History: Great Corn Belt; Lyon County, Iowa 

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Great Corn Belt
Lyon County is in the great corn belt of Northwestern Iowa, in the valley and the 
swelling uplands of the Big Sioux. It is not supreme either as a producer of the 
foods which tend to advance the raising of cattle and swine, or of the crops 
themselves, irrespective of their ultimate value when transformed into livestock. 
Lyon County, on the other hand, goes along in a substantial middle course. As with 
other sections of this part of the state, it is instructive to remember the views 
held by the farmers of the county fifty years ago. Fortunately a presentation of 
these views is at hand, for in 1873, before the worst of the grasshopper scourges 
had descended upon Northwestern Iowa, S.C. Hyde, a pioneer and the son of a pioneer, 
wrote a little history of Lyon County endorsed by its Board of Supervisors, in which 
he prefaces his paragraph on wheat with these words: "We doubt if anywhere since being 
transported from its native plains in Central Asia has this great cereal found a more 
congenial climate than in Northwestern Iowa and Lyon County." The writer mentions the 
drawback of long transportation, but believes that its easier production and certain 
and greater yield than in the East much more than overbalance the greater cost of its 
transportation. Mr. Hyde then turns to corn, with less enthusiasm, but with some 
assurance. "There is an impression prevailing to a considerable extent," he says, 
"that this cereal can not be raised with success in Northwestern Iowa owing to 
coldness of the climate. This opinion has no foundation, as will be shown in our 
article on climate. Actual experience and experiments show tha the mean summer heat 
of this region of the Missouri slope is equal to that required for the successful 
growth of corn. With a congenial climate and a warm soil, rich in nitrogen, it is one 
of our most certain and valuable productions. Mr. L.F. Knight has cultivated corn 
on his farm at the forks of Rock River since 1869, and has never failed to secure a 
good crop; and it has never been cut off by drought, frost or blight, yielding, in some 
years, as high as eighty bushels of shelled corn to the acre. With good management, the 
yield is from fifty to eighty bushels per acre. This crop, as well as all others, is 
raised with less than half the labor usually required on the worn-out soils, or among 
the stumps and stones, with which the eastern farmer has to contend. A man and a boy 
can tend forty acres, besides devoting a portion of their time to other crops, the hoe 
hardly ever being used. This, with a yield of from forty to sixty bushels to the acre, 
the yield of one crop would be 3,680,000 bushels. 
 
These many years corn has driven out wheat as the bumper crop of Lyon County and Mr. 
Hyde's golden dream of fifty years ago has been more than realized; for although the 
county holds only a middle station as a corn producer in Northwestern Iowa the census 
figures for 1920 show that it raised a crop of more than 5,500,000 bushels in the 
previous year. Its beef cattle numbered 31,000 and were valued at nearly $1,400,000, 
and its 16,000 dairy cows, at $922,000. In the raising of the dairy stock Lyon County 
stands about sixth in Northwestern Iowa. Although it is not so well to the front in 
the raising of swine, it makes a good showing with its 83,000 porkers valued at 
$2,000,000. Its hay and forage crop amounted to 58,000 tons, which materially added 
to its strength and promise as a livestock country.

Source: Northwestern Iowa Its History and Traditions 1804-1926 by Arthur F. 
Allen Volume 1.