Corning, Iowa

Corning is a small Adams County seat whose biggest claim is that it was here, on October twenty-third, nineteen twenty-five, that Johnny Carson was born. His father managed the local power company, and the family lived at five hundred Thirteenth Street in a modest house before moving to Norfolk, Nebraska, when Johnny was eight. Carson grew up in Nebraska, but he never forgot his Iowa birthplace, he donated ninety thousand dollars for a local elementary school playground and a skate park.

After Carson died in January two thousand five, a group of fans formed the Johnny Carson Birthplace Society, eventually spending more than a quarter of a million dollars restoring the house to its nineteen twenty-five appearance. Today visitors can tour the room where the King of Late Night arrived in the world, in a farmtown that still seems a bit surprised it produced thirty years of television history.