Filming locations in Dyersville

Visiting Dyersville: a set-jetting guide. In the gentle farm country of eastern Iowa, a baseball diamond carved into a cornfield has become a byword for chasing a dream. This is the Field of Dreams, the very ballpark built for Phil Alden Robinson's 1989 fantasy drama, where a farmer hears a voice in the corn whisper, 'If you build it, he will come,' and ploughs under his crop to make a field for ghosts.

What makes the trip special is that the field still stands exactly as it was built, white farmhouse and all, looked after rather than torn down once the cameras left. Walking out of the corn and onto the grass, you step straight into the film's quiet, sentimental magic. It is a place that tends to move even people who barely follow baseball, because the story was always about fathers, sons and second chances more than the game.

The site itself is wonderfully simple to visit. The field and the farmhouse are a free visitor attraction, with donations welcomed, open seasonally through the warmer months. You are encouraged to bring a glove and play catch on the diamond, and to walk out into the rows of corn the way the players do, which is the whole point of coming.

Dyersville is a quiet little town a few minutes down the road, worth a look for its towering basilica, and it makes a relaxed half-day stop on a wider drive through the Midwest. There is no crowd to fight and nothing to rush, so come when the corn is high in summer or early autumn, slow right down, and let the field work its old-fashioned spell.