Iowa History

The Iowa Department of Cultural Affairs empowers Iowa to build and sustain culturally vibrant communities by connecting Iowans to the people, places and points of pride that define our state. The department impacts Iowans through the State Historical Society of Iowa, the Iowa Arts Council and Produce Iowa — State Office of Media Production. It engages Iowans by elevating the role arts, history and culture play as an economic driver, a catalyst for the creative sector and a key ingredient in our quality of life.

Iowa Public Television’s Iowa Pathways is an online learning environment that challenges students to create their own story of the state as they explore the people, places, events and ideas of Iowa. This award-winning website helps students choose topics that interest them as they examine relationships among Iowa concepts—past to present.

ArchiveGrid includes over 5 million records describing archival materials, bringing together information about historical documents, personal papers, family histories, and more. With over 1,000 different archival institutions represented, ArchiveGrid helps researchers looking for primary source materials held in archives, libraries, museums and historical societies.

Best of History Web Sites aims to provide quick, convenient, and reliable access to the best history-oriented resources online in a wide range of categories and has been designed to benefit history teachers and their students; however, general history enthusiasts will benefit from the site as well. Ranked #1 by Google for history web sites, Best of History Web Sitesd receives upwards of 100,000 visitors per month. With links to over 1200 history-related web sites that have been reviewed for quality, accuracy, and usefulness, the site also includes links to K-12 history lesson plans, teacher guides, activities, games, quizzes, and more. Sites with engaging educational content and stimulating and useful multimedia technologies are most likely to be included in these pages. However, useful general resources and research-oriented sites have been included as well.

Children & Youth in History is a world history resource that provides teachers and students with access to sources about young people from the past to the present.

Includes timeline, eras, topics, resources, and references.

DPLA connects people to the riches held within America’s libraries, archives, museums, and other cultural heritage institutions. All of the materials found through DPLA—photographs, books, maps, news footage, oral histories, personal letters, museum objects, artwork, government documents, and so much more—are free and immediately available in digital format. The cultural institutions participating in DPLA represent the richness and diversity of America itself, from the smallest local history museum to our nation’s largest cultural institutions. Our core work includes bringing new collections and partners into DPLA, building our technology, and managing projects that further our mission through curation, education, and community building.

The HTA is in its 26th year of publishing high quality articles, books, essays, documents, historical photos, and links, screened for content, for a broad range of historical subjects. It was founded in 1990 in Mississippi and is one of the oldest history sites on the Internet. This site is dynamic with regular additions to its contents and its link collection.

The Internet History Sourcebooks Project is a collection of public domain and copy-permitted historical texts presented cleanly (without advertising or excessive layout) for educational use.

You will find in the Access to Archival Databases (AAD) resource online access to records in a small selection of historic databases preserved permanently in NARA. Out of the nearly 200,000 data files in its holdings, NARA has selected approximately 475 of them for public searching through AAD. We selected these data because the records identify specific persons, geographic areas, organizations, and dates. The records cover a wide variety of civilian and military functions and have many genealogical, social, political, and economic research uses.