Library Guides: Iowa-Related Resources: Just plain silly and/or bizarre

Silly Iowa laws:

In Iowa, ministers must obtain a permit to carry their liquor across state lines.
It is illegal for a mustached man to kiss a woman in public.
Any person who attempts to pass off margarine, oleo, or oleomargarine as real butter is guilty of a simple misdemeanor in Iowa. This one originated in 1943 but is still in force today. For more information see The Butter-Margarine Controversy.
One-armed piano players must perform for free.
In Cedar Rapids, it's illegal to read a person's palms in the city limits.
In Marshalltown, horses are forbidden to eat fire hydrants.
The Iowa Legislature once passed a resolution ordering the state cafeteria to start serving cornbread.
It's a crime to use a dead person’s handicapped parking sign or license plate - see 321L.3 of the Iowa Code.

Current Iowa laws can be found in either:
Code of Iowa (print version title) - - we have these available from 1851 to the present at K Io92 (on Floor 2).
Iowa Code (electronic title) - - which is keyword searchable at: https://www.legis.iowa.gov/publications/search

Snake Alley in Iowa!?
Burlington, Iowa’s Snake Alley: Ripley’s Believe It or Not has called it the “Crookedest Street in the World.” Rivaling San Francisco’s Lombard Street, it was built in 1894 as a shortcut from the clifftop mansions of Heritage Hill to downtown Burlington, a Mississippi River city with steep hills. With five half-curves and two quarter-curves, the brick-paved street with limestone curbing drops 58 feet over a distance of 275 feet.

Iowa town names and how to pronounce them:
Pronunciation Guide to Names and State Officeholders in Iowa. It’s a very small book and a bit old – but extremely helpful!
Call number: F619 B261p – Parks Library Reference Collection (on Tier 2).

ISU Library Resources

Corn Palaces and Butter Queens by Pamela H. Simpson
Call Number: NA6750 A2 U6 2012
Teddy Roosevelt's head sculpted from butter. The Liberty Bell replicated in oranges. The Sioux City Corn Palace of 1891 encased with corn, grains, and grasses and stretching for two city blocks--with a trolley line running down its center. From the pioneering cereal architecture of Henry Worrall at the Philadelphia Centennial Exposition to the vast corn palaces displayed in Sioux City, Iowa, and elsewhere between 1877 and 1891, Simpson brings to life these dazzling large-scale displays in turn-of-the-century American fairs and festivals. She guides readers through the fascinating forms of crop art and butter sculpture, as they grew from state and regional fairs to a significant place at the major international exhibitions. The Minnesota State Fair's Princess Kay of the Milky Way contest, Lillian Colton's famed pictorial seed art, and the work of Iowa's "butter cow lady," Norma "Duffy" Lyon, are modern versions of this tradition.
Dictionary of Iowa Place-Names by Tom Savage
Call Number: F619 S385 2007 (Reference Collection - Tier 2)
Accessible online to those with a current ISU ID. Savage includes information on the place-names of all 1,188 incorporated and unincorporated communities in Iowa that meet at least two of the following qualifications: twenty-five or more residents; a retail business; an annual celebration or festival; a school; church, or cemetery; a building on the National Register of Historic Places; a zip-coded post office; or an association with a public recreation site. If a town’s name has changed over the years, he provides information about each name. He also includes information about the state’s name and about each of its ninety-nine counties as well as a list of ghost towns.
Iowa Curiosities by Dan Coffey; Eric Jones
Call Number: F621.6 D72x 2005
Whether you're a born-and-raised Iowan, a recent transplant, or just passing through, Iowa Curiosities will have you laughing out loud as the authors introduce you to the weirdest, wackiest, most outrageous characters and events in the state, and take you places you never could have imagined―some of them right around the corner!
Iowa Trivia by Janice Beck Stock; Alan Beck; Kenneth Beck
Call Number: F621 S84 1996
What is Iowa's only town on an island? What legendary film star was born in Winterset in 1907? What popular ice cream treat was invented in the town of Onawa in 1920? The questions and answers in Iowa Trivia range from the fairly obvious to the slighty more difficult to the totally obscure. They are divided into six fun categories that enable the book to be used with trivia board games: geography, entertainment, history, art/literature, sports/leisure, and science/nature. Iowa Trivia is a great read for people who think they know it all about Iowa-or anyone who would like to.
Oddball Iowa by Jerome Pohlen
Call Number: F619.3 P64x 2005
This guide will take the adventurous traveler to the future birthplace of Captain James T. Kirk, the home of the "Lonely Goat Herder" marionettes from The Sound of Music, and the world's largest Cheeto. The guide includes facts about numerous events in Iowa's history, such as Ozzy Osbourne's infamous bat-biting incident and Jesse James's first moving-train robbery. Iowa is depicted as the birthplace of the Roto-Rooter, the Red Delicious apple, the electronic computer, the reinforced concrete bridge, and the Eskimo pie. The accompanying photographs and maps will direct travelers to other fun attractions, including the butter sculptures at the Iowa State Fair, the annual National Skillet Throw, the Hobo Convention and Museum, the Ice Cream Capital of the World, and the National Balloon Museum.
Tales from the Squirrel Cage Jail by Richard Warner; Ryan Roenfeld
Call Number: HV8746 U62 I69x 2009 (Floor 2)
A history of the 1885 "Squirrel Cage" rotary cell jail in Council Bluffs, Iowa, and information about some of the colorful prisoners housed there over the years and their crimes. Creaking mechanical gears would slowly spin the Pottawatomie County Jail so that the guard could stay put as he watched each prisoner’s every action. Located inside an 1885 Victorian Gothic-style brick structure, the bizarre contraption (in use until 1969) is one of three rotary cell jails still in existence.