Fan Riding Hot Air Balloon Over Football Field 1913

This 1913 cartoon from the Des Moines Register (September 7, 1913) shows that football was as big a part of Iowa life then as it is today.

Photograph: Columbia Theater & Hotel Davenport Iowa

 

The Davenport Democrat and Leader printed this picture of the newly built Columbia Theater and Hotel in 1913. The building at Third and Ripley Street in Davenport was built by T. J. Walsh at a cost of $150,000.

H. C. Kahl Home in Davenport Iowa 1913

 

The H. C Kahl home on Marquette Street Hill in Davenport as it looked in 1913. Kahl, vice president of the Walsh-Kahl Construction Company, built the home at a cost of $200,000.

(Colorized photograph from the Davenport Democrat and Leader. December 29, 1913)

Herbert Hoover During World War I

 

Before he was president, Herbert Hoover was a mining engineer. A numbers man. A logistics wizard who’d made a fortune digging minerals out of the ground on three continents. Then, in 1914, war exploded across Europe.

Thousands of Americans were stranded with no cash and no way home.

Hoover organized emergency loans. Chartered ships. Set up offices. Within weeks, he’d helped get tens of thousands of Americans out of Europe.

He became chairman of the Commission for Relief in Belgium after it had been overrun by Germany. Millions of civilians faced starvation. Britain’s navy blockaded food shipments. Germany occupied the land. Hoover negotiated with both sides to move grain across oceans and through battle lines.

Under his direction, ships crossed the Atlantic loaded with wheat and flour. Warehouses rose. Distribution networks spread across occupied territories. The commission fed millions of people every day.

When America entered the war in 1917, Woodrow Wilson made Hoover the U.S. Food Administrator, a post he held from 1917 to 1919.

Hoover didn’t want heavy-handed rationing laws. He believed in voluntary cooperation. So he made food patriotic.

All Eyes Were On Babe Ruth In The 1916 World Series

 

In October 1916, every eye in Iowa was focused on the World Series and Babe Ruth. Farmers leaned on fence posts. Barbers argued over box scores.

Telegraph wires hummed like angry bees. Out there in Boston, a thick-armed kid with a mean fastball was turning October into his own private carnival.

Ruth wasn’t the Sultan of Swat yet. He was just a left-handed wrecking crew in wool flannel, chewing up the Brooklyn Robins. In Game 2, he worked fast, jaw set, eyes flat. Brooklyn hitters swung like men chopping at ghosts. Boston won. No fuss.

Game 5 was where things got strange. Fourteen innings. No lights. No mercy. The crowd sagged and swayed. Pitch after pitch, Ruth kept firing, as if he’d tapped into some private reservoir of stubborn American madness. When it ended—scoreless for Brooklyn—he’d stacked up nearly 30 straight World Series innings without allowing a run.

Iowans read the numbers in the morning papers and shook their heads. They didn’t know they were witnessing the early rumble of a coming storm that would blow the fences down and change the sport forever.

Babe Ruth would be an unstoppable force in the game.

Pitcher Ray Fisher Des Moines Federal League

Ray Fisher, 18, was the leading picture for the Des Moines Federal League in 1916. When he pitched for the MsCurmin Drug team, he won twelve straight games, averaged twelve strikeouts, and five hits per game.

He got his start in the West Des Moines Sunday School League, where he played for the South Des Moines Methodist team. In 1916, he was given a trial with the local Western League Club.

 

(Picture from the Des Moines Register. February 20, 1916)

Iowa Crime Time Is Available Now

 

Iowa looks harmless.

Wide skies. Gravel roads. Farmhouses spaced just far enough apart that nothing ever seems to happen. The place where people leave doors unlocked and believe evil belongs somewhere else.

It didn’t.

Between 1874 and 1935, violence slipped quietly into Iowa’s towns and countryside. It didn’t arrive with warning signs or sirens. It came in the night. It came through back doors and empty streets. It hid behind borrowed names, stolen cars, and familiar faces.

Iowa Crime Time exposes forgotten crimes that shattered the illusion of safety. Bank robberies carried out with military precision. Outlaws who passed through the state like ghosts—here one day, gone the next. Men and women whose names would become legends, leaving fear and blood behind them as they moved on.

Some crimes were fast and brutal. Others were slow, calculated, and deeply unsettling. In one quiet town, a single night of violence left a scar so deep it never healed. After that, no door felt strong enough. No night felt truly quiet again.

These stories don’t unfold in crowded cities or lawless frontiers. They happen in places that believed they were immune. That belief made the danger worse.

This book isn’t about puzzles or courtroom drama. It’s about atmosphere—about the growing sense that something is wrong long before anyone realizes how bad it’s going to be. It’s about the fear of knowing that help is miles away, that darkness can move freely, and that evil doesn’t need chaos to thrive.

Iowa Crime Time drags these stories back into the light and reminds us of a chilling truth: The most dangerous places aren’t always obvious. Sometimes, they’hide in the corn.

Fire Destroys Crescent Macaroni And Cracker Company 1915

 

Crescent Macaroni and Cracker Company

Flames gutted the Crescent Macaroni and Cracker Company on January 25, 1915.

The plant at Fifth and Iowa Streets in Davenport, Iowa, was the largest macaroni company in the country. The company that employed 250 laborers and 35 salespeople had its best year in 1914, requiring employees to work overtime most of the year.

The fire broke out shortly after 8:15 p.m.

Night watchman George Montz said it started in front of oven number one on the west side of the plant. He turned in the alarm at 8:16, but nearly twenty minutes passed before the first fire company arrived.

Coca Cola Big Six Advertisement 1915

 

Coca Cola was pushing the National Pastime in this advertisement from The Muscatine Journal, published on June 18, 1915.

Dick Nesbitt Drake University Football 1928

 

Dick Nesbitt, Drake University football player, Des Moines, Iowa. (watercolor drawing of black and white image published in the Des Moines Register. November 29, 1928)

Charles Nigg The Maquoketa Wheelman

 

Charles Nigg of Maquoketa, Iowa, pushed a wheel barrow called the Iowa Special from Maquoketa to the American Legion convention in San Antonio, Texas in 1928. He served in the Spanish American War with his two brothers. (picture from Des Moines Tribune. October 11, 1928)

Mrs. Lewis Neff (Formerly Marjorie Love)

 

This photograph of Mrs. Lewis Neff, formerly Marjorie Love, was published in the Des Moines Register on March 11, 1923. She was the daughter of Otis G. Love. Mrs. Neff lived in New York where her husband worked in the export department of a large sugar company. (watercolor drawing of a black and white newspaper image)

Iowa Military Units at Camp Dodge

The Des Moines Register (October 7, 1917) published these pictures of Iowa soldiers at Camp Dodge, training for overseas duty in World War I. It's an interesting look at army life.

Sioux City men of Company A training at Camp Dodge.

Pictures From The Villisca Axe Murders

On October 7, 1917, the Des Moines Register published these photograpghs of the Villisca Axe Murder house and some of the victims and suspects. I hadn't seen a few of these before so I thought they were worth a look.

The Villisca Axe Murder house as it appeared in 1917.

Luther College Decorah, Iowa circa 1910

 

Main building at Luther College in Decorah, Iowa (circa 1900-1910 - watercolor after a vintage postcard)