Dubuque & Dyersville - Heritage Trail - Field of Dreams

Описание: We spent several days near Dubuque, Iowa. We camped at Swiss Valley Campground. We spent part of our first evening taking shelter in the bathhouse when a tornado warning was issued. Thankfully all we got was heavy rain. We spent the next day sightseeing at Dyersville. We visited the Field of Dreams Movie Site just outside of town. The 1989 movie starring Kevin Costner was filmed at this location. They built the baseball field on an existing farm. The timing of the construction was critical as it had to be built during the filming and the height of the corn had to be perfect. In the scene where Ray Kinsella walks through the cornfield and hears the voice telling him to build a baseball field the corn needed to be shoulder high. There was a drought that year and the corn wasn’t growing fast enough. The film crew solved the problem by damming a creek on the farm to form a small reservoir. They piped the water to the fields, allowing the corn to grow as filming time neared. Ironically, when the scene was filmed the corn was too tall. They had to build a 12 inch platform for Costner to walk on so the corn wouldn’t be over his head. In order to keep filming on schedule, the actual construction of the baseball field was completed in just four days. Local high school baseball teams assisted in the effort, laying seven semi-truck loads of sod in just two days. The property became a tourist attraction after the film was released. It was later sold and many improvements made. It attracts around 200,000 visitors annually. You can rent the house and field for $2,500 per night. Major League Baseball built an 8,000 seat ballpark about 500 yards from the Field of Dreams. They held a regular season game there between the Chicago White Sox and the New York Yankees in 2021. They use the venue for other events and plans for another MLB game in in the works.

We visited the the Baseball Hall of Dreams (museum of baseball history) and the If You Build It Exhibit (museum dedicated to the making of the Field of Dreams movie) in nearby Dyersville. No visit to the town of Dyersville would be complete without a stop at the National Farm Toy Museum which we visited next. The museum houses one of the largest collections of cast iron farm toys. If you grew up on a farm, chances are you played with an ERTL toy tractor…we had several. ERTL began making toys in 1945. In 1959 a large production facility was built in Dyersville, Iowa. In 1999, the British company, TOMY, took over ERTL. The ERTL Company still operates out of Dyersville, but their toys are now manufactured all over the world. We finished our day with a stop at Textile Brewing which is housed in a historic sewing factory. The building was built in 1906 as a gasoline engine factory. It was then a sewing factory from 1910 to 2017. The factory produced shirts and later pajamas. In 1935 there were 43 girls on the payroll and they produced 2,400 shirts per week. The brewery opened in 2019 and they incorporated the sewing factory items into their decor. Our tabletop was an old work bench that a sewing machine had been mounted on. The next day we biked the Heritage Trail, which runs on the former Chicago Great Western Railroad line. The crushed limestone trail was in great shape despite the recent heavy rains. We rode from Dubuque to Dyersville and back for a total of 52.73 miles. We made a second visit to Textile Brewing since it was near the bike trail. On our last day in the area we took a little tour of Dubuque, primarily the historic district near the Port of Dubuque on the Mississippi River. We checked out some cool murals, the old Dubuque Star Brewery Building, and the Fenelon Place Elevator (cable car). The brewery building was built in 1898. With the exception of when Prohibition was in effect, beer was produced in the building until 2003 by a number of different brewing companies. The city of Dubuque acquired the building in 2004 as part of their riverfront renovation project. It now houses a winery and has office space on the upper floors. The ground floor houses many items and displays from the original Dubuque Star Brewing Company. The Fenelon Place cable car was built in 1882. A banker who worked at the bottom of the steep hill and lived at the top had it built for his private use. He had his gardener lower him down to work, bring him back up for lunch and a short nap, lower him back to work and then up at the end of the day. Before long, neighbors began asking for rides. He had it rebuilt in 1884 after a fire destroyed the original one. He opened up the new cable car to the public and charged 5 cents a ride. It was destroyed by fire and rebuilt several more times and became owned by a company that several neighbors formed. The going rate today is $4.00 for a round trip.

George’s Town/The Den/courtesy of epidemicsound.com