Next CF Bracket Best Iowa Towns/Cities Nomination Thread
- Thread starter CycloneRulzzz
- Start date
Centerville has some beautiful old houses and a nice square. Get outside of that and it's kind of a dump, but a neat old town.
But that would include some Polk County towns that might not give smaller ones a chance. I could up it to 25,000 if people want it.
Ida Grove isn't nearly as nice as it used to be. There is a significant wage gap in that town and it's kind of the haves and the have nots.
Drove through town for the first time in decades.
Walked through my old school. Alone. The place was just open.
The town looked almost identical to how I remembered it
That's not a bad thing.
This is 100% true. Land values and home values are much higher here.
When I was a kid, it was the tail end of the farm crisis and there were are lot of run down farms, and the small towns had a lot of decrepit/abandoned buildings. Most of those have been bulldozed or repurposed, and while there's less stuff, the overall aesthetic and general wealth is a lot higher than it was back then.
I was joking about Bolan. They did have the entire town on Letterman in 1989 though. So it has that going for it.
Waukon's a nice town, but this isn't true at all.
I'm not putting it down at all, I could live there (I'm in the Cresco area so it's very similar) but Decorah has a really unusual amount of amenities for a town of 8,000 people that are a direct result of the presence of Luther College and being located directly on the Upper Iowa. Neither of those things apply to Waukon.
If someone wanted to live in the Iowa Driftless and have cheaper COL and still have pretty good access to Decorah's amenities (and like you said, without the self-importance than can get eye-rolling at times), I would strongly recommend living in a town like Waukon (or Calmar, Cresco, etc).
But Decorah's a true regional hub + college town and it has a lot of things to offer that other communities don’t have.
Last edited:
Land values and the impact of that is probably the biggest quantifiable factor. Though a lot of small towns have been slowly declining, it's a pretty slow decline that has gone with shrinking towns and land ownership continuing to consolidate. But it was starting from a much better place. There's been sort of a mini-urbanization where people from the small towns that stay in the rural regions concentrate to the regional hubs, which has helped them maintain population and amenities fairly well.
I really think there is some level of cultural difference. It was a long time ago (early 2000s) but growing up in rural NW Iowa, then out of college working in Marion Co. but interacting with lots of people from like the Wayne and Appanoose county areas, I couldn't believe how redneck it was down in that bottom two tiers of counties. This coming from a farm kid that liked fishing and hunting, and had 50 kids in his HS class. It sounded like people were talking in southern accents to me.
Le Mars.... i mean it's the ice cream capital of the world.
Orange City is also a really, really nice town.
Orange City is also a really, really nice town.
Probably should count as an auto-qualifier for that, although I can't vouch for the town directly.
I don't have as much connection to specific places in Iowa anymore, so I'm not much of a source. At one time, Storm Lake probably would be on the list, not sure if it's worthy now or not. I'm sure others can assess.
Fair enough, can't argue too much. Decorah has more to do than most towns that size. If I'm visiting somewhere for a long weekend, Decorah is better than most. I appreciate it more now as an adult with a little disposable time and income. I guess maybe I'm working on overcoming childhood biases, it's just not a town I could actually live in.
Some very nice people in Centerville, historic square, but there amount of dirt balls is crazy for a town that size. One of the nicer towns in the southern tier of county seats.
There's a pretty good book about the history of Centerville... Centerville:A Mid-American Saga. Some very interesting history in that town and in that part of the state.
Very true, and you do not notice the southern twang until you get away from that region for a year or two. I grew up in the area of the state you mentioned, and when we moved to Sac Co. the kids would ask me to say those funny words? I would ask what are you talking about, and just common words sounded like I was from the Southern US not southern Iowa. When I would travel home, I also began to notice the difference myself. The people for some reason speak in a southern twang.
Pella looks nice, but it sucks. But they do have a Chic Fil A. So they have that going for them.
Southern Iowa was settled by a lot of people from Missouri, Tennessee, Kentucky and Virginia.
