This research investigates the relationship between the early mapping and surveys of Iowa in the 19th century and the morphology of the contemporary landscape. A study of the maps of Iowa between 1830's - 1850's was conducted in order to understand the factors that contributed to the quick transformation of the landscape at the time where Iowa was a native territory to become a state within the American Union and the heartland of industrialized agriculture based on family farming. The findings of this historical research became the basis of the AlA funded project, in which a strategy of spatial regeneration for Iowa was developed to address the social, environmental and material waste produced by the demise of family farming and the growing efficiency in industrial agriculture.