Notes on Iowa

Iowa Time Machine ⏰: On June 7, 1934, notorious Chicago gangster Tommy Carroll was shot and captured by law enforcement in Waterloo. The news sent shockwaves through the community and made headlines across the nation, as one of the Midwest’s most wanted fugitives was finally brought to justice.

Carroll, known for his daring bank heists and close ties to the Dillinger gang, had been on the run for months, evading capture with cunning and sheer luck. But on June 7th, his luck ran out.

Waterloo police, tipped off to his whereabouts, confronted Carroll in a tense showdown. The gunfire marked the end of his criminal escapades and the beginning of a new legend in Iowa’s history.

The arrest represented a turning point in the nationwide battle against organized crime. Carroll’s capture proved that even the most notorious gangsters could not outrun the long arm of the law, especially when small-town resolve met big-city crime. Waterloo’s brave officers were hailed as heroes, and their story symbolized hope during a turbulent era.

Iowa Time Machine ⏰: On June 7, 1856, the first of ten companies of Mormon pioneers prepared to push handcarts out of Iowa City. Destitute but determined to join other Latter-day Saints in Salt Lake City, nearly 3,000 Mormon pioneers participated in the handcart expeditions between 1856 and 1860.

Arriving in America from England, Wales, Scotland, and Scandinavia, the European converts used funds from the Perpetual Emigrating Fund to emigrate to the United States. Due to a poor harvest in Utah during 1855, funds ran short for the journey west. Brigham Young proposed a plan to use handcarts in September 1855, hoping to reduce the cost of the journey west by one-third.

Arriving by railroad in Iowa City, thousands of Mormons set about building the 5’ x 4.5’ single axle handcarts. Weighing sixty pounds when empty, the carts could carry between 250 and 500 pounds. While many handcart expeditions proved uneventful, the trek ended disastrously for the Willie and Martin Companies.

Both companies started their journey dangerously late in 1856 and encountered heavy snow and severe temperatures in central Wyoming. Despite a dramatic rescue effort, more than 210 of the 980 pioneers in these two companies passed away during the journey. Today, the handcart expeditions find remembrance in Iowa City’s Mormon Handcart Park.

Iowa Time Machine ⏰: On June 7, 1835, the 1st United States Dragoon took up a line of march through the Des Moines River Valley under the direction of Lieutenant Colonel Stephen Watts Kearny. In the first major American military expedition up the Des Moines, the government tasked the Dragoons with documenting the lands that would become Iowa.

An expedition stretching over 1,100 miles from First Fort Des Moines Montrose on the Mississippi, up the confluence of the Boone River with the Des Moines, over to the village of Dakota leader Wabasha, and back to the Des Moines near the headwaters in modern-day Minnesota, roughly 160 men made the summer 1835 journey into the relatively unknown.

The Dragoons, mounted soldiers who fought on foot, were a forerunner of the more familiar cavalry of the late 1800s. Brought to Iowa to document lands, develop military forts, and enforce boundaries between overly eager settlers and Iowa’s Indigenous peoples, the Dragoons represented a key presence on the Iowa frontier.

Kearny’s men separated into three companies for the journey up the Des Moines. Additionally, five four-horse wagons and a herd of cattle accompanied the Dragoons across a landscape of bison-filled prairies, oak savannah, and slough, hard to imagine today. The commander of Company B, Lieutenant Albert Lea, recorded his observations of the journey in a little book called “Notes on the Wisconsin Territory, Particularly Pertaining to the Iowa District.”

You might notice a similarity between Lea’s book title and “Notes on Iowa,” and the cross-over is intentional. The “Notes on Iowa” project started with a 2021 walk across Iowa following the route of the 1835 Dragoons expedition. To learn more about the Dragoons, the walk across Iowa, and many other Iowa topics, check out the new book “Retracing the Dragoon Trail in Iowa.”

Iowa Time Machine ⏰: On June 7, 1896, industrialist Vivien Kellems was born in Des Moines. She went on to use her company, her courtroom battles, and her public persona to question how far Washington could conscript private citizens into enforcing federal tax law.

By the late 1920s, Kellems had founded a cable grips manufacturing company, accumulated considerable wealth, and learned firsthand how war contracts, regulations, and tax rules shaped the fortunes of industrial firms. In January 1944, she refused to pay her federal income tax, a deliberate act that drew national attention and was framed by critics as unpatriotic in the midst of war.

Her best-known stand came in 1948 when she announced that she would no longer withhold federal income taxes from her employees’ wages, invited indictment to challenge the constitutionality of withholding, and used the resulting case and press coverage to build a grassroots movement of tax resisters who saw themselves as defenders of constitutional limits and individual liberty.

Over the following decades, she signed and mailed blank tax returns to protest what she described as discriminatory treatment of unmarried taxpayers, published a book, ran for office, and maintained a steady stream of speeches and commentary linking feminism, voting reform, and opposition to compulsory withholding.

Iowa Time Machine ⏰: On June 6, 1939, the Val Air Ballroom officially opened in West Des Moines. Home to many closely held memories of unforgettable musical performances, the iconic Iowa venue continues to welcome Iowans today.

Initially, the home of the Wilson Rubber Factory during World War I, the slowing of demand for rubber left the site on Ashworth Road in West Des Moines temporarily abandoned. Converted into an open-air dance hall, the new venue welcomed its first guests, hoping to dance the night away, in early June 1939.

Big Band music often filled the night as Iowans danced under the stars. A crowd of 2,500 heard Ted Lewis play his hit “My Shadow and Me.” Men paid 85 cents for admission, and women only 25 cents. In 1939, a naming contest drew a winning entry focused on the venue’s open-air nature and location (Valley Junction). The venue hosted concerts under the night sky along White Pole Road for nearly two decades.

In August 1954, construction began to enclose the venue and allow concerts year-round. Completed in March 1955, the Henry Busse Orchestra opened the new Art Deco-designed building featuring hand-painted murals and floral designs. While a 1961 fire caused $100,000 in damage, the venue survived. Closed temporarily in 1996 due to a transfer in ownership and again in December 2022, the Val Air Ballroom kicked off a new era in 2024 after a significant renovation.

Iowa Time Machine ⏰: On June 6, 1944, hundreds of Iowans participated in the D-Day invasion of France. In the air as paratroopers, on the beaches as combatants, and in the aftermath as medics, Iowans served with distinction in the largest amphibious landing in military history.

In advance of 5,000 ships landing 160,000 troops on five beaches in northern France, 12,000 aircraft took to the skies to drop paratroopers. Paratrooper Henry Langrehr of Clinton found himself on a C-47 headed across the English Channel. While flak cut the transport plane over St. Mère-Église, Langrehr and ten others found themselves in the air, far from the intended drop zone. Langrehr shattered the greenhouse roof on the way down and eventually caught fire from a tank. Captured, Langrehr spent time in a POW camp before Allied forces eventually arrived.

21-year-old Verle Buck of Jubilee, Iowa (Black Hawk County) found himself on a landing craft and destined to serve in the first wave of American soldiers at Omaha Beach. After losing several leaders in his landing boat to German fire, the gate dropped, and Buck rushed to the beach. “There was no way you could swim that English Channel. You had to go.” While men fell around him, Buck managed to make his way up the beach to help turn the tide of the war. Centerville’s Ray Simmons was prepared to rush the beach without a weapon as the next wave of landing craft bobbed in the surf. A Seventh-Day Adventist serving as a non-combatant medic, Simmons hoped to help those injured in the initial action on Omaha Beach. Miraculously, Simmons managed to cross the beach under heavy fire and establish a medic station on top of a 100-foot bluff to administer care.

Hundreds of other Iowans proudly served and sacrificed during the D-Day invasion of Europe and World War II. The stories of the brave echo through history as a reminder of a time when many stepped up to take meaningful actions in the pursuit of protecting the American dream.

Iowa Time Machine ⏰: On June 6, 1901, a Centerville newspaper first mentioned a new company called Hercules Manufacturing that planned to manufacture stump pullers.

Founded in 1901 by Miles Bateman and Bernard A. Fuller, the Hercules Manufacturing Company focused on steel stump pullers, as photographs and advertisements show, deployed in open fields with teams of horses and operators clustered around the central drum. Within a decade, the firm’s plant appeared on postcards that proudly labeled Centerville as the home of Hercules Manufacturing, suggesting both local pride and the company’s role in the town’s industrial identity.

Hercules gained national prominence for their “triple power” and “one‑man” stump pullers, as the company refined its product line over time to appeal both to larger operators and to individual farmers looking for a relatively compact machine. The typical setup deployed a heavy steel frame anchored near a stump, a grooved drum wrapped in steel cable or chain, and a team of horses or other draft power pulling on a long sweep to wind the drum. As the drum turned, the cable tightened around roots or under a stump, gradually lifting or wrenching it from the ground.

By about 1930, the classic horse‑powered stump puller had largely disappeared from active service, displaced by gasoline tractors, crawler machines, explosives, and later hydraulic equipment that could clear land more quickly and with less setup. While Hercules may have experimented with other products, the stump puller that had defined the firm’s reputation quickly faded into history.