"Is this heaven?" Shoeless Joe might not mistake Logan for heaven since the Field of Dreams is on the other side of the state, but Iowa served up a heavenly afternoon for me as I kept company with some of the saints eternal and waited on a few trains. Traffic on the UP is of course way down, but I got a couple of westbounds in my time here, including this empty coal train with three GEs on the head end.
Out of curiosity I looked up the person the large monument on the left belongs to. Lemuel Bolter it turns out was an interesting man. The grandson of a Revolutionary War soldier, Lemuel traveled overland from Michigan to California as a young man as part of the 1850s gold rush. He made some money before returning east to Michigan and then buying a farm here in Harrison County, Iowa. In addition to farming, he practiced law and was elected to the state legislature. He died on April 29, 1901 while serving as an Iowa state senator and died with the distinction of having served longer in the Iowa legislature as a representative and senator than any other citizen of the state at that time.
