Iowa City

After raucous times on the western frontier during the 1840s and 1850s, Iowa City settled into a relatively sleepy existence while its principal industry, the University of Iowa, was finding its way from obscurity into an important Iowa resource. Its once-too-small-to-succeed university hospital has blossomed into a medical and economic powerhouse. Research in widely varied fields, from space science to microbiology, finds fertile grounds and minds. Big Ten football beckons on fall Saturdays.