Guide · Iowa
Iowa, worth the detour.
17 hand-picked stops that never make the highway signs — the hidden gems, offbeat landmarks, and overlooked museums locals send you to, each with the story behind it and why it’s worth leaving the interstate.
Landmarks & memorials
5 stops in Iowa.
The white farmhouse behind Grant Wood's 1930 painting still stands in tiny Eldon — visitors can borrow overalls and a pitchfork from the visitor center and pose exactly as the painting's models did.
Field of Dreams Movie Site"If you build it, he will come" — the actual cornfield-ringed diamond from the 1989 film, where you can still walk out of the corn onto the infield at dusk.
Herbert Hoover National Historic SiteThe birthplace cottage, Quaker meetinghouse, and gravesite of Iowa's only U.S. president, set inside a National Historic Site free to enter — a rare NPS check-in on the eastern Iowa corridor.
Iowa State CapitolThe only five-domed statehouse in America, its central dome sheathed in tissue-thin 23-karat gold leaf — this is Roamward's capital check-in for Iowa, the literal centerpiece of the state progress map.
Roseman Covered BridgeThe most photographed of Madison County's covered bridges and the one at the heart of both the real ghost legend and 'The Bridges of Madison County' romance — cross it on foot and hear the boards creak.
Attractions
3 stops in Iowa.
The river otter tank is the unofficial star of the museum — families cluster there more than anywhere else, and the local nickname 'water cats' has become shorthand for the whole visit.
Living History FarmsInterpreters in the 1900 farm section still work fields with draft horses and period equipment — no engines, no shortcuts, just the actual physical labor Iowa farming required at the turn of the century.
Shrine of the Grotto of the RedemptionFather Paul Dobberstein reportedly began the project as a promise to the Virgin Mary after recovering from serious illness in seminary — the grotto is a decades-long thank-you built stone by stone over 42 years.
Roadside & scenic
6 stops in Iowa.
Built in 1894 by three German immigrant engineers who modeled it on old-world vineyard paths, this one-block, five-half-curve, 21%-grade street out-turns San Francisco's Lombard Street by 100 degrees — Ripley's called it 'The Crookedest Street in the World,' and it's still a one-way downhill run because horses used to lose their footing climbing it.
Stone City (Grant Wood Scenic Byway anchor)A limestone-quarry ghost-village-turned-art-colony where Grant Wood co-founded a 1932 artists' retreat in a converted icehouse — the visitor center's replica American Gothic facade sits amid the same Anamosa-stone bluffs Wood painted, at the western anchor of the 80-mile byway that bears his name.
Albert the BullStanding since 1964 on the edge of town, Albert is the World's Largest Bull statue — 30 feet tall, 33 feet long, with a 15-foot horn span — a Cattlemen's Association mascot-turned-landmark that put Audubon on the map for every I-80 detour-seeker heading north on US-71.
Loess Hills Scenic Overlook (Preparation Canyon unit)One of only a handful of officially named, ADA-accessible overlooks on the Loess Hills National Scenic Byway, perched above the ghost town of Preparation — a failed 1850s Mormon-splinter settlement swallowed back into prairie and bluff.
Loveland Scenic Overlook TowerA 100-foot spiral tower rising straight out of an interstate rest stop, built so I-880 drivers can pull off, climb up, and see the Omaha skyline and the Loess Hills fold into the Missouri River valley — one of the only official scenic byway features you can visit without leaving the interstate.
Murray Hill Scenic OverlookA 3-acre prairie-topped bluff two miles northeast of Little Sioux where yucca plants — a Sonoran Desert native — somehow thrive on wind-blasted Loess Hills soil, with interpretive panels explaining why these hills exist nowhere else in the world outside China.
Outdoors
2 stops in Iowa.
A 250-foot limestone bluff frames the Upper Mississippi River Wildlife Refuge, Lock and Dam No. 12, and the river town of Bellevue below in one shot -- and in winter, the same open water below the dam draws bald eagles the overlook trail was built to watch.
Eagle Point Park (Dubuque)A 164-acre bluff-top park built during the WPA era specifically to frame the view of Lock and Dam No. 11 below -- the stonework overlooks and pavilions were designed as public infrastructure for watching the river work, not just scenery, and the eagle namesake still holds up in winter.
Nature
1 stop in Iowa.
Plan the Iowa trip
Hidden gems, scenic drives, hikes — all in one Iowa guide.
See everything worth the detour in Iowa, then let Roamward build the trip around it. Know a Iowa spot we’re missing? Tell us — we’re building this with the people who actually drive it.