John Shook

Buena Vista: A Name Without a Town

Every state has at least one ghost town. Just as towns emerge for a variety of reasons, they also die for just as many. But, like people, it’s often what happened in a town when it was still around that really matters. That’s especially true for the town of Buena Vista. To […]

John Shook’s Toes: Surgery on the Iowa Frontier

2 Comments / Bad History, Uncategorized / The Kitchen Table Historian

Hard as it is to believe now, Scott County, Iowa, bordering the Mississippi River on the state’s eastern edge, was once America’s frontier. Before 1833, when the United States Congress opened what was then known as the Blackhawk Purchase to free settlement, nearly that entire region was as wild and untamed as anything the

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