Photo of the Day 399

Scouts Lifting a Flag, Spencer, Iowa, 1997

Photograph by Randy Olson

A photo from Iowa, where these Boy Scouts lifted an American flag at the 1997 Clay County Fair, is an apt tribute on Election Day 2008. The official presidential-nominating process began here exactly 11 months ago with Iowa's first-in-the-nation caucuses. The winners? Democrat Barack Obama and Republican Mike Huckabee.

(Photo shot on assignment for, but not published in, "County Fairs," October 1997, National Geographic magazine)