William E. Whittaker is a research archaeologist at the Office of the State Archaeologist, University of Iowa. The author of many scholarly articles on Iowa archaeology and history, he is also the editor of Frontier Forts of Iowa (Iowa, 2009) and the Journal of the Iowa Archeological Society. Thousands of his photographs of the remains of small Iowa towns have been published online by the Iowa Digital Library and the University of Iowa’s Digital Studio for the Public Humanities. He lives in Iowa City, Iowa.