Nebraska and Iowa The Cornhusker State and the Hawkeye State
Two bordering Midwestern states in these United States that I am very familiar with.
The mighty Missouri River, which is the longest river in North America by the way,
is the only thing that separates them.
And good thing that river is there separating them
because there’s a bit of a rivalry between the two.
Both don’t have as much in common as you’d think. Yeah let’s just
knock those similarities out the way first.
First of all, both are on the prairie. Lots of grass.
Both states lean to the right, politically. Although Nebraska a bit more.
Agriculture is very important in both states. In particular, livestock and corn. You
know, that vegetable that’s an ingredient in the food you’re eating right now. Sure,
there’s the University of Nebraska Cornhuskers, but Iowa produces more corn than any other state.
Ok, ok, Nebraska ranks number three in corn production.
Both generally have clean air and water compared to most of the rest of the country. Ah, that’s
nice. But residents of both do have to deal with very cold winters and surprisingly hot summers.
Both mostly have a humid continental climate, with four distinct seasons. Thanks to the
constant battle between winds from the north and south, the weather can quickly
and dramatically change. One day it could be 30 degrees fahrenheit out, the next day 70 degrees.
Or you might be walking in the sunshine one moment and the next you’re in a giant thunderstorm.
Both have similar natural disasters,
with the biggest ones being tornadoes, yes thunderstorms, and flooding.
Excluding Omaha and Lincoln in Nebraska and Des Moines in Iowa, both are not exactly known for
their ethnic diversity. A lot of people in both trace their ancestry to Europe.
The biggest religion in both is Christianity. Specifically,
most Christians in both identify as Protestant.
Similar to other Midwestern states,
the rural and small town population in both states has been quickly declining.
Both spend about the same amount each year per
student on education. (I- $12,256, N- $12,450). Both have a higher percentage
of college educated citizens than the national average. (I- 41.2%, N- 44.3%)
Both are landlocked and far from the ocean, but Nebraska is the only triple landlocked
state in the country, meaning Nebraskans must travel through three states to get to an ocean.
Both border six states.
Both have absolutely no professional sports teams. But according to Wikipedia
“The state of Iowa has one professional sports team in which they lead the nation:
Cuddling.” Yeah someone might want to edit that.
So how about all those differences between the two states?
Well first of all, Nebraska is about 27% bigger in land area. Oh yeah? Well,
Iowa has more people (I- 3.2 million, N- 1.9 million) and because of that a higher population
density. Heck, there are parts of Nebraska where HARDLY ANYBODY lives. Like in the
beautiful Sand Hills region, which makes up 1/4 of the entire state. I’ve been there,
and if you want to get away from, like, everybody, that’s the place to go.
Iowa’s population is more spread out. Most of Nebraska’s population lives in
the eastern portion of the state. Despite Iowa having more people, its biggest city,
Des Moines, is smaller than Nebraska’s second biggest city, Lincoln. Ok, ok…but that’s not
based on metropolitan area numbers, shame on me for that. Des Moines has a metro population
more than double that of Lincoln, ok? Oh yeah? Well Omaha, Nebraska’s metro population is over
a million people. Oh yeah? Well its metro includes Council Bluffs, Iowa so there. Anyway, I used to
live in Omaha and it’s an incredibly underrated city. So is Des Moines, come to think of it.
Overall, Iowa residents pay more in taxes.
However, the cost of living is overall higher in Nebraska.
That all said, housing is much cheaper in both compared to most of the rest of the country.
Nebraska has a lower poverty rate. (I- 11.2%, N- 9.9%) The median household income is also
higher there. (I- $61,681, N- $63,229). But, Iowa has a lower overall crime rate.
Nebraska has a higher minimum wage. (I-$7.25 per hour, N-$9 per hour)
Iowa gets more precipitation, man. Nebraska’s precipitation DRAMATICALLY goes down the further
west you go in the state. So while Eastern Nebraska is all green in the summer with more
trees, Western Nebraska is…uh…not, and has hardly any trees at all. In fact, most of the Nebraska
Panhandle, or this section of the state, has a semi-arid climate. Why is it so dry out here?
Well because of the rain shadow created by the Rocky Mountains. Rocky Mountains I say?
What on earth? Well, here’s something to put into perspective how big Nebraska is. It takes 6 and a
half hours to drive from Omaha to Scottsbluff, Nebraska, but only 3 hours to drive from
Scottsbluff to Denver, Colorado. Western Nebraska is even in the Mountain Time Zone, for real.
Most of Nebraska is in the Great Plains, and when Americans first arrived to settle it,
there were barely any trees. Iowa at least had some trees. Oh yeah, let’s get into some history…
Both have been settled by humans for thousands of years. Some were nomadic,
others were sedentary. By the time Europeans got to the area in the 1500s and 1600s,
prominent American Indian tribes in modern-day Nebraska included the Cheyenne,
Pawnee, Lakota, Omaha, Otoe, and Ponca. Prominent American Indian tribes in modern-day
Iowa included also the Otoe, but additionally the Missouria, Dakota Sioux, Illini, and Ioway.
No way. Yes way. That’s where Iowa gets its name from! Nebraska is named after the Otoe Indian word
Nebrathka, which means “flat water,” in reference to the Platte River, which runs through the state.
The first Europeans to make contact with American Indians in modern-day Iowa were apparently the
French explorers Louis Joliet and Pere Jacques Marquette. They encountered the Illini just west
of the Mississippi River in 1673. Naturally, the French claimed the land, but rarely came back.
The French were also the first Europeans to check out modern-day Nebraska, but that wasn’t
until the 1700s. In 1714, Etienne de Bourgmont and his crew checked it out for the first time.
The only thing the French did after that in modern-day Iowa and Nebraska was some trading
along the rivers. They established only two permanent trading posts in modern-day Nebraska,
and nothing, as far as I can tell, in modern-day Iowa. When Spain briefly controlled modern-day
Iowa, it did offer some land grants to protect mining around modern-day Dubuque.
Flash forward to 1803, and the United States now controlled the area. In 1808, it built
Fort Madison in modern-day Iowa. In the War of 1812, the area was part of Missouri Territory.
During that war, in uh…1813…British-allied American Indians led by the Sauk leader Black Hawk
took it over. However, after that war ended time and time again the United
States government pushed American Indians further and further west in modern-day Iowa,
clearing the way for American settlement in the 1830s. By that time, the area was part of Michigan
Territory. And then, Wisconsin Territory. And then Iowa Territory, woah…impressive.
Meanwhile, American missionaries had moved out to modern-day Nebraska. In 1842, a dude
who later was a Senator and ran for President named John C. Fremont explored the Platte River
with another famous dude named Kit Carson. The city of Fremont, Nebraska was named after him.
For decades, Americans traveled through future Nebraska, but rarely stopped there.
The main way they traveled through it? The famous Oregon Trail, of course!
Iowa became a state first. By 1846, enough folks lived there to make it so,
and afterward settlement quickly grew. By 1851 nearly all American Indian nations had
been pressured to move out by the American government. Most of the new settlers farmed,
of course, and settled near the rivers that led to the Mississippi RIver to
ship their farming goods. Many American Indian nations still remained, however,
in what would become Nebraska Territory…woah that’s pretty big…after the American government
created it in 1854. They created Nebraska Territory with one of the worst laws ever passed,
the Kansas–Nebraska Act. In addition to creating the territories of Kansas and Nebraska and opening
them for settlement, it allowed the new settlers to determine whether they would be admitted to
the Union as a free state or slave state. This predictably caused a mad rush of proslavery and
antislavery advocates to live out there, but most of them chose to live in Kansas Territory. Things
were much more chill in Nebraska, even after the American Civil War broke out in 1861. Things were
also pretty chill in Iowa during the war, although more than 75,000 soldiers from Iowa enlisted.
Nebraska became a state in 1867. For the rest of the century, the population
of both states exploded due to so many migrants and
immigrants moving there to get either cheap or even free land to farm.
The railroads had a dramatic impact on the development of both states. Railroad grants
were free land given to the railroad companies so they could build railroads and sell off the land
where settlers came to settle. However, many people didn’t like these deals because they
thought the railroad industry was ripping off settlers. In the late 1880s and early 1890s,
Nebraska farmers in particular faced difficult times when droughts caused crop failures,
and many of them lost their farms due to not being able to pay off debts. This,
combined with reaction to railroad company monopolies, helped lead to the Populist Movement.
Populist hero James B. Weaver came from Iowa, but the movement was even bigger in Nebraska. In fact,
Omaha was the home of the convention that created the Populist Party
in 1892. But who was their presidential candidate that year? James B. Weaver of course.
By the early 1900s, prosperity mostly returned to both states, and both continued to grow.
Beginning in the 1920s, farmers in both states struggled again,
but more so in Nebraska. The Dust Bowl, which happened in the 1930s due to little rain,
hot days, and high soil erosion, also devastated Nebraska much more than Iowa.
The Nebraska farmers who survived adapted to harsh conditions through more efficient irrigation,
contour farming, and planting millions of trees to hold the soil in the ground
to keep it from eroding and blowing away.
Today, while both states are still known for farming, Iowa is actually more rural. Other than
agriculture, major industries in Iowa include food processing, machinery, and healthcare.
Other major industries in Nebraska include financial services, transportation, and insurance.
According to both CNBC and Forbes magazine, Nebraska is a much better state for business.
The median age is higher in Iowa. (I- 38.5, N- 36.8)
Nebraska has more cows. Iowa has more pigs. In fact, I was surprised to learn that Iowa has like,
waayyy more pigs than any other state in the country. Pigs outnumber humans there 4 to 1.
Iowa also leads the country in egg production
and is number two in soybean production. Dang, Iowa. Impressive.
But Nebraska has more impressive rivers. The big one is the aforementioned Platte River. Sure,
Iowa gets the mighty Mississippi as its border with Illinois to the east, but the only somewhat
bigger river in the state is just a tributary of the Mississippi called the Des Moines River. I
still can’t get over how Nebraska has more miles of rivers than any other state in the country.
Nebraska has the Nebraska National Forest, located in the northwestern part of the state.
Squirrel: Wait what? Didn’t you say earlier that Western
Nebraska was really dry and had hardly any trees?
Mr. Beat: Why I did, squirrel. Great job paying attention there.
You’re gonna ace the test over this video.
Squirrel? Wait test? There’s a test?
Mr. Beat: But yeah, the Nebraska National Forest is actually the country’s largest human-created
forest. Located in the Sand Hills, this is what it would have looked like before those trees were
planted. But the legendary botanist Charles Bessey had the crazy idea to plant thousands of trees.
Today, the forests look like they’ve been there forever, and it’s federally-protected land.
Every four years, Iowa gets a LOT of attention from political junkies across the country
since it is the home of the first caucuses that vote on who will be the presidential nominees
for both of the major political parties. It is commonly believed that whoever wins
those caucuses starts the presidential primary season with a lot of momentum,
and for that reason Iowans regularly get opportunities to meet presidential
candidates. In intimate locations, too. Back in 2020 right before the world ended,
J.J. McCullough and I were in Iowa right before the caucuses and got to experience some of that
excitement firsthand. Hey check out our videos about it if you want to and stuff.
Nebraska is the only state in the country with a unicameral state
legislature, meaning instead of having a house and a senate
like the United States Congress, it has just one governing body in its legislative branch.
Nebraska is also one of only two states that splits up its electoral votes,
which I think is pretty groovy. It's called the congressional district method since
it awards two electoral votes to the state popular vote winner and divides up the rest
to the popular vote winner in each of its three Congressional districts.
This has led to multiple split electoral votes there, most recently in 2020. Biden won
Nebraska’s 2nd Congressional District...which-no surprise- is basically Omaha and its suburbs.
Other things I’m supposed to mention about Nebraska based on my comment section
from my Kansas-Nebraska video is that Edwin Perkins invented Kool-aid in Hastings, Nebraska,
and more than half a million sandhill cranes, or around 80% of the world’s crane population,
stop by one 80-mile stretch of land in Nebraska every March on their annual
spring migration. Oh, and on Saturdays in the fall, Memorial Stadium in Lincoln, Nebraska,
is the equivalent of the third most populated city in the state.
Other random cool things about Iowa? There’s this cool town called Pella there. Dutch immigrants
founded it in 1847 and the town has since preserved much of its Dutch heritage. Ah but
there’s also Elk Horn, Iowa, which is known for its Danish heritage and check out that windmill.
And since 1900, the city of Britt, Iowa, has been hosting the National Hobo Convention which
is something I never realized I really wanted to attend until researching it for this video.
And finally, there’s a nice little college football rivalry between the University of
Iowa’s team and University of Nebraska’s team. The Hawkeyes have dominated it in recent years,
but don’t forget that the Cornhuskers have historically had one of the most
prestigious programs in college football history.
Squirrel: Mr. Beat, the Nebraska-Oklahoma football rivalry was a much bigger deal.
Go away squirrel.
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So which is better? Iowa or Nebraska? I’m a little biased toward Nebraska since I loved living in
Omaha. And there it is, the first repeat in my Compared series. I already compared Nebraska to
Kansas, but I didn’t know what to compare Iowa to, and the vast majority of you said compare it to
Nebraska. So I did. And for your future planning purposes, I plan on videos comparing Maryland and
Virginia, Oklahoma and Texas, and Michigan’s Lower Peninsula and Upper Peninsula. So call your mother
and your father and brothers and sisters your grandparents and grandchildren and fiances and
cousins and uncles and aunts and best friends and friends and acquaintances to let them all know ok?