Runner looks for novelties across Iowa

NORTH ENGLISH — Impressed with a young person interested in small-town Iowa history, the English Valleys’s History Center invited Tyler Sullivan to present its first program of the year.

A 2006 graduate of Regina Catholic Education Center in Iowa City, Sullivan is a prolific runner. About 10 years ago, he became interested in finding novelties in each of the state’s 99 counties.

Later, Sullivan began running at least a mile in every town he visited.

Sullivan chronicles his travels on his Facebook page, Iowa Scenic Views by Foot, which has 23,000 followers.

Sullivan began exploring his home state when he was dating a girl from Mason City in 2015, he said Sunday.

When the couple went to her neck of the woods, they’d stop at attractions along the way, and they’d do the same when they went south to Johnson County.

After the relationship ended, Sullivan continued to explore Iowa’s counties.

Sullivan asked his North English audience if they’d ever visited Birdsall’s Ice Cream Company in Mason City or the Buddy Holly crash site in Cerro Gordo County.

Sullivan visited the Montgomery County Fair in Red Oak and the swinging bridge in Columbus Junction in Louisa County. He saw his first rodeo at the Lee County Fair in Donnellson.

Sullivan visited welcome centers and walked out with bags full of brochures of places he wanted to visit and things he wanted to see.

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He’s spent 10 years roaming his home state to find treasures in small towns. “These towns are magical,” Sullivan said. This is where people go to school and to church, he said.

Sometimes people don’t realize what’s in their own towns, Sullivan said. One day he was taking a photo of a mural in the Osceola post office, and a resident asked him what he was taking a photo of. He pointed to the mural. The man said he’d been in the post office many times and never noticed it.

Eventually, visiting the towns wasn’t enough. Sullivan began running in the towns.

Sullivan’s a marathon runner, he said, but some of these towns don’t have many miles in them. He runs at least a mile in each town, even if that means running a couple of laps around Main Street.

During Sunday’s presentation, Sullivan talked about Story City’s 1913 Carousel, the kaleidoscope factory in Pocahontas and The Grotto of the Redemption in West Bend. He advises take a tour of the grotto because the guide will give the histories of specific items in the grotto.

Sullivan enjoyed seeing Iowa buffalo at Fredericksburg and Rusty the giant sloth at the University of Iowa Museum of Natural History in Iowa City.

Sullivan has visited the first roundabout in Iowa — a large cottonwood tree in the middle of the intersection of 350th Street and 710th Street near Brayton in Cass County.

Don’t drive it on a muddy day, Sullivan advised.

In Winthrop, Sullivan visited the former office of artist Grant Wood’s dentist, Dr. Byron Henry McKeeby — the old man in Wood’s painting “American Gothic.”

Ida Grove has castles, Sullivan said. He wishes the city would make every building on the main street a castle.

Sullivan talked about Plum Grove, the home of Iowa’s first territorial governor, Robert Lucas, and his wife, Friendly. The house is maintained by the State Historical Society, and the gardens are tended by the Johnson County Master Gardeners.

Sullivan asks people in the towns he visits what they think he should see. “If you ask the locals, they know more than those brochures,” he said.

“The smaller towns have beautiful churches,” said Sullivan. “And they are all open.”

Sullivan works as a custodian at the University of Iowa during the week and works part-time at Walmart on Sundays, but he takes every opportunity he has to travel the state.

Sullivan has visited 96 of the 99 counties and plans to run at least a mile in every town on the Iowa Road Map. He’ll even run a mile in towns that are no longer towns.

Sullivan no longer keeps count of the number of towns he visits. It’s more about the people, he said.