About Living History Farms
Living History Farms is a 500-acre open-air museum on the northwest edge of Des Moines that follows one question across three centuries: how did Iowans turn tallgrass prairie into some of the most productive farmland in the world? The museum was the idea of William G. Murray, an agricultural economist at Iowa State University, and it opened to the public in 1970. It is accredited by the American Alliance of Museums and belongs to the Iowa Museum Association.
The site is laid out as a series of working farms and a town, each fixed at a different date. Walking trails and tractor-drawn carts link the 1876 Town of Walnut Hill with the farms, and every site is actually farmed or worked by costumed interpreters rather than displayed behind glass. The museum's best-known day came on October 4, 1979, when Pope John Paul II celebrated Mass and delivered a homily here to a crowd estimated at 340,000, an event the museum still commemorates.
Two buildings on the grounds are original to the land rather than reconstructed: the Martin and Ellen Flynn home and its barn. The Flynn Mansion anchors the Victorian end of Walnut Hill and hosts teas, mystery evenings, and historic home tours through the year.
The Farms and the Town
- 1700 Ioway Farm — Staff grow blue flour corn, squash, pumpkins, and beans, the "three sisters" of Ioway agriculture, beside bark and mat lodges and a chibóthraje, the traveling house used on the annual bison hunt. Hide tanning, tool making, and open-fire cooking are demonstrated through the season.
- 1850 Pioneer Farm — A log house and fields of corn, potatoes, and wheat, the three main crops of the Iowa frontier, with the midday meal of meat, bread, and potatoes prepared inside.
- 1876 Town of Walnut Hill — A re-created main street with a blacksmith, broom maker, newspaper publisher, implement dealer, druggist, milliner, and general store, plus a doctor, lawyer, veterinarian, and banker, a middle-class home, a rural church, a country cemetery, and a one-room schoolhouse.
- 1900 Horse-Powered Farm — Percheron draft horses pull the machinery that plants, cultivates, and harvests corn, oats, and hay, while the farmhouse kitchen preserves garden produce by hot-water-bath canning.
Collections and Research Services
Living History Farms is primarily an interpretive museum, but its artifact holdings can be searched from home through the Online Collections Database at lhf.catalogaccess.com, which is useful for identifying farm implements, household goods, and period clothing. The museum also publishes annual reports and runs historic skills classes, day camps, Barnyard Readers story times, and award-winning K-12 and homeschool programs through a dedicated education department. Anyone researching an Iowa farm family will want to combine a visit with the records described in our guide to free family history research.
Planning Your Visit
The museum is at 11121 Hickman Road in Urbandale. The hours posted at the time of writing are Tuesday through Saturday, 9:00 a.m. to 4:00 p.m., with the last tractor cart to the farms leaving at 2:30 p.m.; the season and hours change, so confirm them and current ticket prices at www.lhf.org before you go. Expect to walk between sites outdoors, and allow most of a day to see all four areas. The website has an accessibility page, a visitor guide and map, a photo policy, and group reservation details for scouts, 4-H clubs, and adult groups.
Other Iowa stops covered in this directory include the State Historical Society of Iowa in Des Moines, whose research center holds the state's archives, and the Herbert Hoover Presidential Library and Museum in West Branch.
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