“Then would you mind telling me what you’re doing in the middle of a plain in Iowa — and what I’m doing here, for that matter?”
Occasionally in books or movies a character will drop a reference to some place in Iowa. The most common reasons appear to be a) to show that this person has connections to the Midwest, providing flavor and minor characterization; b) to show that this person is a rube who has no idea how the civilized world works; or c) because there’s a plot device that needs something happening in the middle of nowhere.
Ayn Rand’s Atlas Shrugged is an example of the last. That’s where the quote at the top of this post comes from. A scientist associated with the government is sent to check out Project X, an ultrasonic ray capable of causing great destruction. The radius of the weapon is described as such:
“a circle with a periphery extending from the shore of the Mississippi, roughly from the bridge of the Taggart Transcontinental Railroad, to Des Moines and Fort Dodge, Iowa, to Austin, Minnesota, to Woodman, Wisconsin, to Rock Island, Illinois.”
Here’s what it looks like on the Iowa map if you circumscribe all of those locations. (Woodman is a pretty small town.) Note that part of the circle follows close to the Mississippi. There are two nearby railroad bridges in real life, the Government Bridge for the old Rock Island Railroad in the Quad Cities and the Union Pacific bridge at Clinton.
The square in the middle represents the center of the circumscribed area. It is not the center of the shape represented by the polygon inside it, since the circle includes a much greater area to the south. This square is directly over La Porte City.
Since no original name was given, the true site is up for grabs. The website Conservapedia, for example, pinpoints Harmony City as being Dunkerton, 18 miles due north of La Porte City. Black Hawk County, in general, makes for a reasonable geographic location of the project.
Note: This post is not intended to be political. It is merely a discussion of Iowa in literature. It just so happens that this is a very political book.