Iowa anniversaries for 2025
Notable markers for Kossuth County, men's basketball teams
Here’s a sampling of milestones for 2025 in Iowa, although the literal stone pictured above has five years to go before hitting the century mark.
1840 (185 years ago)
The second act of the third session of the Iowa Territorial Legislature is to establish a territorial road from Davenport “via Parkhurst, Camanche, Lyons and Charleston, to Bellview”. Parkhurst later became Le Claire, and Charleston Sabula, but the road commissioners would only partially succeed. A solid connection between Sabula and Bellevue would not be built for nearly a century, when what is now U.S. Highway 52 is constructed in 1932.
1845 (180 years ago)
Be it enacted by the Council and House of Representatives under the Territory of Iowa:
SECTION 1. Name of university-under direction of thirty regents. That a seminary of learning shall be, and the same is, hereby established in Iowa City or vicinity thereof to he known by the name and style of the ‘Iowa City University;’ which shall be founded and maintained forever on the most liberal principles being equally accessible to students of all religious denominations who shall be freely admitted to equal advantages and privileges of education, and to all the literary honors of said college or university, according to their merit…
Approved, 2d June, 1845.
1855 (170 years ago)
The Iowa Legislature abolishes Bancroft and Humboldt counties and creates a 53-mile-tall Kossuth supercounty. The bottom half of Humboldt County is assigned to Webster County. Two years later, the Legislature attempts to restore Humboldt County and only partially succeeds. The resulting nonconformity in this stack has annoyed everyone since.
1860 (165 years ago)
Des Moines had newspapers of various nameplates in the previous decade, but it was in January 1860 that the Iowa State Register appeared. As told by William Friedricks in The Annals of Iowa in 1995, John Teesdale bought the Free Soil Iowa Citizen in December 1857. Teesdale even interviewed abolitionist John Brown “as they passed through the capital escorting escaped slaves to freedom,” the story says. Following various newspaper consolidations and some waffling on when issue No. 1 of a new volume started, today’s Des Moines Register is in its 176th year.
1865 (160 years ago)
Confederate Gen. Joseph Johnston surrenders to Union Gen. William T. Sherman on April 26, 1865, 11 days after Appomattox. According to a compilation by historian Mark Bradley, 17 Iowa infantry units were with Sherman’s army, many of which participated in the March to the Sea.
1870 (155 years ago)
The Iowa Legislature removes the requirement, set in place 10 years earlier, that only white men could practice law. The change came about after Arabella Mansfield got a friendly ruling from a judge then passed the bar with flying colors, giving “the very best rebuke possible to the imputation that ladies cannot qualify for the practice of law.”
1915 (110 years ago)
Toledo’s $75,000 school building opens on April 19. Its noncontinuous century-plus of service — the derecho made it unusable in 2020-21 — ends this year. The South Tama school district acquired and is repurposing the former Iowa Juvenile Home site to become the new middle school.
1925 (100 years ago)
Garwin’s three-story, $60,000 high school, “modern in every particular” according to the Marshalltown Evening Times-Republican, opens in fall and is dedicated Dec. 30. It replaces one destroyed in a fire the previous year. This past election, voters in the Green Mountain-Garwin school district voted 2-to-1 in favor of replacing this structure with a two-story facility.
Murray’s present high school building also opens in 1925.
1930 (95 years ago)
Grant Wood paints American Gothic. Start planning that centennial now.
“IOWA IS OUT OF THE MUD,” a New York Times headline says. “Iowa, familiarly known at one time as the Mud Roads State, is this year equipping herself with 1,025 miles of hard-surfaced pavement. The hot, dry summer has not been beneficial to farmers, but it has permitted unusually rapid construction of roads.”
U.S. Highway 65, aka the Jefferson Highway in Iowa, is the first north-south highway completely paved from Minnesota to Missouri. As for the first east-west highway, I’m not going to spoil a future series.
1940 (85 years ago)
The Centennial Bridge across the Mississippi River opens between Davenport and Rock Island. Its historical and architectural significance today comes with being ranked the most traveled structurally deficient bridge in Iowa.
1950 (75 years ago)
A fire at St. Elizabeth Hospital in Davenport results in 41 deaths. “Patients struggled to escape to safety because their windows and doors were barred shut, which was a common practice in mental institutions,” KWQC said in 2024. The last living witness — Roy Porter, a Davenport fireman — turned 100 last fall.
1975 (50 years ago)
Interstate 35 opens from U.S. Highway 20 to Clear Lake. This includes a diagonal segment not in the original plan that was created to shift the route closer to Mason City rather than follow U.S. Highway 69 up into Minnesota. Decades earlier, the Iowa House had failed to stop another long diagonal road (now Iowa Highway 330). Rural legislators again joined hand-in-hand with the farmers to fight tooth-and-nail to stop this plan, and again got their hats handed to them.
1980 (45 years ago)
Iowa’s men’s basketball team, coached by Lute Olson, makes the Final Four for the third time in program history. Star player Ronnie Lester gets injured early in the national semifinal against Louisville, and without him, Iowa falls by a score of 80-72.
Chuck Grassley is elected to the U.S. Senate.
1990 (35 years ago)
For the fourth census in a row, Iowa prepares to lose a U.S. House seat. But it’s worse than that. Following a decade of the farm crisis, Iowa’s population declined from 1980, the first time that had happened since 1910 (a drop of a mere 7,000 people). It would not be until 2000 that Iowa had as many people as it did in 1980.
2000 (25 years ago)
The Iowa State men’s basketball team wins the Big 12 regular-season and conference tournament titles and gets a 2-seed in the NCAA Tournament. By the Elite Eight, ISU was the only 2-seed remaining … and its opponent, Michigan State, was the only 1-seed remaining … and the game happened to be in Michigan State’s backyard.
Then, late in the game, the blarge happened, and ISU coach Larry Eustachy was ejected, and the Spartans cruised to what to date is the Big Ten’s last men’s NCAA basketball title.
2010 (15 years ago)
The Kansas Jayhawks get Farokhmanesh’d by the Northern Iowa Panthers in the 2010 NCAA men’s basketball tournament. With 37 seconds left and UNI only up by 1, Ali Farokhmanesh calmly drains an uncontested 3-pointer for a spot in the Sweet 16. It’s UNI’s best tournament showing to date.
Seven years after its athletic director vowed it wouldn’t “surrender the Big 12 to Oklahoma and Texas,” the University of Nebraska runs to the warm embrace of the Big Ten. At the same time, the Pac-10 attempts to pillage six teams from the Big 12, and the first conferencepocalypse is on. Miraculously, the Big 12 continues to exist.
Chuck Grassley is re-re-re-re-re-elected to the U.S. Senate.
2020 (5 years ago)
The Iowa State Daily publishes its final print issue March 13, as students head home for spring break. Originally, the ISU campus was to be closed through April 3. It would turn out to be longer. (I’ll spare all of us the details.)
The Daily Iowegian, Pella Chronicle, Knoxville Journal Express, New Sharon Sun, and Keota Eagle newspapers all shut down. Five newspaper nameplates in Tama County plus one in Grundy County are condensed into three.
A derecho far bigger than those of 1998 and 2011 wrecks central and eastern Iowa so badly the damage can be seen from space. In eastern Iowa, wind gusts are estimated up to 140 mph, with the highest official recorded speed 126 mph at Atkins. Cedar Rapids loses two-thirds of its tree canopy.
This post has been updated to correct the size of Kossuth County in 1855.
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