September 3, 2008

September 3, 2008

Just west of us in West Branch, IA is the Herbert Hoover National Historic Site. We start our tour with a walk thru the tiny two-room house where Hoover was born and then move on to his Presidential Library and Museum. The exhibits are quite well done and we spend way more time here than I had anticipated. Herbert Hoover, our 31st president, lived in Iowa until he was orphaned at the age of nine. After graduating from Stanford, he made a fortune as a mining engineer when he discovered gold in Australia. During WWI he directed charity relief efforts to feed the starving of Europe, and became internationally famous as the Great Humanitarian. He served as Secretary of Commerce during President Coolidge’s administration and led an unprecedented improvement in the American standard of living. With his help a huge percentage of Americans owned a house, car, telephone, and radio for the first time. He was considered “A Wonder Boy” and won the 1928 presidential election by a landslide. Unfortunately his long string of success ran out. The Great Depression hit with a vengeance a few months later. Bad luck for sure. He inherited a severely overheated economy ripe for the bubble to burst. Although he wisely embarked on an unprecedented federal spending spree, he counteracted the benefit by hiking taxes on the rich and tariffs on imports. His worst sin was probably communications. He failed to instill the nation with hope or take credit for his stimulus projects. By the end of his term he was being vilified by the public, and lost his re-election by a landslide.

A little further west we stop in Iowa City to see the Devonian Fossil Gorge. During the big flood of 1993, surging waters flew over the dam spillway here and exposed limestone rocks containing sea fossils from 370 million years ago. It is hard to imagine that Iowa was once under the ocean. Unfortunately this site is not too tourist friendly right now. The big flood they had this spring wiped out most of the identification markers. Nevertheless we are able to spot a few oyster and crinoid specimens in the rocks.

We spend the night at an RV park an hour west in Kellogg, IA.