Iowa admitted to the union: December 28, 1847

170 years ago today: Iowa becomes the 29th state in the union.

The Iowa Territory was formed on July 4, 1838, and the vote for statehood came eight years later, in 1846. Only adult males at least 21 years of age were eligible to vote. The territory's total population was about 100,000 at the time, mostly in the eastern portion of the territory, that is, the portion nearest the Mississippi River. The vote was 9,442 in favor and 9,036 voting against statehood and its attendant taxation.

Slavery was banned in Iowa, so its statehood was tied to the legal compromise of the time, the Missouri Compromise, that said that for every new non-slave-holding state admitted into the union there should be a slave-holding state. Florida, with slavery legal within its borders, had become a state on March 3, 1845. Had that not occurred first, Iowa's admission to the union would have been, for all intents and purposes, impossible at the time.

Most of the western or Missouri River side of Iowa wouldn't be settled until after the American Civil War of 1861–1865, to which of all states, North or South, Iowa contributed the highest percentage of fighting-age men. To this day, the Iowa capitol displays many battle flags from Iowa regiments of the Civil War.

Click on the below map for an enlarged view in a separate browser window.

Iowa is the only US state bordered by river on two sides: the Mississippi forms Iowa's eastern border and the Missouri and its tributary the Big Sioux form Iowa's western border.

I was born in Cedar Falls, raised in Algona, graduated from high school in Newton, and from college in Orange City. Cedar Falls is named after the Cedar River. The name Algona was proposed by the wife of one of the first settlers of Kossuth County, Judge A. C. Call; in Algonquin it means "Algonquin waters." The origin of Newton's name is disputed. Orange City, settled mostly by Dutch immigrants, is named after the House of Orange-Nassau, an aristocratic dynasty founded in 1544 by William the Silent, leader of the Dutch War for Independence.