The Heartland

Part 1: City of Five Flags

Paula lives in a small city called Dubuque. It has a population of about 60,000 and lies next to
a well-known river. Listen to Paula talking about how her hometown got its nickname.

Iowa is located right in the middle of the United States and so we call it the Heartland. It’s bordered on one side by the Mississippi river and the other side by the Missouri river, and it has a really rich history. There’s all kinds of immigrants that came to Iowa. We have people f-, that are Swiss. We have people that are Norwegian. We have people that are German and Irish, and there … are many flags that have flown over Dubuque, meaning different nationalities claim the territory as their own. And it started out with France. Julien Dubuque was from France, he was a French fur trader. And then, for a while, it was owned by Spain. And we have places in Dubuque called the Mines of Spain and S-, the Spanish wanted to own the area here because we have lots of lead mines, and so they were interested in that. And then of course England owned the United States and … so the English flag flew over Dubuque. And then when we received our independence, and fought very hard from-, for that – from the British – we had the 13 colonies, and … so that was called the Union Jack flag. And then of course now today we have 50 states in the United States.

Now do Part 1: Getting the gist.

Part 2: Iowa

Iowa is a farming state that produces large quantities of corn and soyabeans. But it is also known for
many other things. Listen to Paula talking about people, activities and events in her home state.

One of the biggest cities in Iowa is Des Moines. And there’s a lot of neat political things that happen in Des Moines and in the state of Iowa. Iowa is the first in the nation caucuses and that is a really strong ta-, tradition for the United States of America. All of the politicians come to Iowa and start shaking hands and campaigning. In fact, people who are running for president this next year … as soon as they announced they were running for president, the first place they went to was Iowa. And what they … want to do in Iowa is establish their popularity so that they can get elected. There’s a lot of people running for president in this next election, and they’ve all been here.

Uhm … There’s a lot of really fun recreational things to do in Iowa. You can go horseback riding. You can go whitewater rafting. Uh, there are lots of really swift rivers that are smaller. You can go snow skiing, water skiing. And a lot of people have fun on things called four-wheelers and snowmobiles, and they go out in the winter on their snowmobiles and they go out in the summer on their four-wheelers – just going around in the country.

And we have some bigger cities. Uh … Cedar Rapids, uhm … obviously Des Moines. Iowa City where there’s some great big universities and that’s the home of the Hawkeyes. And then Ames is another great big university, and that’s the home of the Cyclones. And Iowa is very proud of its education and its educational repu-, reputation. It’s really had uh, some of the best students, the bs-, brightest people ever. Uhm, Norman Borlaug is from Iowa and he received a Nobel Peace Price. He actually developed a strain of wheat that was a way to basically rid many other third world countries of hunger. And so many wonderful, smart, political people live in Iowa.

Now do Part 2: Getting the gist and Word building.

Part 3: Dubuque

Dubuque is quite an old city and it still has many picturesque old buildings in the city centre. In the late 1800s it was the centre of a wagon building industry that once employed a third of the city’s population. The wagons were of very high quality and were exported as far as South Africa.

Dubuque is a very special city. It is one of the oldest cities west of the Mississippi river. In fact, the oldest city in the United States west of the Mississippi river. It was founded by a French fur trader named Julien Dubuque in 1758, and so he … uhm … really made good friends with the Meskwaki Indians who lived here. In fact, he married a Meskwaki Indian named Potosa, and she was the daughter of the Meskwaki Indian chief. And then Julien Dubuque ended up moving away, but he was here for a long time. He was very popular with the Indians. And uh, he ended up going to Quebec in Canada.

But, there’s a lot of really interesting history of Du-, about Dubuque. It w-, it is a very wealthy city in the Victorian area. There were a lot of very wealthy business people. They did a lot of logging. They were furniture makers. And they were also wagon makers and these are the wagons that were drawn by horse, but they were considered … uhm … very fancy wagons. They were the best cars you would have today. And so A. A. Cooper was a wagon maker and he w-, became very successful, so successful that Henry Ford approached him about going in on his horseless carriage idea. And A. A. Cooper said “Oh, that’ll never work.” Well, obviously it did because we have cars today.

Uh, Dubuque is a very … uhm, old city. There’s a lot of Victorian architecture here. Some very pretty homes. And a lot of churches that have a-, a lot of gothic structure. There’s theatres, there’s buildings that you can go and see and there’s also a very special place called the Fenelon Place elevator. It’s on 4th street and that’s where a lot of the business men who had their homes up on the hill would ride the Fenelon Place elevator to work so that they could go home for lunch and it wouldn’t take so long to get around the cliffs.

Uhm … Dubuque is on the Mississippi river and it’s one of the longest rivers in the world. It starts up in Itasca, Minnesota and goes all the way to New Orleans. And so the river’s a popular place to go out boating and swimming and fishing, but it’s also an important place for commerce. And so there are barges that carry grain and coal and oil up and down the river. And then they’ll take it to shipyards in New Orleans or they’ll bring products up the river also.

Now do Part 3: Checking details and Your turn to talk.

Crossroads

The Heartland

The Heartland

Part 1: City of Five Flags

Part 2: Iowa

Part 3: Dubuque

Part 1: Getting the gist

Part 2: Getting the gist

Part 2: Word building

Part 3: Checking details

Part 3: Your turn to talk

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