Development of the Higgins Museum has been focused on the issues of Iowa and its adjacent states. The Iowa galleries display the most complete state collection of National Bank Note issues ever assembled for a major state, with 278 of the state's 300 communities of issue represented. The first National Bank to open for business anywhere in the country, on June 29, 1863, was the First National Bank of Davenport; assigned charter number 15 based on its June 22, 1863, organization date; 495 banks were subsequently chartered in Iowa, with every one of the 99 counties boasting at least one.

The national banking system had been established by the National Currency Act of Feb. 25, 1863, to provide a ready market for United States bonds issued to finance the Civil War, and to a soundly based circulating currency that could replace the more or less insecure jumble of state bank notes then in circulation. The resulting National Bank Note issues became the country's effective circulating currency during the fifty-year period from the Civil War to World War I, resulting in stabilization of a banking system that could provide credit to both the government and the public.

No state in the nation hosted more National Bank Note issuing banks on a per capita basis than did Iowa. It provided the preeminent example of main street, or hometown banking, in the words of the late John Hickman, a leading cataloger and dealer in National Bank Note issues, who trumpeted the merits of the notes as "history in your hand." Hickman spent 20 years in service to the Higgins Museum, from 1975 to 1995, initially in the capacity of acquisitions agent and subsequently as curator of the collection.

Among the featured displays in the lobby area is one dedicated to the first and last notes issued under the laws that authorized National Bank Note issuance. A vintage bank teller cage built by a Charles City, Iowa, bank equipment manufacturer is also set up in the lobby, having been restored to its century old original quality. Other major relics of the hometown bank notes era on display include an original bullet safe that served the First National Bank of Everly from 1905 to 1933, a bank signature printing and note cutting device employed at the First National Bank of Mason City for preparing notes for circulation, a vault door from the First National Bank of Iowa City, a spider printing press and an outstanding display of real photo Iowa bank and main street postcards.