What is the Landscape History Project?

The goal of the Landscape History Project is to help landowners, or people who simply have a passion for a specific piece of land, discover the story of that land.  Every acre of Iowa has a unique history. Understanding the history specific to a cherished piece of land will create a greater appreciation for that land and strengthen our bond with it. A number of resources exist that can help tell the story of your backyard, farm, neighborhood park, or favorite natural area. For instance, the original Government Land Office Survey Notes, described the mid-1800 landscape of every square mile in Iowa.  The population and agricultural censuses offer a great deal of information about the families that first lived on the land including what they planted and harvested. Aerial photos beginning in the late 1930’s offer a birds-eye-view of how your land has changed in the last 65 years.

Although this information does not provide a complete history, it does offer a general summary of how the land has changed over the past 160 years, and who were the people drawn to the land, and subsequently prospered, struggled, laughed, and cried on that land.  The population census reveals who these families were, where the owners, their children, and their parents were from, everyone’s occupations, etc…  By knowing the birthplaces of three successive generations, a general migration route can be deduced.  If your land was a farm from 1860 to 1880, the agricultural census will tell what crops were planted, how much livestock was owned, and even how many pounds of bees wax were produced.  Farms were much more diverse at that time.  The aerial photos then show the state of the land in 1938.  Did buildings exist in 1938, which are gone now? Is the opposite true?  Did your woodland have more open space or was your shrubby pasture once completely grassland. These resources alone tell a great story, but this is only scratching the surface if you would like to dig deeper. The next step would be to search for obituaries or biographies in county histories.  If previous landowners or relatives are still living, correspondence with them would yield even more information.

Would you like to discover the history of your land? If so, there are several ways the Land Stewarship Program can help.

Research and interpretation can be conducted for individual customers

• If there is enough interest for ten or more landowners, a workshop can be held which allows for a reduced rate per property. 
• If enough landowners would like to conduct the research themselves, a training can be offered to teach them how to do so.

 Please take a few minutes and look at some examples of each resource mentioned and some of the stories resulting from previous workshops.