(63) Crawford County 6.27.2026

Crawford County started off with a sweet surprise- our first stop was Manilla to snag a picture of the Historic Klondike Hotel, a restored 1897 hotel stop for the railway- but it happened to be open for the Tractor Pull event going on in Manilla. We haven’t been able to tour very many of these historic hotels so it was such a nice surprise!

We took a drive through the rest of Manilla and then made our way to Denison.

 

Our first stop was the Donna Reed Performing Arts Center. Unfortunately, the theater and soda fountain are no longer in use, but both still look so amazing!

We were excited to see Donna Reed’s Oscar only to find out it is on display at the McHenry House which is only open the 1^st and 3^rd weekends ☹ so all we got to see was this “Oscar fake”!

 

We enjoyed lunch at the Bake Shop and Hollywood Café

We headed over to Dow City to tour the Dow House. We love learning the rich history in all of these old towns and imagining what life must have been like in its golden days. This house had so many unique “originals” that we enjoyed getting to see.

Original artwork from one of the Dow daughters

The only original light fixture left

Original wedding dress worn by Mrs. Dow in the 1800’s and altered and worn throughout the generations of Dows

We even got to go out on the balcony . . . just imagine what this view must have been in 1876!

We got another sweet surprise for Crawford County when we found out on the Crawford County Historical Society Facebook page that the McHenry House, where Donna Reed’s Oscar is on display, happened to be open this weekend! We booked it back to Denison and alas, the Oscar:

We never thought we’d get to see one of these in real life 😊

And we got to tour the rest of the house 

Then we wondered, is this actually Hollywood- no, it’s just Denison, Iowa :D

Yep, this is definitely Iowa :P

Couldn’t miss this shot of Mader and Lightning McQueen as this was Elisha’s favorite childhood movie!

 

We decided to stop at the only ice cream shop in all of Crawford County- an original Dairy Queen!

To wrap up the day, we did a drive through Deloit (no pictures) and Schleswig

Another favorite of ours is getting to see the varied landscape of Iowa so we enjoyed getting to see the rolling hills of western Iowa.

Rate: 1
Other Things to See/Do:
Mueller Conservation Center, Denison
Crawford County Speedway, Denison
Eugene Kock Memorial Park, Westside