Mobile Museum Rolls Across Iowa
Dawn Gannon looked on with pride and a hint of amusement as one student after another rushed back and forth from study hall to the big blue Winnebago.
“The kids would come out to the parking lot and tour it and then go back in to get their friends,” she said. “And then they’d go back and get some more friends to come out, and then they’d do it again.”
But it wasn’t an ordinary RV that caught the Calamus-Wheatland students’ attention. It’s a 38-foot, Iowa-built Winnebago filled with artifacts from the State Historical Museum of Iowa. The “Iowa History 101” exhibit is part of the museum’s History on the Move program. It’s sponsored by EMC Insurance Companies and Iowa State University Extension and Outreach, plus Casey’s General Stores, which pitched in for gas.
More than 500 students and adults from the Wheatland area were among the first to see the exhibit this spring when it began a three-year tour of all 99 counties.
“When the story about it came out, I saw that we needed to get it here,” said Gannon, an instructional coach for the Calamus-Wheatland Community School District. “We told our school board and staff, and everybody was getting excited about it. Our kids can’t just board a bus and drive to Des Moines to visit the State Historical Museum so it was great to have it come to our school.”
That’s why the exhibit was created, said Jessica Rundlett, the museum’s coordinator for special projects and outreach.
“While the State Historical Museum is physically located in Des Moines, we can take Iowa history to all 99 Iowa counties by putting it on wheels,” she said. “I know how important that is because I grew up more than 100 miles from Des Moines. I was one of the lucky ones because my parents brought me to the museum, but a lot of Iowans don’t have that opportunity.”
With more than 100,000 artifacts in its total collection, the museum staff faced a daunting task of packing 170 years of Iowa history into a 300-square-foot exhibit.
Mike Wolfe, the star of TV’s “American Pickers,” lent his voice and video talents for the exhibits multi-media components, while curators pored over the museum’s collection for artifacts and photos to tell the story of Iowa in the compact space. (They also road-tested the display cases over railroad tracks to make sure they were secure.)
“Like all our exhibits, we try to make sure we incorporate a geographical representation of the entire state,” curator Leo Landis said. “We really wanted to focus on Iowans at home and work and play to tell basic Iowa history stories in rural communities and farms as well as larger communities.”
The exhibit includes a NASA flight suit Peggy Whitson wore into space. There’s the pen Gov. William Harding used to sign the 19th Amendment, giving women the right to vote. There’s even a prototype of the state flag Dixie Cornell Gebhardt of Knoxville designed 100 years ago, in 1917.
Other artifacts include Natasha Kaiser-Brown’s Olympic Medal, Lynne Lorenzen’s basketball uniform and the boots Charlie Wittmack wore on his climb Mount Everest.
There are highlights about farming and the world’s first digital computer, developed at Iowa State University, along with an early cast-iron skillet, a Tai Dam spinning wheel, and a sash made by a Meskwaki weaver.
Gannon, the teacher, said many students were enthralled by items she remembered from her younger days.
“The Cabbage Patch dolls and the Gameboy were the big hits,” she said. “But seriously, as teachers, we could talk about a lot of the things that were in the exhibit from our own experiences.”
Teachers use the exhibit and its corresponding worksheets and PowerPoint presentation to help fulfill new Iowa history curriculum requirements in the classroom.
Glenda Mulder, who directs of the Laurens Public Library, said all the local students from kindergarten through eighth grade toured the exhibit when it visited library in September.
“It was awesome,” she said. “Each age had something different that they liked, and they were absolutely fascinated with it.”
More than 400 students and adults visited the exhibit in Winterset.
“We weren’t even open for the season yet, and we had 60 people come through,” said Jared McDonald, the director of the Madison County Historical Complex. “Then it went over to our middle school so all of our fifth-graders could see it. We had about 350 kids go through it, and they just had a blast.”
With almost 33 counties visited so far, Rundlett, the exhibit’s coordinator, is pleased with the progress to date. Many visits are already booked into 2018.
“We’ve been as far west as Orange City, east to Clinton, north to Okoboji and south to Donnellson,” she said. “The response has been outstanding.”
By the Numbers
The History on the Move “Iowa History 101” exhibit has tallied the following numbers from March to September 2017:
- Counties visited: 29
- Cities visited: 37
- Days exhibit has been open: 130
- Events attended: 54
- Number of visitors: 21,073
Request a Visit
If you’d like to request the mobile museum to visit your town, here are a few tips:
- Specify your preferred and alternate date(s).
- Consider requesting the mobile museum as part of a larger community event or festival.
- Keep in mind that requesting a visit doesn’t guarantee it.
— Jeff Morgan, Iowa Department of Cultural Affairs
