National Iowa Day Date in the current year: February 8, 2025

Iowa is a state in the Midwestern United States, bordered by the Mississippi River, Missouri River, Big Sioux River, and the states of Wisconsin, Illinois, Missouri, Nebraska, South Dakota, and Minnesota. Its nickname, “The Hawkeye State”, is a reference either to the Sauk leader and warrior Black Hawk or to a character in James Fenimore Cooper’s novel The Last of the Mohicans. Iowa is also known as “The Corn State” because it is the leading corn-producing state in the country.

Iowa, like many other states, is named for its predecessor, the Iowa Territory, which was named for the Iowa River, itself derived from the ethnonym of the indigenous Ioway people. The first known Europeans to document their expedition to Iowa were French explorers Jacques Marquette and Louis Jolliet in 1673. The area that is now Iowa was claimed by France and remained under French control as part of Louisiana until 1762. As a result, Iowa’s flag is based on the French tricolor of red, white, and blue.

In 1762, France secretly ceded Louisiana to Spain under the terms of the Treaty of Fontainebleau. The actual transfer of authority was slow, and Spain exercised very loose control over the Iowa region, granting trading licenses to British and French traders interested in the furs and lead obtained by the native tribes.

In 1800, the First French Republic and Spain signed another secret agreement, the Third Treaty of San Idelfonso, which returned control of Louisiana to France. Napoleon Bonaparte promptly sold French Louisiana to the United States in the Louisiana Purchase of 1803. Congress divided the newly acquired territory of Louisiana into the District of Louisiana and the Territory of Orleans, with present-day Iowa falling into the former.

In 1805, the District of Louisiana was organized as the Louisiana Territory. When the state of Louisiana was admitted to the Union in 1812, the Louisiana Territory was renamed the Missouri Territory to avoid confusion. In the years that followed, the area that is now Iowa became part of an unorganized territory in 1821, the Michigan Territory in 1834, and the Wisconsin Territory in 1836.

Throughout most of this time, the territory of Iowa was primarily inhabited by Native Americans. The forced Black Hawk Purchase of 1833 opened the area to American settlers. Five years later, the Iowa Territory was officially created by Congress from a portion of the Wisconsin Territory. On December 28, 1846, the southeastern portion of the Iowa Territory was admitted to the Union as the state of Iowa.

National Iowa Day is part of the National State Days project, launched in 2017 by National Day Calendar to celebrate the unique history, culture, and heritage of each U.S. state in the order in which they joined the Union. Celebrations begin with National Delaware Day on July 13 and are held once a week, except during the weeks of Thanksgiving and Christmas. National Iowa Day falls on February 8 in this cycle, not coinciding with the actual anniversary of Iowa’s admission to the Union.