Iowa's 2nd congressional district
Iowa's 2nd congressional district is a congressional district in the U. S. state of Iowa that covers most of its southeastern part. It includes Davenport, Iowa City, Clinton, Ottumwa, Fort Madison, Bettendorf and Pella; the district is represented by Democrat Dave Loebsack, in office since 2007. On June 22, 2001, the Iowa General Assembly passed a plan to redistrict the state of Iowa; the plan went into effect in 2002 for the 108th U. S. Congress; the prior redistricting plan was effective from 1992 to 2001. Election results from presidential races: As of December 2018, there are four living former members of the House; the most recent representative to die was John Culver on December 26, 2018. Iowa's congressional districts List of United States congressional districts Martis, Kenneth C.. The Historical Atlas of Political Parties in the United States Congress. New York: Macmillan Publishing Company. Martis, Kenneth C.. The Historical Atlas of United States Congressional Districts. New York: Macmillan Publishing Company.
Congressional Biographical Directory of the United States 1774–present
Iowa's 5th congressional district
Iowa's 5th congressional district is an obsolete congressional district in the U. S. state of Iowa. It was last represented by Republican Steve King, now serving the state's 4th congressional district; the district became obsolete for the 113th Congress in 2013 as Iowa lost a seat in the U. S. House of Representatives redistricting based upon results from the 2010 Census. Official redistricting maps divided the territory in this district in half, attaching the northern half to the 4th district and the southern half to the 3rd district. Iowa's 5th Congressional District was redistricted in 1942. U. S. Representative Karl M. LeCompte became the representative of Iowa's 4th Congressional District, U. S. Representative Paul H. Cunningham was the representative from Iowa's 6th Congressional District. Iowa's 5th Congressional District was redistricted in 1972. U. S. Representative Neal Smith was taken out of Iowa's 5th Congressional District and put in the 4th Congressional District. U. S. Representative William J. Scherle was taken out of Iowa's 7th Congressional District and put into the 5th Congressional District where he ran against future U.
S. Senator Tom Harkin. On June 22, 2001, the Iowa General Assembly passed a plan to redistrict the state of Iowa; the plan went into effect in 2002 for the 108th U. S. Congress; the prior redistricting plan was effective from 1992-2001. Election results from presidential races: As of May 2015, six former members of the U. S. House of Representatives from Iowa's 5th congressional district are alive. Iowa's congressional districts Martis, Kenneth C.. The Historical Atlas of Political Parties in the United States Congress. New York: Macmillan Publishing Company. Martis, Kenneth C.. The Historical Atlas of United States Congressional Districts. New York: Macmillan Publishing Company. Congressional Biographical Directory of the United States 1774–present
Iowa
Iowa is a state in the Midwestern United States, bordered by the Mississippi River to the east and the Missouri River and Big Sioux River to the west. It is bordered by six states. In colonial times, Iowa was a part of Spanish Louisiana. After the Louisiana Purchase, people laid the foundation for an agriculture-based economy in the heart of the Corn Belt. In the latter half of the 20th century, Iowa's agricultural economy made the transition to a diversified economy of advanced manufacturing, financial services, information technology and green energy production. Iowa is the 26th most extensive in land area and the 30th most populous of the 50 U. S states, its capital and largest city by population is Des Moines. Iowa has been listed as one of the safest states in, its nickname is the Hawkeye State. Iowa derives its name from the Ioway people, one of the many Native American tribes that occupied the state at the time of European exploration. Iowa is bordered by the Mississippi River on the east.
The southern border is the Des Moines River and a not-quite-straight line along 40 degrees 35 minutes north, as decided by the U. S. Supreme Court in Missouri v. Iowa after a standoff between Missouri and Iowa known as the Honey War. Iowa is the only state whose east and west borders are formed by rivers. Iowa has 99 counties; the state capital, Des Moines, is in Polk County. Iowa's bedrock geology increases in age from west to east. In northwest Iowa, Cretaceous bedrock can be 74 million years old. Iowa is not flat. Iowa can be divided into eight landforms based on glaciation, soils and river drainage. Loess hills lie along the western border of the state. Northeast Iowa along the Upper Mississippi River is part of the Driftless Area, consisting of steep hills and valleys which appear mountainous. Several natural lakes exist, most notably Spirit Lake, West Okoboji Lake, East Okoboji Lake in northwest Iowa. To the east lies Clear Lake. Man-made lakes include Lake Odessa, Saylorville Lake, Lake Red Rock, Coralville Lake, Lake MacBride, Rathbun Lake.
The state's northwest area has many remnants such as Barringer Slough. Iowa's natural vegetation is tallgrass prairie and savanna in upland areas, with dense forest and wetlands in flood plains and protected river valleys, pothole wetlands in northern prairie areas. Most of Iowa is used for agriculture; the Southern part of Iowa is categorised as the Central forest-grasslands transition ecoregion. The Northern, drier part of Iowa is categorised as the Central tall grasslands and is thus considered to be part of the Great Plains. There is a dearth of natural areas in Iowa; as of 2005 Iowa ranked 49th of U. S. states in public land holdings. Threatened or endangered animals in Iowa include the interior least tern, piping plover, Indiana bat, pallid sturgeon, the Iowa Pleistocene land snail, Higgins' eye pearly mussel, the Topeka shiner. Endangered or threatened plants include western prairie fringed orchid, eastern prairie fringed orchid, Mead's milkweed, prairie bush clover, northern wild monkshood.
There is little proof to suggest that the explosion in the number of high-density livestock facilities in Iowa has led to increased rural water contamination and a decline in air quality. In fact, covered manure storage in modern barns prevent that manure from washing away into surface water, as it does in open lots as snow melts and thunderstorms occur. Other factors negatively affecting Iowa's environment include the extensive use of older coal-fired power plants and pesticide runoff from crop production, diminishment of the Jordan Aquifer. Iowa has a humid continental climate throughout the state with extremes of both cold; the average annual temperature at Des Moines is 50 °F. Winters are harsh and snowfall is common. Spring ushers in the beginning of the severe weather season. Iowa averages about 50 days of thunderstorm activity per year; the 30 year annual average Tornadoes in Iowa is 47. In 2008, twelve people were killed by tornadoes in Iowa, making it the deadliest year since 1968 and the second most tornadoes in a year with 105, matching the total from 2001.
Iowa summers are known for heat and humidity, with daytime temperatures sometimes near 90 °F and exceeding 100 °F. Average winters in the state have been known to drop well below freezing dropping below −18 °F. Iowa's all-time hottest temperature of 118 °F was recorded at Keokuk on July 20, 1934. Iowa has a smooth gradient of var
Louisiana Purchase
The Louisiana Purchase was the acquisition of the Louisiana territory of New France by the United States from France in 1803. The U. S. paid fifty million francs and a cancellation of debts worth eighteen million francs for a total of sixty-eight million francs. The Louisiana territory included land from fifteen present U. S. states and two Canadian provinces. The territory contained land that forms Arkansas, Iowa, Oklahoma and Nebraska, its non-native population was around 60,000 inhabitants. The Kingdom of France controlled the Louisiana territory from 1699 until it was ceded to Spain in 1762. In 1800, Napoleon the First Consul of the French Republic, hoping to re-establish an empire in North America, regained ownership of Louisiana. However, France's failure to put down the revolt in Saint-Domingue, coupled with the prospect of renewed warfare with the United Kingdom, prompted Napoleon to sell Louisiana to the United States to fund his military; the Americans sought to purchase only the port city of New Orleans and its adjacent coastal lands, but accepted the bargain.
The Louisiana Purchase occurred during the term of the third President of the United States, Thomas Jefferson. Before the purchase was finalized, the decision faced Federalist Party opposition. Jefferson agreed that the U. S. Constitution did not contain explicit provisions for acquiring territory, but he asserted that his constitutional power to negotiate treaties was sufficient. Throughout the second half of the 18th century, Louisiana was a pawn on the chessboard of European politics, it was controlled by the French, who had a few small settlements along the Mississippi and other main rivers. France ceded the territory to Spain in the secret Treaty of Fontainebleau. Following French defeat in the Seven Years' War, Spain gained control of the territory west of the Mississippi and the British the territory to the east of the river. Following the establishment of the United States, the Americans controlled the area east of the Mississippi and north of New Orleans; the main issue for the Americans was free transit of the Mississippi to the sea.
As the lands were being settled by a few American migrants, many Americans, including Jefferson, assumed that the territory would be acquired "piece by piece." The risk of another power taking it from a weakened Spain made a "profound reconsideration" of this policy necessary. New Orleans was important for shipping agricultural goods to and from the areas of the United States west of the Appalachian Mountains. Pinckney's Treaty, signed with Spain on October 27, 1795, gave American merchants "right of deposit" in New Orleans, granting them use of the port to store goods for export. Americans used this right to transport products such as flour, pork, lard, cider and cheese; the treaty recognized American rights to navigate the entire Mississippi, which had become vital to the growing trade of the western territories. In 1798, Spain revoked the treaty allowing American use of New Orleans upsetting Americans. In 1801, Spanish Governor Don Juan Manuel de Salcedo took over from the Marquess of Casa Calvo, restored the American right to deposit goods.
However, in 1800 Spain had ceded the Louisiana territory back to France as part of Napoleon's secret Third Treaty of San Ildefonso. The territory nominally remained under Spanish control, until a transfer of power to France on November 30, 1803, just three weeks before the formal cession of the territory to the United States on December 20, 1803. A further ceremony was held in Upper Louisiana regarding the New Orleans formalities; the March 9–10, 1804 event is remembered as Three Flags Day. James Monroe and Robert R. Livingston had traveled to Paris to negotiate the purchase of New Orleans in January 1803, their instructions were to purchase control of New Orleans and its environs. The Louisiana Purchase was by far the largest territorial gain in U. S. history. Stretching from the Mississippi River to the Rocky Mountains, the purchase doubled the size of the United States. Before 1803, Louisiana had been under Spanish control for forty years. Although Spain aided the rebels in the American Revolutionary War, the Spanish didn't want the Americans to settle in their territory.
Although the purchase was thought of by some as unjust and unconstitutional, Jefferson determined that his constitutional power to negotiate treaties allowed the purchase of what became fifteen states. In hindsight, the Louisiana Purchase could be considered one of his greatest contributions to the United States. On April 18, 1802, Jefferson penned a letter to United States Ambassador to France Robert Livingston, it was an intentional exhortation to make this mild diplomat warn the French of their perilous course. The letter began: The cession of Louisiana and the Floridas by Spain to France works most sorely on the U. S. On this subject the Secretary of State has written to you fully, yet I cannot forbear recurring to it s
Iowa's 11th congressional district
Iowa's 11th congressional district existed from 1883 to 1933, when Iowa sent eleven congressmen to the United States House of Representatives. The district covered northwestern Iowa; the district was created in 1881 from a subset of the counties in the old 9th district. From 1883 to 1886, the district included Emmet, Palo Alto, Calhoun, Carroll, Buena Vista, Dickinson, Osceola, O'Brien, Ida, Woodbury, Plymouth and Lyon counties. Reapportionment in 1886 reflected the increasing population balance between eastern and western Iowa, causing the district's size to shrink and resulting in a westward shift of its eastern boundary. No new counties were added, Emmet, Palo Alto, Calhoun and Carroll counties were moved to the 10th district. After 1886, the boundaries of the district never changed; the district was predominantly rural, except for Sioux City, included counties such as Lyon that were among the last in Iowa to settle. However, by 1895 the District had the second-largest population of any of Iowa's congressional districts, behind only the oversized Tenth District.
By 1890, the continued disproportionate increase in the population of the Tenth and Eleventh Districts caused some to predict that the General Assembly would need to reduce the area of each district, but no such change occurred. Meanwhile, between 1900 and 1920, the population of Sioux City more than doubled, exacerbating the problem of underrepresentation. By 1921, the Eleventh District was the most populous Iowa district, with 130,000 more residents than the First District, over 80,000 more than the population of an ideally-sized Iowa congressional district. All but one congressman elected from this district was a member of the Republican Party; the exception, Democrat Thomas J. Steele, was elected in 1914. Scott recaptured his former seat from Steele at the first opportunity. Under the nine-district plan adopted by the Iowa General Assembly in 1931, the boundaries of the old 11th district were preserved as the new 9th district. However, the new 9th district was no longer safe for Republicans, Democrats Guy M. Gillette and Vincent F. Harrington kept it in Democratic hands.
Ten years when the 1940 census caused Iowa to lose another seat, the new 8th district included all of the old 11th district's counties, minus Monona County, Democratic-leaning in the 1930s. Republican Charles B. Hoeven won every election in the new 8th district. Except for two Democrats who first won election in landslide years nationally for Democrats, Republican congressmen have represented most counties from the old 11th district since 1941. Iowa's congressional districts Martis, Kenneth C.. The Historical Atlas of Political Parties in the United States Congress. New York: Macmillan Publishing Company. Martis, Kenneth C.. The Historical Atlas of United States Congressional Districts. New York: Macmillan Publishing Company. Congressional Biographical Directory of the United States 1774–present
Mississippi River
The Mississippi River is the second-longest river and chief river of the second-largest drainage system on the North American continent, second only to the Hudson Bay drainage system. Its source is Lake Itasca in northern Minnesota and it flows south for 2,320 miles to the Mississippi River Delta in the Gulf of Mexico. With its many tributaries, the Mississippi's watershed drains all or parts of 32 U. S. two Canadian provinces between the Rocky and Appalachian mountains. The main stem is within the United States; the Mississippi ranks as the fifteenth-largest river by discharge in the world. The river either borders or passes through the states of Minnesota, Iowa, Missouri, Tennessee, Arkansas and Louisiana. Native Americans have lived along its tributaries for thousands of years. Most were hunter-gatherers, but some, such as the Mound Builders, formed prolific agricultural societies; the arrival of Europeans in the 16th century changed the native way of life as first explorers settlers, ventured into the basin in increasing numbers.
The river served first as a barrier, forming borders for New Spain, New France, the early United States, as a vital transportation artery and communications link. In the 19th century, during the height of the ideology of manifest destiny, the Mississippi and several western tributaries, most notably the Missouri, formed pathways for the western expansion of the United States. Formed from thick layers of the river's silt deposits, the Mississippi embayment is one of the most fertile regions of the United States. During the American Civil War, the Mississippi's capture by Union forces marked a turning point towards victory, due to the river's strategic importance to the Confederate war effort; because of substantial growth of cities and the larger ships and barges that replaced steamboats, the first decades of the 20th century saw the construction of massive engineering works such as levees and dams built in combination. A major focus of this work has been to prevent the lower Mississippi from shifting into the channel of the Atchafalaya River and bypassing New Orleans.
Since the 20th century, the Mississippi River has experienced major pollution and environmental problems – most notably elevated nutrient and chemical levels from agricultural runoff, the primary contributor to the Gulf of Mexico dead zone. The word Mississippi itself comes from Misi zipi, the French rendering of the Anishinaabe name for the river, Misi-ziibi. In the 18th century, the river was the primary western boundary of the young United States, since the country's expansion westward, the Mississippi River has been considered a convenient if approximate dividing line between the Eastern and Midwestern United States, the Western United States; this is exemplified by the Gateway Arch in St. Louis and the phrase "Trans-Mississippi" as used in the name of the Trans-Mississippi Exposition, it is common to qualify a regionally superlative landmark in relation to it, such as "the highest peak east of the Mississippi" or "the oldest city west of the Mississippi". The FCC uses it as the dividing line for broadcast call-signs, which begin with W to the east and K to the west, mixing together in media markets along the river.
The Mississippi River can be divided into three sections: the Upper Mississippi, the river from its headwaters to the confluence with the Missouri River. The Upper Mississippi runs from its headwaters to its confluence with the Missouri River at St. Louis, Missouri, it is divided into two sections: The headwaters, 493 miles from the source to Saint Anthony Falls in Minneapolis, Minnesota. The source of the Upper Mississippi branch is traditionally accepted as Lake Itasca, 1,475 feet above sea level in Itasca State Park in Clearwater County, Minnesota; the name "Itasca" was chosen to designate the "true head" of the Mississippi River as a combination of the last four letters of the Latin word for truth and the first two letters of the Latin word for head. However, the lake is in turn fed by a number of smaller streams. From its origin at Lake Itasca to St. Louis, the waterway's flow is moderated by 43 dams. Fourteen of these dams are located above Minneapolis in the headwaters region and serve multiple purposes, including power generation and recreation.
The remaining 29 dams, beginning in downtown Minneapolis, all contain locks and were constructed to improve commercial navigation of the upper river. Taken as a whole, these 43 dams shape the geography and influence the ecology of the upper river. Beginning just below Saint Paul and continuing throughout the upper and lower river, the Mississippi is further controlled by thousands of wing dikes that moderate the river's flow in order to maintain an open navigation channel and prevent the river from eroding its banks; the head of navigation on the Mississippi is the Coon Rapids Dam in Minnesota. Before it was built in 1913, steamboats could go upstream as far as Saint Cloud, depending on river conditions; the uppermost lock and dam on the Upper Mississippi River is the Upper St. Anthony Falls Lock an
Iowa's at-large congressional district
From December 28, 1846, to March 3, 1847, the new state of Iowa was represented in the United States House of Representatives by two representatives, elected on a statewide basis, rather than by districts. This unusual situation enabled Iowa to be represented in the Twenty-ninth United States Congress from the date that it joined the Union; the two at-large representatives, Shepherd Leffler and Serranus Clinton Hastings, had been elected in 1846, in anticipation of statehood. This temporary solution ended in 1847. By the time that the Thirtieth United States Congress was sworn in, the General Assembly had divided the state's counties into two districts, which in August 1847 had elected their own representatives, William Thompson in Iowa's 1st congressional district and Leffler in Iowa's 2nd congressional district. Before statehood, Iowa Territory had a single delegate to the U. S. House, elected on an at-large basis. Iowa's congressional districts Martis, Kenneth C.. The Historical Atlas of Political Parties in the United States Congress.
New York: Macmillan Publishing Company. Martis, Kenneth C.. The Historical Atlas of United States Congressional Districts. New York: Macmillan Publishing Company. Congressional Biographical Directory of the United States 1774–present Congressional Biographical Directory of the United States 1774–present
