The American Gothic house, Iowa State, and three Iowa university towns
Across east-central Iowa through Grant Wood country; the painter spent most of his life in Cedar Rapids and pulled his best-known landscapes from the hills of southeast Iowa. KAMW Ames Municipal serves Iowa State, founded 1858; on September 11, 1862, Iowa became the first state to accept the Morrill Act, and the Ames school went on to open in 1869 as the nation's first coeducational land-grant college. East to KIOW Iowa City: the Old Capitol, cornerstone laid July 4, 1840, seat of the Iowa Territory and the young state until 1857, now the centerpiece of the university's Pentacrest; and the Iowa Writers' Workshop, founded 1936 as the country's first creative-writing degree program. Flannery O'Connor and Raymond Carver studied there; Kurt Vonnegut and Marilynne Robinson taught there. South to KOTM Ottumwa Industrial: 14 miles east in tiny Eldon stands the American Gothic House, the 1881 farmhouse Grant Wood spotted in 1930 and painted into the most parodied image in American art. The visitor center next door lends out the pitchfork and apron so you can pose. Three college towns, one small white house, one chain.