The Difference Between Amish and Amana Colonies

We have heard about Iowa's Amana Colonies for many years, but really didn't understand what they were. Were they Amish, or not? Well, this day we were going to find out. We headed east across the center of the state of Iowa. We could have taken the fast route down Interstate 80. But we opted for Hiway 92, with its 55-mph speed limits, rolling hills, and small towns with names like Pleasantville and Oskaloosa. We also made a u-turn in the town of Indianola (not an easy thing to do when you're pulling a trailer), to go back to the Saturday morning farmer's market. We bought our first Iowa sweet corn, sweet garden peas, and cucumbers. The rest of our drive was through a constant sea of corn and bean fields.

We come from wheat country, but we saw very little wheat in Iowa. Very often we would have corn on one side of the road, and soy beans on the other. We're guessing that they rotate these two crops, as we often saw a few tall corn plants coming up volunteer in the bean fields.

The reason for this slower route was to make a stop, not at the Amana Colonies, but through the Amish town of Kalona. It was 2.5 hours down the highway today. Our first stop was at the local Amish bakery--Golden Delight Bakery--for a pecan roll, apple fritter, raspberry jam, and cranberry-pecan-cinnamon swirl bread. They were all yummy! You know you are in the right neighborhood for some good bakery goods when you see the feed for the cattle in shocks in the field, rather than those fancy round hay bales.

The next stop was an Amish discount grocery store. These scratch-and-dent stores sell crushed packages and almost-expired goods that they get from other stores cheap. We like to buy unusual food items that are usually too expensive for a tasting test. We had a cart of unique protein bars, low-sugar gummies, honey, pecan apple butter, and soap. It's good Amish fun for us to go to these unlighted, un-air-conditioned businesses where you can't use credit cards and there's usually a horse and buggy parked out front.

As we drove in this country neighborhood, we giggled  to see we were on the Yoder Turnpike as we passed neat Amish and Mennonite farms.

But our destination today was not Amish or Mennonite--it was the Amana Colonies. The people that lived in the colonies had some things in common with those groups. They came from Europe to America to escape religious persecution, and settled in groups with like-minded believers. They also seem to put a lot of effort in planting flowers around their houses. But that was where the similarities ended.

The citizens of the Amana Colonies moved to Iowa, where they pooled their money and bought 26,000 acres collectively. Instead of living in one community, they built seven different colonies so the workers would be spread across their land. The villages were strategically located an hour's ox-cart ride apart. They lived communally, sharing the work and the profits. Families lived in homes that were owned and built by the church. Workers were assigned duties and worked long days, but received no wages. They did get a free place to live, and all their meals and clothes were provided.

Homes didn't have kitchens, because they took all their meals at one of the 50 communal kitchens that prepared meals for big groups of workers at once. Amana citizens were assigned to caring for crops, cutting wood, building furniture, growing community gardens, weaving in the woolen mills, or milking colony-owned cows . . . The plan worked for the Amana Colonies from 1855 until they were disbanded in 1932.

It was too late in the day to tour the four museums scattered around the seven colonies. So we opted for a 14-mile Amana Colonies road trip that was recommended by the woman at the visitor center. Using the audio guide, we visited the following highlights in the following colonies:

Middle Amana - We drove by the only surviving commerical kitchen. Women that were assigned to work here prepared 3 meals, plus snacks for two coffee breaks every day.

High Amana - We stopped for a look at the General Store. It had the same fixtures, wooden floor, and tin ceilings as it did when built in 1858.

West Amana - We had a planned stop at an art gallery, but it was closed on the weekend during the peak tourist season.

South Amana - We walked through the Fern Hill Gifts and Quilt Store. The second floor fabric area was filled with bright quilt material that made a pretty picture. We also made another stop at Schanz Furniture to see some good quality hand-made wooden decor items.

Homestead - This is home to the Village Church Museum, and where this evening's Zither concert was held.

Amana - This seems to be the most touristed village with the most stores and restaurants. We stopped in at the chain-saw carver, the Amana Furniture store, and the mercantile that sells the woven linens that are still made in the textile mill. The mill has been on this site since the 1850s, and many of the original Amana citizens were assigned to work here. 

Now the only textile mill in Iowa, they use computers to design and run the machines that can weave a wool blanket in three minutes. Only a small fraction of the original mill is needed for the current smaller operation. The rest of the mill has been divided into hotel rooms. We checked out the hotel lobby, with its industrial vibe and an interesting wall of old thread spools decorated the lobby wall.

Amana was hosting the Tour de Brew bike race today. Over 500 bicyclers pedaled their way across 30 miles of Iowa hills. 

The Millstream Brew Company provided frothy drinks and live music. We joined the bicyclers for the live music.

One of the must-do activities for a trip to the Amana Colonies is to eat a meal at one of the German restaurants. The German families that immigrated to the colonies brought their cuisine, and it is available to visitors today. We chose a platter meal at the Ronneburg Restaurant (named for a German castle) that included Bavarian chicken, fried potatoes, green beans, seasoned cottage cheese, homemade bread and butter. One platter was plenty for two of us. Another popular option at the Amana Colony restaurants is the family-style meals where the side dishes are passed at the table and can be refilled if needed. But at $32 per person, it's an expensive option.

We ended the busy day at another live music venue at the old Festhalle Barn. All the colonies have many of the original houses and buildings from the 1850's. Some of them are in good repair, while the old barn behind the band looked like it might fall down in the next wind storm.

So, to return to the differences between the Amish and the Amana Colonies... We discovered that the Amana Colonies practiced the communal lifestyle where all the property was owned by the church and was shared. Amish families own their own property and homes. Amish reject modern conveniences like electricity and cars and maintain a seperation from worldly influences. The Amana Colonies embraced modern technology and used electricity. In fact, the Amana company was started here and was a forerunner of the microwave industry and other appliances. Anyone that owned one of the first Radarange microwave ovens will be surprised that it was developed and built here in Amana. While the Amish's religious beliefs stem from the Anabaptist tradition, the Amana Colonies was part of a German Pietist group called the "True Inspiration Congregation."

It was interesting to spend a little time in both the Amish and Amana cultures this day. It was also fun to see and taste their differences first hand. We would say that one similarity is that both of these groups are good cooks!

For the Love of Des Moines

It was a hot day in Iowa, so we planned our outdoor activities early. We were thankful for the cloudy skies as we parked at the Pappajohn Sculpture Park.  Every city needs a little love, and over 70 cities all over the world have a copy of this famous sculpture. 

Pappajohn Park sits on four acres of prime real estate in downtown Des Moines. The iconic sculpture of this park is "Nomade," a crouching figure whose skin is made of letters. The artist explains that just as our bodies are made up of cells, our communication is made up of individual letters. Denisa took the same posture as the Nomade.

We found a huge spider, with horses in the background at the Pappajohn sculpture park.

The horses were our favorites. They looked like they were made of old weathered driftwood.

But it's actually cast bronze. The process to change wood to bronze takes three months. Then patina is applied to mimic the look of wood. A close-up picture shows the detail of the finished product.

We found more strange and wonderful sculptures in this big park in downtown Des Moines. There were a lot of weird faces peeking out at visitors in the park. It was surprisingly cool--in temperature and in experience--for our first stop in this city in July.

Our next stop was the lovely downtown river walk. Des Moines is divided in two by the Des Moines River. It falls into roaring cascades off a man-made scalloped ledge just past the bridge. We walked across the "Women of Achievement" pedestrian bridge, where Iowa honors its most achieved females. 

That brought us to the other side of the river park, and a tribute to the Asian immigrants that have been welcomed to Iowa.

We also loved the fishing pole sculpture at River View Park. Denisa was swinging from the fishing pole, while the bobber was floating in the blue sea of the playground.

As it was heating up, we hustled across the river to get to the Iowa State Capitol for the 11:30 tour. We admired the outside first, knowing that we were going to get the inside scoop about this building from our guide. She told us the golden dome was the real deal. The gold leaf covering has to be replaced every 25-30 years and will take about six pounds of real gold to recoat.

We had a great guide that spent 1.5 hours teaching us some Iowa history. For example, Iowa wanted their capitol to be showy, so it's one of ten state capitols with a gold dome. But it's the only capital with five separate domes. While standing on the first floor, we tried to get a good picture of the inside of the biggest dome high above us. Pay particular attention to the square windows close to the top, because we'll see more of them later.

We visited the old Iowa Supreme Court, where she described the 20-year-old artist who got the job of hand-carving the front panels out of a single plank of rare teak wood.

The detail of the carving was incredible! Forty years later, when they increased the number of judges from five to seven, they needed more teak-wood planks carved. The original artist was now 60 years old, and he agreed to make two more to match.

Iowa became the U.S.'s 29th state. This rare 29-star flag was in the Iowa state museum.

Because they were the 29th state, they chose to use 29 different kinds of marble inside the building. They used the grand staircase to showcase as many kinds and colors of marble as possible.

From that staircase, we looked up to see a lovely set of murals. We assumed they were paintings, but we would see them up close later in our tour.

We next visited the Senate chambers, with its fancy Victorian opulence. There was something about this room that felt a little like we were on a cruise ship.

Iowa is the only state that doesn't provide individual offices for its legislators. Their desk in the chamber is their only office space. An extra chair and small desk is provided beside each senator for their one assistant's office space.

The Law Library is the most photographed room in the capitol.

That's because it is on the list of the ten prettiest law libraries in the world.

It features floor-to-ceiling wooden spiral staircases that the librarians would have to climb to get to those heavy law books on the top floors. They must have been in great shape! Today you would rarely see a librarian on the stairs because most of their volumes are available electronically.

An interesting item that can be "checked out" at the Law Library is this full skeleton, hanging in its own display case. Jokes abound that this is the last person that had an overdue book at the library.

The House of Representatives has 100 members, and again they have no offices. So there are 200 chairs in this big room, so the assistants have a place to office as well.

We climbed a couple flights of steps to get a bird's eye view of the chandeliers in this room.

Going up those flights of steps also put us at the level of those murals we saw earlier from far below.

What looked like paintings from a distance, were actually mosaics made from a million pieces of tile--each about the size of a thumb nail. They were made in Italy, and then shipped to the United States to be put together like giant jigsaw puzzles.

Mark was chosen as the special tour group member to verify several unusual characteristics of the mosaics. After 45 years of hanging out with Denisa, he is an expert at recognizing unusual.

The detail of the mosaics were wonderful, and we were glad that we took the tour so we could see them up close.

Remember those windows at the top of the dome in one of the first pictures? That's where we were heading next. Our guide led us through a locked door and then up 91 more spiraling steps to get to the "whisper deck". 

It's called the whisper deck because the domed shape holds the sound so perfectly. Our guide could whisper a message from one side, and we could still hear it on the other side of that wide expanse. Those windows that looked so tiny from the ground floor were actually 25 feet tall. You can see Mark in his red shirt at the railing to give some size perspective.

From our spot at that top railing, we could see the Civil War memorial that was hanging at the top of the dome.

It was a long ways down to the first floor from the top of this capitol tour!

It was an interesting view as our group spiraled back down the 91 steps from the top of the dome.

We thought the Iowa capitol tour was one of the classiest we have ever had. It was another reason to love Des Moines. One of these days we're going to count up how many state capitols we have visited, but we're guessing it's somewhere between 30 and 40.

Here's one last view of that dome from the bottom, now that we know what it's like up there.

As we exited the capitol building, we went towards the green space to the south. We spotted an interesting baby bird for our wildlife picture of the day. We didn't expect to see a young raptor in our city tour of Des Moines. We wonder if he had an unsuccessful fledge experience, and was stuck on the ground today. Google thinks this was a young American Kestrel?

As we headed south on our walk, we came to the collection of statues that most capitol cities seem to collect. This one honors William Allison for his 43 years as a U.S. Senator. The flower garden at its base was lovely this summer.

This veterans' memorial was especially impressive. The picture was even more impressive with the capitol building's domes peeking over the tree behind it. Denisa is a very unimpressive size, standing on the bottom steps of the memorial.

Another fun picture in the plaza is of the map of Iowa, with its neatly squared 99 counties labeled.

By this time we were needing lunch, and we found a little place with a 4.9 (out of 5) star rating that was just a mile away. We had a famous Grinder Sandwich at Graziano Bros. grocery store. We hate to complain, but there was just too much meat on that sandwich even when we split it. That's an unusual "complaint." We added some Italian grocery items to our shopping list to eat later.

Our last stop of our lovely Des Moines day was the Iowa Historical Museum. We don't visit many museums, but we will stop by most of the ones with free admission. We liked that this museum had a Hollywood section that included many of the films made in Iowa. Since we visited the Bridges of Madison County yesterday, we watched the film clip from the movie starring Meryl Streep and Clint Eastwood. We figured out that Clint (who is now 96 years old) was 65 when he directed and starred in the movie. That means that we are the same age now, as Clint was when he visited Iowa in 1995. We wonder if he experienced the love of Des Moines too.