This Iowa Oral History Project consists of a series of ninety-seven interviews conducted from the early 1970s through 2002. These audio interviews add richness to the history and culture of Des Moines and Iowa that cannot be realized in print.  Listening to the actual voices of the interviewees gives great insight into the lives of these individuals who experienced history first hand.  The content of the oral histories is quite diverse. Please listen and enjoy.

Oral Histories are in order by date recorded.

• Prohibition in Des Moines : an interview with Babe Bisignano


• Pediatrics : interview with Lee Forest Hill
• Jews of Des Moines: interview with Eugene Mannheimer
• Teaching in Iowa: interview with Mabel Robbins
• Iowa meat packing: interview with Lester Bookey
• Background to Des Moines and Iowa architecture
• Banking during the depression: interview with H. Lee Huston
• Iowa Civil Liberties Union: interview with Louise R Noun and Gilbert Cranberg
• History of the Iowa State Fair: interview with Kenneth Fulk

Music in Des Moines since 1915: interview with Susan Bender Eddy

Iowa conservation: interview with Louise Parker

History of the Art Center: interview with Peggy Patrick

History of the Hoyt Sherman: interview with Margaret Mellor

Community Theatre Association: interview with L.K. Boutin

Henry Wallace: interview with Mrs. Per Wijkman

Prairie City, 1890's: interview with Eva Mackaman

History of architecture: Terrace Hill: interview with William Wagner

Titanic survivor: interview with Anna Hysten Gustafson

Iowa authors: interview with Pauline Millen

The working girl during the Depression: interview with Kathryn Love

Des Moines Community Playhouse: interview with Marion Cowper Rae

The Princess Theater: interview with Hazel Stone.

Vienna to Des Moines: interview with Martha Glayston

Florence M. Meyer, Iowa's first woman stockbroker

The way it was in 1915: interview with Kathryn Love

Iowa history: South Dakota Gold Rush: interview with Ruth and Ethel Ash

Trial of Tojo: interview with Owen Cunningham

Early Des Moines buildings, parks, businesses: interview with George Whittiner

Interview with Harold J Parnham, horticulturist

History of the Unitarian Church in Des Moines: interview with Oval Quist

Early businesses and real estate in Des Moines: interview with Paul Ashby

Ruby Holton, Drake professor

Fort Des Moines colored officers training, 1917

Home front during WWI, WWII, Iowa coal mining

Chatauqua, 1920's, WWII, WAC

Entertainment and flappes: interview with Kathryn Love

William Schweiker, Sr.

He wrote the Iowa corn song - 

Cold water cave: Bertrand steamboat project - Interview with Otto Knauth. Knauth, a reporter for the Des Moines Register, discusses the discovery of the cold water cave discovered in northeast Iowa in 1967

.Edith Dunham Webber - Interview deals with reminiscences of Webber's career as a book reviewer.