Prairies once covered about 40% of the United States.
In Iowa, 99.9% of the prairie landscape is gone.
Iowa has some of the most fertile farmland in the world.
Scientists believe it takes about 400 years to produce one inch of new soil.
The First Farmers
The last great glacier retreated approximately 12,000 years ago.
Scientists believe people have lived in the upper Midwest for nearly 12,000 years.
Indian groups began building earthen mounds in the upper Midwest approximately 4,000 years ago.
Mound-building activities along the Upper Mississippi ended around 1300 AD.
About 700 years ago, Indians of a farming culture settled along the Mississippi river in northeast Iowa.
The state of Iowa was named for the Ioway Indians.
The Ioway were living in the Upper Mississippi River Valley when the first European explorers arrived in the 1600s.
Photographer: Scott Fairbairn
The Fur Trade
The first European explorers to reach the upper Midwest were Louis Joliet and Father Jacques Marquette in June 1673.
France claimed the entire Mississippi River and the surrounding valley in 1682 after La Salle's explorations.
After the French claimed the Mississippi valley, they set up fur trading posts on the frontier.
Indian groups traded the skins of beaver, raccoon and deer for objects such as iron kettles, glass beads and cloth.
The Sauk and Mesquakie Indians replaced the Ioway Indians as the dominant group in the Upper Mississippi River Valley in the mid-1700s.
Black Hawk was the most famous Sauk war chief. Another important Sauk chief was Keokuk.
Pioneer Farmers
The Louisiana Purchase was sold by Napoleon to the United States in 1803.
The United States paid France 15 million dollars for the Louisiana Purchase.
The Louisiana Purchase totaled approximately 828,000 square miles of land west of the Mississippi River, including the present-day state of Iowa.
Pioneer settlement in Iowa began in 1833.
Iowa became a state in 1846.
Between 1833 and 1846, Iowa was part of the Michigan Territory, the Wisconsin Territory and the Iowa Territory.
By 1851, the U. S. Federal government claimed ownership of all Iowa lands once held by Native Americans.
Most of the pioneer settlers were born in states to the east of Iowa.
After the Civil War (1861-1865), large numbers of European immigrants came to live in Iowa.
Immigrants from Germany were the largest group to settle on the Iowa prairies.
The new immigrants traveled to Iowa by wagon, stagecoach, steamboat and railroad.
The use of steamboats and stagecoaches dropped sharply after railroads were built in Iowa.
Most of Iowa's early settlers were farmers.
The abundance of farmland drew many immigrants to the United States.
When Iowa was first a state, land usually sold for $1.25 per acre.
Prairie pioneers built their homes from materials around them. Log homes were built where timber was available. Where timber was scarce, sod homes were built.
Early pioneer settlers were self-sufficient farmers. They built their own buildings, sewed clothing, raised livestock and grew their own food.
By the 1870s small farms covered most parts of the state.
Corn was the main crop grown in Iowa.
Pioneer farming required much hard work with few mechanical tools.
By 1870, the pioneer frontier was gone.
Farmers who arrived after the pioneers had more efficient equipment that allowed them to plant and harvest additional land.
