The State Historical Society of Iowa’s History on the Move bus is parked outside the Perry Public Library on Railroad Street and will receive visitors this weekend on the following schedule:
- Friday from 10 a.m. to 6 p.m.
- Saturday from 10 a.m. to 5 p.m.
- Sunday from 10 a.m. to 4 p.m.
The custom-built, Iowa-made Winnebago is on course to visit all 99 Iowa counties by the end of 2022 with its traveling exhibition, “History 101: People and Places.”
The 300-square-foot exhibit “focuses on Iowa’s people and places, shares stories of Iowa’s past and showcases 56 artifacts from the museum’s collection,” according to the State Historical Society website. “Iowa History 101: People and Places” covers 13,000 years of Iowa history in order “to fulfill the mission of connecting Iowans to the people, places and points of pride that define our state.”
Artifacts on display will include:
- a Meskwaki cradleboard from the late 1800s, a frame used in combination with a beaded wrap to protect infants
- knitting needles used by Jane Kirkwood of Iowa City to aid soldiers during the Civil War and World War I
- a birchbark lunchbox used by a boy in Cerro Gordo county in the 1870s
- women’s suffrage materials, including the pen Gov. William Harding of Sibley used to sign Iowa’s 19th Amendment bill, as part of the national effort to ensure women’s right to vote
- a University of Iowa pennant owned by Edward Carter of Monroe County, the first African American to get a medical degree from the University of Iowa
- a business card from the 1920s of J. L. Spriggs, an African-American homebuilder in Des Moines
- boots worn by Des Moines Water Works director L. D. McMullen during the flood of 1993
- a NASA-issued, flight suit worn by record-breaking astronaut Peggy Whitson of Beaconsfield photographs of Iowans from across the state
The History on the Move bus is free and open to the public. Sponsors include EMC Insurance Companies, Casey’s General Stores, Winnebago Industries, Iowa State University Extension and Outreach and Mike Wolfe.
