Johnson County Historical Museum

After touring the antique car museum, we walked into the other part of the building, the Johnson County Historical Museum.  

One wall was decorated with old maps of Iowa counties, and there were informational boards with stories of life in Johnson county.  The photo on the left shows the last graduating class from an old two-story schoolhouse (1899).

 

 There was a display on Swaner's Dairies which served the community for nearly a century and replicas of the Old Capitol in Iowa City, a log cabin, and a tent.  Also on display was a plow. 

The pioneer life was hard! The handcart on the right was available for visitors to unhitch and try; however, the "supplies" were not nearly as heavy as the pioneers would have had to pull.

The printing press on the left and the cash register with an old dollar bill on the right were two of the most interesting displays in the museum.  

Our friend, fellow chess player, and Team League teammate(!) Tim pulled out a dollar to compare with the one on display.  The older bill was noticeably quite larger than modern bills.  It also certified that its owner actually had a dollar's worth of silver at the U.S. Treasury--you are *not* going to see that on today's dollars.  

There was a display on trading posts and a case of arrowheads.  On the right and below left the display on Iowa farm wives is pictured.

 Farm houses (as shown on the right) are definitely not a thing of the past.  Iowa is dotted with homesteads throughout the countryside everywhere, but they are ever so slowly disappearing as the old folks die or sell out to bigger farmers, and their children move to the cities.

Our visit to the Johnson County Historical Museum was a pleasant addition to our tour of the antique cars, reminding us of the Iowa that was, and still is in some ways unchanged, a beautiful, bountiful land.