10 Things Every Iowan Knows About Small-Town Life That City People Don’t
From the highway, an Iowa small town can look like a few blocks and a water tower.
Iowans who grew up in one know there’s a lot more going on than city visitors guess.
Here’s what small-town life looks like from the inside.
1. Girls’ Six-on-Six Basketball
Girls’ six-on-six basketball was a two-court game that Iowa girls started playing in 1934, Iowa PBS reports.
The girls’ athletic union voted unanimously to end it in 1993.
In 1984, nearly all of Mount Vernon followed its team to the state tournament in Des Moines, the National Endowment for the Humanities reports in a 2019 article.
School was closed for days.
Iowa PBS has highlights of the final state tournament game, a 1993 matchup between Hubbard-Radcliffe and Atlantic.
2. Critical Access Hospitals
The Rural Health Information Hub reports 1,225,283 Iowans, or 38.2 percent of the state, living in nonmetro counties, using 2024 five-year American Community Survey estimates.
The state also has 82 critical access hospitals and 213 rural health clinics.
What Critical Access Means
A critical access hospital is a small rural hospital that meets federal Medicare rules.
Federal rules cap a critical access hospital at 25 inpatient beds and require emergency care 24 hours a day, seven days a week.
It generally must sit more than 35 miles from the nearest hospital.
3. Volunteer Fire Departments
Iowa Public Radio reported in January 2024 that Iowa has about 850 fire departments, according to the Iowa Department of Public Safety, with about 92 percent staffed by volunteers.
The president of the Iowa Firefighter’s Association said each year the state loses about 1,000 firefighters through retirement, illness or relocation.
The state fire marshal’s division says its Fire Service Training Bureau trains over 830 fire departments.
If you live in a small town, you may already know a neighbor who volunteers.
4. Farmer Co-ops
A farmer co-op is owned by the people who use it, according to Iowa State University Extension.
A 2017 count found 618 grain, farm supply and petroleum co-op locations in Iowa.
Those co-ops had about 129,000 members, 6,490 employees and $11.5 billion in annual sales.
5. Main Street Iowa
Main Street Iowa’s totals, as Opportunity Iowa lists them, include $3.1 billion invested in buildings, 5,676 or more new and expanded businesses and 17,326 new jobs.
The program began in 1985, when the Iowa Legislature adopted the Main Street America model.
More than 50 Iowa communities are connected to a network of 40 programs nationwide.
6. Hometown Weeklies
CNN reported in March 2024 that Iowa has about 240 newspapers, a figure it attributed to the state’s newspaper association.
The Daily Iowan, the University of Iowa’s student paper, took ownership of two small weeklies, the Mount Vernon-Lisbon Sun and the Solon Economist.
The papers hit the stands under the new ownership in February 2024.
The Sun had one full-time and one part-time reporter, and the Economist had one full-time reporter.
Harvest Public Media reported in April 2024 that Medill says Iowa, Minnesota and the Dakotas have lost more newspapers per capita than any other states in two decades.
7. County Fairs and 4-H
A 2017 Iowa State University Extension post says the Association of Iowa Fairs had 106 county and district fairs among its members.
In 2016, more than 17,000 4-H and FFA livestock exhibitors brought more than 70,000 livestock entries to Iowa’s county fairs.
4-H has almost 100,000 young people taking part in Iowa, and its Iowa programs go back more than 100 years.
8. FFA Chapters
The Iowa Department of Education said in August 2026 that Iowa FFA counted approximately 20,800 student members in 2025.
Iowa FFA’s website lists more than 270 chapters.
Three new chapters are launching in 2026, at Storm Lake, Bishop Garrigan and Mount Vernon high schools.
Mount Vernon is also the town that followed its girls’ basketball team to Des Moines in 1984.
9. Church Hotdog Friday
Iowa Public Radio reported in December 2023 that St. James Episcopal Church in Independence, Iowa, holds Hotdog Friday every week.
The church warms hot dogs in a second-hand roller machine and serves them with onions, ketchup, mustard and Hormel chili.
The church has been in operation since 1863, and about 15 people might show up on a good Sunday.
Most weeks, a couple dozen residents show up to eat on Fridays, and the line can reach 40 people.
A professor with Iowa State University’s Rural Shrink Smart clinic described a full church as an example of social capital building.
Psst! How much do you know about Iowa’s high school basketball, football and pheasant hunting? Take our quiz and see how many you can get right.
Quiz
Iowa Hoops, Football and Pheasant Trivia
Answer these questions about Iowa high school basketball, high school football and pheasant hunting. We bet you can’t get them all right. Prove us wrong?
Where are Iowa’s high school football championship games played, according to Iowa PBS’s 2025 announcement?
10. Community-Owned Grocery Stores
Market on Market is a grocery store in Gowrie, Iowa, that the community bought after the Jamboree store closed in March 2020.
Residents raised the money in 10 days, the Center for Rural Affairs reports.
They formed a limited liability company and sold shares to residents.
It reopened April 25, 2020.
If you bought a share, you became an owner alongside your neighbors.
As of March 2025, the store had five years of community ownership.
The center's post lists a board that includes a farmer, a carpenter, a banker, a barber, a hospital worker and a veterinarian who is also the mayor.
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These are some of the things many Iowans miss after they move away.
9 Things Iowans Miss Most After They Move Away
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These are the roadside stops many Iowans send visitors to.
