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Iowa History

This Is What Life In Iowa Looked Like In 1939. WOW.

By Michaela Kendall | Published December 20, 2015

Times have certainly changed, but sometimes we don’t realize just how far we’ve come in such a short amount of time. The following photos will give you a glimpse of what life was like in 1939, and they will remind you of just how different things are today, over 75 years later.

1. These farmers sit and visit out front of Jacks Billiard Parlor in Collins.

2. A farmer inspects a cultivator at the Central Iowa 4-H club fair in Marshalltown.

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3. Another man at the 4-H club fair in Marshalltown practices his archery skills.

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4. A farmer in Jasper County loads the manure spreader.

5. A farmer in Jasper County takes a break from the day's work to smoke tobacco from his wooden pipe.

6. A farmer plows his field in Hardin County with a ten-horse team.

7. A group of men help pull a car out of the ditch after an accident on U.S. Highway 65 near Iowa Falls.

8. This hardware merchant in Grundy County is hard at work taking inventory.

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9. This mechanical corn picker at the Robinson farm in Marshall County was a pretty advanced piece of equipment at the time.

10. And you wont find anything like this one-row mounted type of mechanical corn picker in the fields nowadays.

11. Des Moines in 1939 was a lot different than Des Moines today.

12. And life in general was a lot simpler back then.

If we have come this far in 75 years, what will life be like in another 75 years?

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