Transportation in Rural and Urban Spaces

How is life the same and different in rural and urban areas?

Transportation is about how to get from here to there. What is the route and what is the mode of travel? Walking from one place to another with whatever one could carry was the earliest form of transportation, and the first routes were paths through fields or woods. Where there were rivers, small rafts, canoes and boats provided easier and faster travel than by foot, and they were capable of carrying larger loads than a single person. People by the sea learned how to catch the wind in a boat's sails and travel to distant ports for trade and exploration.

Early Modes of Transportation

In early Iowa, rivers were the first highways. Indians, French and British fur traders loaded canoes to trading posts that sent furs to the East Coast and on to Europe. The Missouri and Mississippi Rivers and their tributaries provided an extensive system of water routes. Early Iowa settlers often arrived by sailing down the Ohio to St. Louis or up from New Orleans and then landing in one of the Mississippi River towns. Western Iowa pioneers established Council Bluffs and Sioux City along the Missouri where they could get supplies.

Stage coaches and wagons drawn by horses or oxen could take early settlers across land where there were no navigable rivers. In the 1850s, railroads extended their first lines west of the Mississippi and soon were bringing waves of pioneers seeking homes on the fertile Iowa prairies. Trains could travel in all weather, haul tons of freight on each trip and make travelers much more comfortable. Being on a rail line was so important to a town's survival that local citizens invested in them and voted public bonds to support them. In western Iowa, the railroad companies platted towns along their routes. Soon, nowhere in Iowa was more than 10 miles from a rail line.

Transportation and Iowa Families

Farm families used horses to pull wagons and buggies for travel. Livery stables in town kept horses for town families. The coming of the automobile made a huge impact on Iowa, especially farm families. Trains went from town to town on established schedules, but cars could connect farm homes to towns or other local destinations and the riders could travel when they wanted. With autos came the need for more and better roads. The responsibility for road building a maintenance shifted from the neighborhood to the county and state. Who should pay for better roads became a major political issue.

The automobiles greatly helped to end the isolation many farm families felt. While there were still many rural one room schools by 1920, more farm children started enrolling in town high school, and their families no longer made only Saturday night shopping trips into town. Trucks and busses added new forms of travel and hauling. Airplanes made their appearance in the Iowa skies in the early 20th century. The U.S. Post Office added air mail service. Airports in the larger cities connected Iowans with distant destinations, both in the U.S. and abroad. The interstate highway system made automobile travel much faster and safer.

Today, when automobiles are almost universal among Iowa families, there is not that much difference between rural and urban transportation. Urban residents often have more access to public or commercial resources, like taxis or buses, and rural residents usually have longer trips to airline terminals. However, rural trips rarely experience the heavy traffic of urban rush hour. Access to affordable, reliable and convenient transportation is a critical factor in modern life. Iowans have good roads but it is costly to maintain such an extensive system.

Just like technology changes and modes of transportation change, definitions change over time as well. For the purposes of this source set, "long ago" means anything pre-1960, and, with a couple of exceptions, the "today" sources are all in the 21st century. The U.S. Census Bureau revised the population requirement for an urban area since the U.S. population has more than tripled from 1900 to 2000. For the purposes of this source set, the "long ago" definition of urban is a population of 2,500 or more people, which was set in 1910 and remained until 1950. In the "today" category, we use the 2000 definition from the U.S. Census Bureau of 50,000 or more people.  

Supporting Questions

What was transportation like in rural areas long ago?

• Bird's-Eye View Map of Marengo, Iowa, 1868 (Map)
• Bird's-Eye View Map of Marshalltown, Iowa, 1868 (Map)
• Main Street in Elliott, Iowa, 1900 (Image)
• Horse-Drawn School Bus in Webster, Iowa, 1928 (Image)
• Wooden Bus of the Renwick Independent School in Iowa, October 1937 (Image)
• Logs Hauled on a Sleigh by a Team of Horses in Seward, Alaska, between 1900 and 1930 (Image)
• Farmer Harvesting Corn with a John Deere Tractor, 1945 (Image)
• People Loading Potatoes onto a Chicago, Burlington & Quincy Railcar, 1903 (Image)
• "Sirloin Special" Hauling Cattle from Hampton, Iowa, to Chicago during Iowa Beef Month, October 1950 (Image)
• Drivers and Delivery Trucks of the Farmers Mutual Co-Op Creamery in Sioux Center, Iowa, May 1940 (Image)
• "Main Street Life" Essay from The Goldfinch, 1997 (Document)
• Train Carrying Logs, between 1900 and 1920 (Image)
• Train with a Blade Traveling through a Snow Drift, 1905 (Image)
• Excerpts from The Goldfinch's "The Automobile Age," November 1982 (Document)
• Excerpts from The Goldfinch's "Railroads...," November 1983 (Document)
• Tipton Consolidated School Buses, 1940 (Image)
• Eclipse Lumber Company Truck in Clinton, Iowa, 1913 (Image)
• Fire Truck in Shenandoah, Iowa, October 1950 (Image)
• Main Street Construction in Shenandoah, Iowa, October 1950 (Image)

What is transportation like in rural areas today?

• Main Street in Columbus Junction, Iowa, 2003 (Image)
• Logging Truck in California, June 2013 (Image)
• Iowa's Rural Public Transit Systems, 2014 (Map)
• Grain Elevator in El Campo, Texas, March 11, 2014 (Image)
• Diesel Locomotive in Lamar, Colorado, May 20, 2015 (Image)
• Train Snow Plow in Glenwood Springs, Colorado, August 4, 2015 (Image)
• Intermodal Transportation Infographic, 2016 (Document)
• Dusty Scene of a Farm Truck and Equipment near Taylor, Mississippi, November 11, 2017 (Image)
• Forklift Loads Bales of Cotton onto a Trunk near Marks, Mississippi, November 11, 2017 (Image)
• Bus 12 Leaving a School in Pella, Iowa, 2018 (Image)
• Person Next to a Row of Young Corn Crops, June 28, 2018 (Image)
• "Compare... Cargo Capacity" Infographic, February 25, 2019 (Document)
• Barge Carrying Containers near Bellevue, Iowa, Date Unknown (Image) 
• Snow Plow in Rural Iowa, Date Unknown (Image)

What was transportation like in urban areas long ago?

• Panoramic Map of Chicago, 1857 (Map)
• Panoramic Map of Davenport, Iowa, 1888 (Map)
• Elevated Railroad in New York City, 1896 (Image)
• South Water Street in Chicago, Illinois, 1899 (Image)
• Marine Terminals in New York, between 1900 and 1910 (Image)
• "Excavating for a New York Foundation," 1903 (Video)
• Express Trains in Subway at Spring Street, New York, 1905 (Image)
• Lumber Steamer Being Loaded in Gulfport, Mississippi, 1906 (Image)
• Fire Station No. 1 in Waterloo, 1908 (Image)
• Wagons Removing Snow in New York City, January 1908 (Image)
• Madison Avenue in Chicago, Illinois, between 1910 and 1920 (Image)
• Automobiles Parked on a Street in Des Moines, Iowa, 1913 (Image)
• Horse-Drawn Wagon Filled with Flynn Farm Dairy Milk Cans in Des Moines, Iowa, 1915 (Image)
• Western Union Messengers in Des Moines, Iowa, August 1918 (Image)
• Ford Commercial Airplane, 1925 (Image)
• Roadway in Des Moines, Iowa, 1928 (Image)
• Fire Truck in Waterloo, Iowa, May 1938 (Image)
• Workers Repairing a Streetcar in Council Bluffs, Iowa, 1945 (Image)
• Construction of Mercy Hospital in Des Moines, Iowa, July 1957 (Image)

What is transportation like in urban areas today?

• Aerial View of Downtown Chicago, Illinois, between 1980 and 2006 (Image)
• Red Line Metro in Washington, D.C., between 1980 and 2006 (Image)
• Bus in Georgia, September 14, 2001 (Image)
• Busy Street in New York City, May 8, 2010 (Image)
• Dallas Area Rapid Transit (DART) Train in Texas, May 24, 2014 (Image)
• "Iowa's Urban Public Transit System," 2014 (Map)
• Aerial View of Boeing Passenger Aircraft in South Carolina, May 1, 2017 (Image)
• Massive Container Ship in Savannah, Georgia, May 20, 2017 (Image)
• Fire Trucks and Firefighters in New York, Date Unknown (Image)
• Fleet of Snow Plows in Iowa, Date Unknown (Image)

Additional Resources

• United States Census Bureau
  Explore the U.S. Census date through this official website for the U.S. Census Bureau. 
• GIS Story Map on Rural America
  This interactive website provides resources to explore U.S. Census population data in regard to rural America. 
• The Urban-Suburban-Exurban-Rural Continuum
  This online document from The Ohio State University looks into the definitions, trends and interdependencies related to the urban-suburban-exurban-rural continuum. Contains helpful photos to show the differences. 
• John Deere Two-Row Corn Picker
  The two-minute video shows a John Deere two-row corn picker in action from 2015. 
• Galbraith's Railway Mail Service Maps of Iowa
  This Library of Congress resources includes historical map of Iowa shows the complex network of railroad lines in Iowa in 1897.
• Locks and Dams
  These two videos show a barge moving through Keokuk, Iowa, and how a "lock works." 
• John Deere Cotton Picker
  This one-minute video shows a John Deere cotton picker in action in Seminole County, Georgia. 
• Grain Elevator 3D Animation
  This one-minute animation outlines how a grain elevator operates. 
• Bird's-Eye View of Des Moines, Iowa
  This map from 1868 is a panoramic view of the city of Des Moines, Iowa. 
• 1929 Ford Commercial Airplane
  This silent, three-minute video is footage from a 1929 Ford Commercial Airplane reliability tour. 

Iowa Core Social Studies Standards (2nd Grade)

Listed below are the Iowa Core Social Studies content anchor standards that are best reflected in this source set. The content standards applied to this set are elementary school-age level and encompass the key disciplines that make up social studies for second grade students.