(Radio Iowa) – An eastern Iowa museum that’s dedicated to preserving the German immigrant experience for future generations is getting a new accolade. The German American Heritage Center and Museum in Davenport will be named this week as the newest site in the Silos and Smokestacks National Heritage Area, which covers a large portion of northeast Iowa. Jori Wade-Booth is spokeswoman for Silos and Smokestacks.

Wade-Booth says, “We have about 100 sites that all include farms, museums, historic sites, businesses and so forth, all tell some part of the story of agriculture.” The facility at the foot of the Centennial Bridge and near the banks of the Mississippi River opened in 2004 in a historic building. It offers visitors an interactive experience to learn about the immigrants’ journey by sea, train and foot, to their final destination — the museum — which was originally a busy hotel for thousands of immigrants in the 1860s.

“The German American Heritage Center and Museum is important because not only does it preserve the heritage of our German-speaking ancestors that came to Iowa,” Wade-Booth says, “but it also tells the important story that German Americans had a huge impact on industry and agriculture in Iowa.” Those thousands of German immigrants played a significant role in helping Iowa to develop as an early ag powerhouse, something the state maintains to this day.

Photo courtesy German American Heritage Center and Museum

“A lot of people think of agriculture inside a box, like there’s tractors and crops and mud on your boots,” Wade-Booth says, “but really it’s the science, technology and math, and it encompasses a whole lot more than just growing corn and soybeans or having animals.” The museum details other elements of agriculture, like how Davenport used to be one of the nation’s top cigar-producing cities, as tobacco was a widely grown crop here more than a century ago. Lumber was also big for Iowa then, as were the state’s many fisheries. Wade-Booth says her organization works in partnership with the National Park Service.

“Silos and Smokestacks National Heritage Area was designated in 1996 by Congress to tell the story of American agriculture,” she says. “We’re the only heritage area in the country that tells that story. We covers 37 counties in northeast Iowa, basically everything east of I-35 and north of I-80.”

The ribbon-cutting at the museum is scheduled for tomorrow (Tuesday) at 11 A-M to welcome the facility as a new national heritage area site.