We came to be in eastern Iowa in early September 2001 — Labor Day weekend, in fact — because in February of that year, we’d taken a short trip to the same region, staying at a motel whose indoor pool turned out to be inoperable. I must have written a complaint letter about it, because the motel offered us another stay for no charge.

September’s definitely a more pleasant month to visit eastern Iowa than February, so we made our way back. We spent most of one day in the pleasant college town of Iowa City. The 2000s, it turned out, wasn’t a good decade for the town — a tornado hit one year, and the Iowa River flooded some of the town two years later. Before any of that, a historic structure burned.

That would be this historic structure: the Old State Capitol. Iowa City was a territorial and early state capital, and the building, with its gold leaf dome, was a relic of that time. (Iowa seems to have a thing for gold leaf on its capitol domes.) After the state government moved to Des Moines in 1857, the building became property of the University of Iowa, which it remains to this day.

We had a look at that early September 2001. Some renovation work was under way at the time.

A little more than two months later, workmen accidentally set the dome on fire and the fire consumed it, though not the rest of the building, which suffered water damage. I’m happy to report that a new gold leaf-covered dome was put on the building about two years later.

As we were leaving Iowa on that trip, we headed south a short distance from Iowa City and visited the Kalona Historical Village, an open-air museum heavy on farm structures and farm equipment, as you’d expect, plus a lot of Mennonite artifacts. Then we headed east and drove through Riverside, a small town. I only paused long enough, not even getting out of the car, to see the “USS Riverside” in a small park. At some point, the town fathers had decided that Riverside was the future birthplace of Capt. Kirk.