QI01NX: Iowa Wedding and Portrait Photography

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Although Native Americans have occupied what is now Iowa for 13,000 years, the written history of Iowa begins with the protohistoric accounts of Native Americans by explorers such as Marquette and Joliet in the 1680s. Until the early 19th century Iowa was occupied exclusively by Indians and a few European traders, with loose political control by France and Spain. Iowa became part of the United States of America after the Louisiana Purchase in 1803, but uncontested U.S. control over what is now Iowa occurred only after the War of 1812 and after a series of treaties eliminated Indians claims on the state. U.S. statehood was acquired in 1846, and by 1860 almost the entire state was settled and farmed. Subsistence frontier farming was replaced by commodity farming after the construction of railroad networks in the 1850s and 1860s. Iowa contributed a disproportionate amount of young men to fight in the American Civil War, afterwards they returned to help transform Iowa into an agricultural powerhouse, supplying food to the rest of the nation.

Iowa