and built wagons here.
Next door, the brick depot holds railroad memorabilia and a gift shop. A short walk takes you to the 1889 home of the Ingebret Evans family, with original chairs, a crude wall shelf, and a recipe for paint penciled on the wall.
As we explored the peaceful town with its tree-shaded lawns and sturdy homes, it became apparent that community effort keeps the town functioning and alive—a determination and strong spirit that we also observed in other small Iowa towns. In fact, the town so charmed us that we abandoned our plans for the afternoon so we could just hang out in Dows.
Perry, Iowa
Our destination at day’s end was downtown Perry, where an original Carnegie library has morphed into the Carnegie Library Museum, restored to replicate 1910, including the book titles on the shelves and a lower-level courtroom. Nearby, a new Center for Town/Craft—a joint effort between Perry and Iowa State University to help towns and neighborhoods develop and revitalize—is opening in the renovated historic First National Bank Building.
Just off main street, the Thymes Remembered Tea Room serves lunch and desserts, nicely paired with adjacent gift and clothing shops. On Second Street, a metal-smithing studio and art gallery called Studiolo showcases Midwestern artists. From there, it’s a pleasant stroll to The Highland Elk Coffee House, serving gourmet coffee drinks, breakfast, and lunch, along with gifts and bakery goods. Upstairs, a lively bistro provides a full-service bar. Across the street from the Carnegie stands the elegant old Hotel Pattee, a remarkable four-diamond hotel that closed at the end of 2006. Happily, it has since reopened and operates today as a boutique hotel, with its individually themed rooms and an in-house restaurant welcoming travelers once more.
Where to stay?
Beyond Hotel Pattee, to the west a few miles, near Coon Rapids—the Iowan cousin of the Minnesota city by the same name—the cozy and welcoming Garst Farm Bed and Breakfast offers lodging in a home that hosted Soviet Premier Nikita Khrushchev in 1959. In addition to nicely appointed rooms, photos in the house document the Khrushchev visit, an attempt by agricultural innovator Garst to share his farming techniques. The bed and breakfast is now operated by Whiterock Conservancy, a public-private partnership encompassing nearly 5,000 acres of conservation and recreation land donated by the Garst family.
Other regional communities with bed and breakfasts include Ames, Boone, Indianola, and Des Moines. Travelers can find standard chain motels in many towns.
Madison County’s bridges
South of Perry, around Winterset, Madison County’s covered bridges drew crowds long before Francesca Johnson watched Robert Kincaid photograph Cedar Bridge in Robert Waller’s wildly popular 1992 book, The Bridges of Madison County. We visited several of the remaining six bridges, including Roseman Bridge, built in 1883 and said to be haunted. Legend has it that a man was wrongly hanged at this bridge, and a convict trapped in the bridge eerily disappeared. It’s cold in the middle, our guide told us; I tested his theory but felt no temperature variation. Nor did I disappear.
Another of the bridges—Cutler-Donahoe Bridge, built in 1871—was moved in 1970 to the Winterset City Park. In addition to the bridge, the park holds a campground, a hedge maze, and a two-mile hike to a stone tower. To catch the Covered Bridge Festival, come the second full weekend in October for sheep shearing, square dancing, a quilt show, and guided bus tours of the bridges.
Winterset, Iowa
Picturesque downtown Winterset centers around a limestone courthouse with a 122-foot dome in the town square. Busy stores and restaurants rim the square, including Fons & Porter’s Love of Quilting retail store and offices. Referred to as “the Martha Stewarts of the quilting world,” founders Marianne Fons and Liz Porter publish quilt books and a national quilting magazine.
Also in Winterset, the Madison County Museum and Historical Complex contains 14 historic buildings, including a National Historic Registry three-hole limestone outhouse with walnut seats. The town claims additional fame as the birthplace of John Wayne, born Marion Robert Morrison in 1907 in a four-room home you can tour. Fans can see the bedroom where the star was born and an original eye patch worn in True Grit.
In the countryside north of Winterset, Fred Howell has transformed his traditional farm into Howell’s Dried Florals & Greenhouse. Here, cascades of dried flowers hang from the rafters of a 1910 barn, and you can walk through fields of red, purple, pink, yellow, and orange blossoms.
Boone, Iowa
North of Perry, near Ames, hilly terrain surrounds the town of Boone, set in the Des Moines River Valley. At the Boone & Scenic Valley Railroad, we viewed the last commercially produced steam locomotive, a behemoth manufactured in China in 1989, and boarded a Streamliner train. Over lunch, we watched the terrain change from fields to wooded hillsides and clattered across a high bridge. The railroad operates dinner, dessert, and picnic train excursions, as well as special event trains, and maintains a railroad history museum.
Mamie Doud Eisenhower’s birthplace, a modest home in Boone, offers tours, and you can soak up regional history at the Boone County Historical Center. Who’d have guessed that “shampoo king” F.W. Fitch invented a cure for dandruff in Boone in 1900?
South of Boone, Ledges State Park brought back memories of my childhood family trip to Ledges, when the unusual rock formations seemed gigantic and the woods deep, dark, and mysterious. The park also holds 70 acres of restored prairie and 15 miles of hiking trails.
From farms to opera
At Reiman Gardens in Ames, highlights include a children’s garden with a covered bridge and a butterfly house. Near Urbandale, Living History Farms puts visitors to work creating shingles in the 1850 Pioneer Farm and grinding corn via horse power in the 1900 Farm.
In this region, opera fans go from a day of farm work to a night at the opera in June and July, during the Des Moines Metro Opera season at Simpson College in Indianola. Happily, it coincides with a Road Scholar class (the educational-travel program formerly known as Elderhostel).
Central Iowa’s small towns took us by surprise. On one tour, a storyteller said, “Iowa is a state without a major urban area. The small town has been our formation pool.” And maybe that explains the resilient determination of these communities to survive, to revitalize their downtowns, and to work together for a greater good.
We left Iowa feeling refreshed, steeped in an old-fashioned sense of commonality. When friends asked where I’d gone on my latest adventure and I answered, “Iowa,” they looked perplexed. Perhaps their curiosity will tempt them to visit that state, too—to chat in small-town cafés, view collections in one-of-a-kind museums, and stroll in shady parks. Perhaps they, too, will linger, smitten by the sincere, down-home nature of Iowa’s small towns.
Alice M. Vollmar (1940–2025) was a freelance travel writer based in Minneapolis. This piece is republished in her memory. This article first appeared in the March 2007 issue of Minnesota Good Age.