As summer rolled around, the last cars pulled out of student parking lots, and faculty began the arduous task of tabulating final grades. But when July came, fresh groups of visitors started arriving downtown. These were book lovers with a mission — to hit every independent bookshop in Iowa by the end of September.
The 2025 iteration of the Iowa Indie Bookshop Tour kicked off this past July 1. Forty-five independent bookshops participated in Iowa, including Grinnell’s very own Pioneer Bookshop.
According to the event’s official website, visitors can collect a passport at any participating bookshop and receive a stamp for every stop visited on the map. Passports turned in at the end of the tour will be entered into a prize drawing.
This is the second year of the official tour, with the first tour starting in the summer of 2024 by CoriAnn Theroux, the owner of the Green Dragon Bookshop in Fort Dodge, Iowa.
According to Cassandra Wherry, manager of the Pioneer Bookshop, last year was the first time an independent bookshop tour had been formally organised for the entire state of Iowa.
“Cities like Des Moines have indie city bookshop tours,” said Theroux. “But at that time there was no other close indie bookshop in Fort Dodge … I really wanted something like that.”
Theroux said that she wanted to organize an event that could pull summer tourists travelling through Iowa to independent bookshops in the state. According to her, bookshops she reached out to across the state responded to her idea with “an enthusiastic ‘Yes.’”
She said that 10 more bookshops joined the lineup this year, and the amount of participants had already exceeded that of 2024.
“It’s been bringing a lot of people closer together, because they’ve realized a shared love for books and traveling,” she said. “I’m super excited to see what the final count will be this year … It gives me a lot of hope.”
There are suggested “mini road trips” on the official website, with Pioneer Bookshop on a route that also includes Pella Books in Pella and Book Vault in Oskaloosa.
“Practically every day this summer, we had at least one group come in on the tour,” said Wheery. “They took days off work just to drive around and go to these bookstores.”
There’s an easter egg too — the bright blue tour map for 2025 was drawn by a Grinnell alum and professional cartoonist, Kevin Cannon `02.
“He was hired by the Midwest Association of College Stores to do these cartoon characters for all the bookstores in our region,” said Wheery. “When I see that map, it’s fun to see that he’s our own.”
Wherry said that the tour had brought in many interesting characters, such as a woman who was trying to tour all states of the U.S. with her two children within a year.
“When she discovered that Iowa was doing this independent bookstore tour, she thought, ‘That will be our Iowa stop,’” said Wherry. “So [she] and her two kids went to every single bookstore on the tour in Iowa … They got to know Iowa very well, these people from Idaho, just driving around in her RV.”
According to Theroux, there have also been many friendly rivals who “chased each other” through bookstores throughout the season.
“We had two groups finish all 45 bookstores by day 18,” she said. “Both groups coincidentally met at a bookstore in Des Moines on their last day, and it became a race to see who could turn in their passports first. It was very cute.”
Wherry added that there were other creative customers who started collecting mementos from every bookshop to collate in scrapbooks. She said that many new visitors to Grinnell were surprised at how interesting a town it was.
“They didn’t realize that Grinnell had such cool architecture and stores and just interesting things to see here,” said Wherry. “It doesn’t cost a lot of money to just drive within the state and see what our own state has to offer, and it gave them an excuse to go to all these cities that they normally wouldn’t stop at.”
For Wherry, independent bookstores retain their unique charms compared to bigger businesses. “A lot of them have stuff just about their city or in their region,” she said. “And, of course, in our case, we highlight our professors and our alumni.”
“Even in a city with multiple bookshops, there’s a reason to go to every one of them,” said Theroux. “Each of them is unique and special in their own ways.”
Wherry and Theroux said that they visited some bookshops despite their schedules. The highlight for Wherry was Book Vault, an independent bookshop in Oskaloosa, housed in an old bank vault. Meanwhile, Theroux said she had an “utterly fabulous time” at The Haunted Bookshop, a used books shop in Iowa City.
“I’m going to retire in a year, and I’ll definitely do [the tour] then,” said Wherry. “We loved seeing people from all over the state and country come, and they were very complimentary of what a cute bookstore we have.”
She said, “You wouldn’t expect to find something like this in a small town, but then little bookstores are in small towns — it makes them special.”
Theroux said that she was going to keep organising the tour “for as long as we possibly can,” adding that there were already new bookshops that expressed interest to be included on the 2026 map. For her, it was not just about supporting independent bookstores, but also about supporting small businesses.
“We’re all part of a community, and I wish people would appreciate small businesses more, and I wish people would get to know these treasures,” she said. “These small businesses put in a lot of effort to create such unique shopping experiences.”
