Iowa
Put resources behind the rhetoric about Iowa history | Opinion
The national anniversary is an opportune time to explore what a commitment to history, particularly local history, does and doesn’t look like.
The history of Iowa: From Native Lands to statehood
What we know as Iowa was once home to several Native American tribes. Here’s how the state got its name and when it joined the union.
- This editorial by Lucas Grundmeier represents the views of the Register’s editorial board.
As the United States reaches 250 years, many Iowans’ thoughts on the next four months, when, for the first time, in two decades, they’ll elect a governor who hasn’t already been governor.
The gubernatorial campaign’s contours are taking shape in television ads, on social media and in meetings around the state. In those forums, some narratives about Republican Zach Lahn and Democrat Rob Sand are emerging — and are easily rebutted.
One idea worth a closer look, though, comes from one of Lahn’s consistent refrains: that Iowans are not properly sharing our state’s story or its history with each other and with our children. The national anniversary is an opportune time to explore what a commitment to history, particularly local history, does and doesn’t look like.
“I believe we are losing our culture as Iowans,” Lahn said at the Republican State Convention June 13. “I believe the history and the heritage of our people truly matter. I believe the stories of our history matter.”
While the editorial board believes our history matters, what he appears to define as our culture and our heritage also matters. And it also matters how we, as a state and nation, preserve the teaching of our history.
We can talk about history outside of the culture-war context
Lahn ties this plank to accusations, essentially, that Democrats want to suppress broader American history because they want children to hate their country. After the soaring quote about what matters, Lahn went on to say that “the left” knows that “the shortest way to destroy a culture is to destroy their stories ― make sure that they are ashamed of where they came from.”
That isn’t close to this editorial board’s view. Lahn is misrepresenting the majority of left-of-center Americans. Understanding this state and this country’s history, both the glorious and shameful parts, are key to telling our stories.
But let’s try our best to set aside this culture-war land mine for today and instead zero in on how we can best conserve the tapestry of Iowa’s past.
This December will mark 180 years since Iowa’s statehood ― more than two-thirds of the United States’ existence. The state’s government should reinvigorate its commitment to conveying and preserving Iowa history. That includes how and when history is taught in public schools, as well as the work of the State Historical Society and related units, which depend on state support.
That’s easy enough to say. But both pieces involve some zero-sum games.
Make some room for Iowa history in high school curriculum
Teachers are in front of students for only so many hours in a year, and state lawmakers and other regulators are constantly stuffing more curriculum requirements into that time. Just this year Gov. Kim Reynolds signed into law new minimum requirements for time spent in physical activity. That was one of the better parts of the mixed-bag “Iowa MAHA” bill, but Iowa can’t stuff 1,500 hours of worthy coursework into the 1,080 hours of each school year.
Also this year, the state Board of Education approved new social studies standards for use in kindergarten through 12th grade. The 219-page document is filled with Iowa connections to social sciences, national politics and world history to enrich lessons in those subjects. But specific focus on Iowa’s past is limited mostly to first and second grades. That’s too little.
Nothing in the standards’ high school curriculum screams that it’s dispensable, to be fair. But U.S. history classes could make some room to expose high school minds for a few weeks to Iowa’s story, from before European exploration to territory days and early statehood and the constant transformation since.
Restore funding for Annals of Iowa and other history initiatives
Meanwhile, relentless belt-tightening has threatened the work of historians to investigate and answer questions about Iowa’s past. The State Historical Society and other agencies were once combined in the state Department of Cultural Affairs; the 2023 state government reorganization closed that department and shunted pieces of the history apparatus to the Department of Administrative Services and the Economic Development Authority.
More concretely, much consternation greeted the 2025 announcement that the Iowa City branch of the Historical Society would be closed, leaving the only physical facilities in Des Moines. Experts said it would stunt research work in eastern Iowa and could lead to the permanent loss of some documents and artifacts, to say nothing of cutting off the possibility of locals deciding to try more casual research.
The state also announced plans last year to step back from editing the history journal Annals of Iowa, a change attributed to “increasingly lean staff.” Historians have called it a singular outlet for scholarship on Iowa topics. Subscribers covered most of the printing cost. No new publisher has been announced.
If history is as important as Lahn says, the next governor and Legislature should resist the temptation to see it as an easy place to save a few bucks compared with, say, taking state troopers off the roads or compromising public health services. The state budget will speak more loudly than rhetoric. And if it truly comes down to history vs. state troopers, Iowa might need to figure out ways to increase government revenue.
History should elicit wonder, regret and pride
A few of Iowa’s stories are widely known, especially to longtime residents. The Iowa Supreme Court’s first ruling, in 1839, In Re Ralph, declaring a Missouri man was free and not bound to his former slave owner in Missouri. The seed genetic innovations that Henry Wallace used to transform the agriculture profession. The Day the Music Died. The despair of the 1980s farm crisis.
But few Iowans could say very much about the periods before statehood and before European exploration. And even the above 19th-century-and-beyond bullet points barely scratch the surface of the wonder, regret and pride to be found in our collective pasts between the Missouri and Mississippi.
When Lahn visited the Register editorial board before the Republican primary election, he gave the right answer to a question about his divisive framing about teaching history. “People that have challenged me on this, they go back to talking about the horrid past of America, the harms that we’ve done to other groups and things like that. And I don’t want to ignore those things,” he said. “I think there’s truth behind things that that we have done wrong as a country. But I think what defines America is how we’ve tried to set the path right. And I just want to make sure that that’s the story we’re telling our young kids is that, yes, we’ve had these pieces in our history that were really tough, that were bad, but look at what we did to make things better, not just for us, but for the entire world.”
The campaign for governor will be better off if Lahn and other candidates stick to that more holistic and more unifying message. All Iowans running for office ought to be able to agree on that philosophy ― and then work to back it up with resources. That would give students and adults a better chance to understand, and continue to discover more about, where we’ve come from.
Lucas Grundmeier, on behalf of the Register’s editorial board
This editorial is the opinion of the Des Moines Register’s editorial board: Rachel Stassen-Berger, executive editor; Lucas Grundmeier, opinion editor; and Richard Doak and Rox Laird, editorial board members.