Iowa: It's Weirder Than You Think

 

People who’ve never been to Iowa think the entire state is just corn, soybeans, and pork tenderloins.

 

That’s because Iowa has spent decades hiding its weirdness from the rest of America like some kind of agricultural cryptid.

 

This is a state where pigs outnumber people, where sliced bread first showed up and people reacted like cavemen discovering fire. Iowa accidentally helped invent the computer. One town became an island because the Mississippi River basically shrugged and said, “Figure it out, nerds.”

 

There’s a crooked street that looks hammered, the world’s largest truck stop, and a literary city filled with writers wearing sweaters in July and pretending their student loans are part of the creative process.

 

Also, Iowa used to belong to France, which feels impossible after you’ve watched somebody eat a pork tenderloin the size of a hubcap while washing it down with ranch dressing and barbecue sauce.

 

The best part is that Iowans barely react to any of this. They might casually say, “Yeah, we got more pigs than people,” before changing the subject to Casey’s breakfast pizza.

 

It’s deeply unsettling behavior.

More Pigs Than People

 

Iowa has so many pigs it honestly feels like humans are losing control of the situation.

 

There are around 23 million hogs living in the state. Humans? About 3 million on a good day.

 

That means if pigs ever stop fighting each other long enough to organize, Iowa’s done. Absolute chaos. State fair over. Humanity loses.

 

You can tell when you’re entering serious hog country, too. Roll the windows down, looking for “fresh country air” and suddenly it smells like hot manure and regret cooking in the August sun.

 

Still, pork runs Iowa. Entire towns revolve around farming. Feed mills, grain elevators, giant hog barns, livestock auctions — it’s everywhere. Half the roads in rural Iowa are just tractors politely delaying traffic for six miles.

 

And Iowans fully embrace it. Breaded pork tenderloins are completely out of hand. Somebody hands you one, and the bun looks emotionally defeated. Bacon is standard fare with every meal. The Iowa Machine Shed sells bacon flavored candy and bubble gum. 

 

That’s commitment.

 

Then there’s the Iowa State Fair. People willingly stand in line to stare at giant pigs and a cow made entirely out of butter.

 

Nobody questions it.

Birthplace of Sliced Bread

 

Before the 1920s, everybody sliced their own bread, which meant every sandwich looked like it had survived a machete attack.

 

One slice thick as a cinder block. The next slice transparent enough to read a newspaper through.

 

Then, in 1928, Otto Frederick Rohwedder invented a machine that sliced bread automatically in Davenport, Iowa.

 

At first, people didn’t trust it. But eventually America saw perfectly even slices and collectively lost its damn mind.

 

People acted like the future had arrived. Housewives loved it. Bakeries loved it. Kids suddenly had sandwiches that weren’t built like unstable architecture projects.

 

Then during World War II the government briefly banned pre-sliced bread to conserve resources, and Americans reacted like civilization was collapsing.

 

That’s real. People basically went:

 

“What do you mean I have to cut my own bread? Are we animals now?”

 

Fast forward a few years, and sliced bread was everywhere.

 

Think about that. Iowa gave humanity one of its greatest achievements: sliced bread.

The Original Red Delicious Apple

 

Iowa gave the world the Red Delicious apple, which feels right because Iowa loves taking completely normal food and turning it into an entire personality.

 

Back in 1872, a farmer named Jesse Hiatt found a weird apple tree growing on his farm near Peru, Iowa. He kept trying to chop the thing down, but it refused to die.

 

That tree had pure Midwest energy.

 

Eventually Hiatt gave up and let it keep growing, which turned out to be a monumental decision because the tree started producing bright red apples that looked and tasted amazing.

 

A nursery company bought the rights and renamed them “Red Delicious.” And for decades those apples absolutely dominated America.

 

If you grew up in the Midwest, every school lunch came with a Red Delicious apple. Grocery stores stacked them in giant, shiny pyramids. Teachers handed them out like educational currency. Cartoons decided, “Yep. That’s what apples look like now.”

 

Sure, people make fun of them today because newer apples taste better. But for years Red Delicious apples ran the produce aisle like a tiny fruit dictatorship.

 

All because one angry Iowa tree refused to die.

Iowa City: Literary Capital of the Midwest

 

You don’t expect one of the world’s great writing cities to be sitting in eastern Iowa between cornfields and Casey’s gas stations.

 

Yet somehow there’s Iowa City.

 

The town became famous because of the Iowa Writers’ Workshop at the University of Iowa, where a ridiculous number of famous writers studied or taught. Pulitzer winners everywhere. Novelists roaming around downtown looking exhausted and emotionally unavailable for artistic reasons.

 

Iowa City eventually got named a UNESCO City of Literature, which sounds incredibly sophisticated until somebody nearby says “ope” while spilling ranch dressing on themselves.

 

The place is packed with bookstores, poetry readings, indie theaters, coffee shops, and enough people angrily typing on laptops to power an entire anxiety disorder convention.

 

Half the town looks like they’re writing a novel or recovering from writing a novel.

 

Which makes Iowa City one of the funniest contradictions in America. A deeply literary little town in a state where somebody nearby is absolutely towing a pig to a county fair while eating gas station pizza.

Iowa’s Only Island City

 

Most people hear “island city” and picture tropical drinks, beach bars, and rich guys named Tanner driving golf carts without shirts.

 

Iowa’s island city is not that.

 

Sabula became Iowa’s only island town after a lock and dam project trapped it in water during the 1930s.

 

One day it was connected to the land. Then the Mississippi River basically went, “Congratulations. You live on water now.”

 

That river has the energy of a drunk uncle knocking over furniture at Thanksgiving.

 

Sabula’s tiny, quiet, and weirdly easy to miss. You can drive through eastern Iowa your whole life and never realize there’s a little island town just sitting over there minding its own business.

 

It’s got marinas, fishing spots, bald eagles, river views, and the peaceful atmosphere that briefly convinces you buying a fishing boat would solve your problems.

 

Then you remember boats cost money, and you know nothing about engines.

 

The weirdest part is how casually Iowans mention it.

 

“Oh yeah, we got an island town.”

 

Like every state just has one tucked somewhere between the cornfields and the Dollar General.

Iowa Helped Invent the Computer

 

Most people don’t think of Iowa as a tech powerhouse. Nobody walks into Best Buy thinking, “Wow. This all started in Ames.”

 

But back in the late 1930s and early 1940s, the first electronic digital computer was developed at Iowa State University.

 

They called it the Atanasoff-Berry Computer, which sounds less like world-changing technology and more like two accountants opening a law office.

 

The thing looked absolutely insane. Giant tubes. Wires everywhere. Metal cabinets humming ominously. Like Frankenstein tried building an HVAC unit during a nervous breakdown.

 

Still, it introduced ideas that became the foundation for modern computing.

 

Which means Iowa helped create the technology eventually responsible for people screaming at strangers online about pineapple pizza at 2:14 in the morning.

 

History really takes some stupid turns.

 

For years, bigger names got credit for inventing the computer, but later court rulings recognized the Iowa machine as a tremendous breakthrough.

 

So technically, every smartphone owes a little respect to a bunch of Iowa scientists surrounded by cornfields and probably eating loose meat sandwiches.

The World’s Largest Truck Stop

 

Truck stops are normally places where you buy gas, burned coffee, and a hot dog that’s been rotating under heat lamps since the Clinton administration.

 

Then there’s Iowa 80 Truckstop.

 

This place is completely unhinged.

 

Along Interstate 80 in Walcott, it’s officially the world’s largest truck stop. Calling it a truck stop honestly feels disrespectful. It’s basically a chrome-covered civilization.

 

The place has restaurants, showers, laundry facilities, dentists, barber shops, gift stores, a movie theater, and enough truck accessories to transform a pickup into a rolling county fair.

 

Thousands of truckers stop there every day. Tourists show up just to witness the chaos.

 

And yes, there’s a trucking museum because apparently somebody looked at the world’s biggest truck stop and thought, “Needs more trucks.”

 

Honestly, they were right.

 

If you’re there during the Trucker’s Jamboree in July, things somehow get even more Iowa. There’s live music, fireworks, pork chop cookoffs, and beauty contests for semi trucks.

 

Nothing says Midwest pride quite like a sparkling eighteen-wheeler competing for a crown.

Snake Alley: Iowa’s Drunk Street

 

San Francisco gets all the attention for Lombard Street, but Iowa built something even weirder.

 

Snake Alley in Burlington looks like somebody dropped cooked spaghetti down a hill and said, “Perfect. Pave it.”

 

Built in 1894, the street was supposed to help horse-drawn wagons get up a steep hill without flipping over.

 

Instead of building a straight road, they turned it into a twisting brick fever dream packed with sharp turns and switchbacks. The road wiggles all over the hill like it’s trying to escape Burlington.

 

Ripley’s Believe It or Not called it the crookedest street in the world. No one disagreed.

 

Driving down Snake Alley feels like a daredevil mountain challenge. Walking it somehow feels worse. Your knees start drafting resignation letters halfway through.

 

And because human beings refuse to leave dangerous nonsense alone, Burlington holds races on Snake Alley every year.

 

That’s right. Somebody saw a crooked brick death staircase and thought, “People should sprint here.”

Iowa Is Weirdly Smart

 

People outside the Midwest sometimes act like Iowa is just tractors, football, and a group of farmers discussing corn yields.

 

Meanwhile, Iowa consistently ranks near the top in the nation for literacy and high school graduation rates.

 

Turns out the corn people can read.

 

Education has always been a big deal for us. Tiny communities with four buildings somehow still have libraries. School funding meetings become blood feuds. People argue passionately about reading programs like they’re debating nuclear policy.

 

And Iowans genuinely love random knowledge. Jeopardy, quiz bowls, and pub trivia are as much a part of Iowa as corn, soybeans, and hogs.

 

Sit near old guys drinking coffee at a Casey’s sometime and you’ll hear them debating weather patterns, Civil War history, soybean yields, and whether the Cubs bullpen should legally qualify as a public emergency.

 

Libraries are everywhere. Some towns barely have enough people for a softball roster and still refuse to let the local library die. Davenport has three libraries. Des Moines has over a dozen libraries, more if you count the suburbs.

 

It’s honestly kind of admirable.

 

Also deeply humiliating when somebody’s seventy-eight-year-old grandma destroys you at trivia night.

Iowa Used To Belong to France

 

This sounds made up, but Iowa used to belong to France.

 

Yeah. France.

 

Before Iowa became part of the United States, it was part of French Louisiana, which means Iowa and New Orleans were technically under the same flag. Somewhere in history there’s probably a French guy standing along the Mississippi River looking around thinking, “What the hell am I supposed to do with all this corn?”

 

French fur traders and explorers moved through the Mississippi River Valley for years, trading with Native tribes, mapping territory, and probably sweating to death in wool coats.

 

Then France handed the land to Spain. Then got it back again. Then sold the whole thing to the United States in the Louisiana Purchase like somebody unloading an old riding mower on Facebook Marketplace.

 

So Iowa bounced between countries before finally ending up American.

 

Which is funny because modern Iowa feels about as French as a deep fryer at a county fair.

 

You picture Paris—the Pont Neuf, the Eiffel Tower, and the Louvre. Then Iowa barges into the conversation carrying a pork tenderloin, a case of Busch Light, and tickets to a monster truck rally behind the fairgrounds.

 

Honestly, the French probably saw winter hit once and said, “Absolutely not. Sell it.”

 

Final Thoughts 

 

So yeah, Iowa has enough corn to make you question whether humans were a mistake, and the planet belongs to agriculture.

 

But underneath all the soybeans and gravel roads, Iowa is one of the strangest states in America.

 

It’s a place with island towns, drunk-looking streets, butter sculptures, giant pigs, literary festivals, monster truck rallies, and enough random history to confuse anyone outside the Midwest. Somewhere between the hog barns and Casey’s pizza, Iowa accidentally helped invent modern computing and gave the world sliced bread.

 

That’s a weird resume

 

The funniest part is that Iowans don’t brag about any of it. They just accept the chaos and keep moving. If someone casually mentions the world’s largest truck stop or a pork tenderloin bigger than a manhole cover, nobody blinks.

 

Maybe that’s Iowa’s real superpower.

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