Field of Dreams Movie Site

The film was shot here in the summer of 1988 on two neighboring farms, with the crew building the diamond, the outfield, and the wooden bleachers and planting the corn to frame it. When production wrapped, most movie sets get torn down. This one did not. The farm family that owned the home-plate portion decided to keep it mowed and leave the gate open, and travelers began finding their way down the gravel roads to play a few innings.

Word spread, first by newspaper and later by every possible means, and the trickle became a steady stream of visitors from across the country and the world. For years the field straddled two separately owned farms, and the two halves were run differently before the site came together under single ownership and was preserved as the attraction it is now, a working-farm landmark rather than a theme park.

The famous image is the corn: rows of it standing tall right up against the outfield, so that players walking in seem to melt into the stalks and disappear. The movie leaned on that effect, and on a summer visit when the corn is high, it still works. Kids and grown-ups alike drift out past the outfield to vanish into the rows and come walking back, grinning.

The corn is a real crop on a real Iowa farm, planted and grown on the seasons like any other field, which is why the field looks most like the movie in late summer, when the stalks tower over the players, and barer earlier and later in the year. That rhythm of the growing season is part of what makes the place feel authentic rather than staged.

For decades the field was purely for pickup play and quiet visits, but in recent years Major League Baseball has come to Dyersville, building a temporary ballpark in an adjoining field and playing regular-season games with the corn as a backdrop and the players emerging from the stalks, a direct nod to the movie. Those games are big events that pack the little town.

Most days, though, the original diamond stays true to its low-key roots. There is no admission gate for the ballfield in the usual sense; the site welcomes visitors and asks only that they treat it kindly. That mix of a genuine pop-culture landmark and an open, come-play-catch spirit is unusual, and it is much of the field's charm.

Dyersville is a small town in the fertile farm country of eastern Iowa, the sort of place that anchors a landscape of corn, soybeans, dairy barns, and grain elevators. Its skyline is dominated by the Basilica of St. Francis Xavier, a soaring twin-spired church that is one of only a handful of minor basilicas in the country set in a rural town. The area is also a capital of collectible farm toys, with museums devoted to miniature tractors and implements.

This part of Iowa lies within the historic homelands of the Meskwaki and the Sauk, and the deep, dark prairie soils that make it such rich farmland were built up over thousands of years under tallgrass prairie before the plow arrived. The gentle rise and fall of the land, the tidy farmsteads, and the long views over the corn are the real Iowa that the movie set out to honor.

The closest Boutel™ stays, so you can turn this stop into an overnight. Each is an independently owned, editorially selected place to stay.