What images are available?
The online catalog contains records and digital images representing the Iowa Department of Transportation’s historic photo collection.

A majority of the photographs were taken between XXXX and XXXX during the reign of the Iowa Highway Commission. Many of the images are one-of-a-kind, rare or unique and are part of the Iowa DOT’s historic glass plate negative collection.

Other early transportation images have been collected by DOT employees, recovered from vintage postcards (now in the public domain), or donated to the department. Any copyright restrictions related to donated photographs will be noted in their description.

Over XXX images are currently available and additional photos and updates are being made continuously.

The collection covers vast subject areas and examines all modes of transportation from the unusual looking bicycles that started the Good Roads movement to horse-drawn urban transit systems to those marvelous automobiles.

Other featured images include: road building and maintenance equipment; Highway Commission administrators, employees and facilities; Eisenhower’s trip across Iowa on the Lincoln Highway; famous Iowans synonymous with transportation history, such as Amelia Earhart and Buffalo Bill Cody; and transportation on the back roads and mainstreet Iowa.

If you’re looking for images not listed in the index or are interested in seeing more images on a certain topic, let us know by sending an E-mail. If we have such images, we’ll do our best to make them available as time permits.

What is copyright?
The copyright law of the United States (Title 17, U.S. Code) governs the making of photocopies or other reproductions of copyright material.

“Copyright” is a form of protection provided to the authors of “original works of authorship,” both published and unpublished, that are fixed in a tangible form of expression.

Copyrightable works include literary works, computer programs, visual art works (i.e. pictorial, graphic and sculptural works), performing art works, sound recordings, serials and periodicals, and mask works.

All images, text, audio, video and other materials on this Web site (collectively, the "Content") are protected under applicable copyright, trademark and other proprietary rights. Technologies and processes embodied in and used by this site may be covered by one or more U.S. patents and patents pending.

Accordingly, the copying, downloading, displaying, posting, redistribution, use, or publication by you of any Content or any part of the site is strictly prohibited, except for use by Iowa Department of Transportation (Iowa DOT) employees in the course of agency business and by other persons for private, educational, research, and non-commercial use.