Boone County Historical Society Iowa

05/26/2026

We appreciate all the stories we've been hearing about the tornadoes on June 13, 1976. We are busy creating display boards and planning. We talked with two additional families in the last week that shared over 150 of their photos with us, bringing the total number of photos shared with us over to over 400. These stories, newspaper clippings and photos will help us tell the story now and will be a resource in our research room for the future.

First photo shared by the Riley family shows a destroyed car with the Jordan school in the background. A robust discussion among some of the families involved think it's a Ford, possibly a Bronco. Does anyone know?

Photo 2 is one of the many display boards we're working on for the exhibit. One of the first thing we heard from those affected by the tornadoes was don't forget the first responders and all those who came to help us.

Photo 3 is from Wednesday when several families met at BCHS and shared stories and photos. L to R: Fran (McGlynn) Frazier, Veronica (McGlynn) Nystrom, Karen (Riley) DeGraffe, and Lanny Lincoln.

This is their story and we are humbled and honored to a part of telling their story 50 years after the tornadoes. The exhibit opens June 6 and runs through the end of July.

05/18/2026

Four Tornadoes - One Day. Special Saturday with a Scholar presentation at 10 am on Saturday, June 6th remembering the 50th anniversary.

We do have a capacity of 100 for the presentation. If we reach capacity, we will have to turn away people. We do not have the capability to livestream the event & have asked several people to volunteer their time & services to livestream & at this time, we do not have anyone willing to help us out.

We will have a panel discussion starting at 10am. At 11am we will be opening the temporary exhibit on the Jordan & Ogden tornadoes of June 13, 1976.

Four tornadoes? That afternoon started with an F3 tornado south of Ogden that fortunately was mostly fields, but some homes & farms were destroyed or badly damaged. Then later in the afternoon, the three tornadoes that hit the Jordan area. The big F5 and a smaller F2 cyclonic tornado and a rare F3 anti-cyclonic tornado. Wonder what all that means? We'll tell you all about it on June 6th at 10am!

05/12/2026

Mark the calendars! Wednesday, May 20 from 6 to 8pm at the Boone County History Center and in conjunction with the Ericson Public Library, we will be hosting Charles Irwin talking about the planning of Boone, original industries and more. The presentation from 6-7 pm will be followed by a walking tour of downtown Boone highlighting the history of some of the buildings and what occupied those buildings over time. This is a free event, but the library is asking you to register at boone.lib.ia.us/events

05/12/2026

Happy 88th birthday to Fareway Stores! We love having an exhibit honoring their success.

05/02/2026

FYI - our bchsiowa.org emails are not working and it looks like they have not been working since April 27. We're working on it, but best way to contact us for now is via Facebook or by phone at 515-432-1907. Thanks and we're sorry for the inconvenience

04/11/2026

A different envelope of negatives tonight. This one is marked, "Vets Baseball Team". We're keeping with the theme of an envelope with only a title, no date, no other information. Gotta love a good mystery! As I did with the "night club" negatives. I'm posting the originals and the AI enhanced images. I'm depending on your knowledge to identify these men and any other information you may have. Thanks!

04/09/2026

We are constantly finding oversized black and white negatives. Most scanners will not scan the larger sizes. So, in today's episode of fun with scanning, I scanned negatives using a regular scanner, then flipped them using a free online service and then used Gemini AI to sharpen the photos. Gemini AI does a horrible job with any wording or signs in the photos, but it does sharpen the faces so maybe, just maybe, you can help us figure out what we have.

The envelope of negatives says, "Night Clubs". No date, no further information. But we're always up for a challenge! Do you know these locations? These people? Approximate date?

I've posted the original scanned photo and the same photo that was AI enhanced.

03/27/2026

There is currently lots of discussion about using AI in everyday life. We'll leave the hard discussions to all of you. We have started using AI sparingly to enhance old photos. We are very careful on the commands we use in AI. Mostly it's "sharpen this image. Do not add anything to the photo". We're finding that sometimes it's a great help with old photos, other times it's a big failure. Since Gemini AI comes free with our gmail accounts, we are using it for now. Here are some examples of before and after. Will Ai be a useful tool for all historians to help clean up old, damaged photos?

03/26/2026

It's been almost 50 years since the F5 tornado hit Jordan. (June 13, 1976) The Boone County Historical Society will be hosting a temporary exhibit in June and July telling the story of this storm, the lives it affected and how they rebuilt. We have a small, but mighty, group that are helping us tell their stories. They are generously sharing their personal photos and stories.

June 6: Saturday with a Scholar (time TBD, but probably 10am) the story of the weather, the three tornados in Boone County that day, photos and a panel discussion. The presentation will be followed by the opening of the Special exhibit.

June 6 - end of July: Special exhibit in the lobby of the Boone Co. History Center.

We want to thank Karl Jungbluth, Veronica Nystrom, Fran Frazier, Lanny Lincoln, and Bob Flynn who are giving their time to help with this exhibit.

As we continue to plan this exhibit, we will keep you updated.

03/11/2026

What's cooking? Did you know that the Boone County Historical Society's Research room has a lovely collection of cookbooks from around Boone County? It's such fun looking through them and maybe you'll find a recipe from a family member. Stop in and check them out!

Today, we were made aware of a project at ISU that scanned 214 old cookbooks from around Iowa and they are available to download! If you go to https://digitalcollections.lib.iastate.edu/cookbooks/ and use the Search function and type in Boone, you'll see three old Boone cookbooks, one from Ogden and one from Boxholm.

What are you making for dinner on this cold, snowy day?

Cookbooks published by Iowan communities, organizations, and individuals document the culinary heritage of Iowa and the United States. In addition to recipes, these works contain valuable cultural, social, and historical information reflecting community life, domestic practices, and regional identit...