Indianola, Balloon Capital

Indianola, the Warren County seat, has an unlikely claim to international fame. Starting in nineteen seventy, the town hosted the United States National Hot Air Balloon Championship, and the competition was held here for eighteen consecutive years. The flat Iowa prairie, reliable summer thermals, and local enthusiasm made Indianola a natural fit.

When the national championship moved on, the town created its own successor: the National Balloon Classic, which launched in nineteen eighty-nine and has run every summer since. The nine-day festival draws nearly one hundred balloons and tens of thousands of visitors to what would otherwise be a quiet county seat of about sixteen thousand people. One of only two hot air balloon museums in the country operates here as well, tracing the history of the sport from the first Montgolfier flights in France in the seventeen hundreds to the modern competitive circuit.

For a small Iowa city, it is an outsized identity.