Keosauqua, IA

Keosauqua is the Van Buren County seat, set along the Des Moines River in the rolling Southern Iowa Drift Plain. The 2020 census counted 936 residents. Its name comes from the Meskwaki and Sauk name for the river, often translated as 'bend in the river,' a good description of the town's setting. European settlers laid out the community in 1839 after the Black Hawk Purchase, and the river soon made Keosauqua part of southeastern Iowa's travel and trade story. County offices, river hills, and farm roads still converge here.

ATTRC.C. Woodburn / Public domain

The Hotel Manning is the town's signature old landmark, a three-story Steamboat Gothic building tied to the Des Moines River's steamboat era. Just outside town, 1,662-acre Lacey-Keosauqua State Park follows the river through oak-hickory bluffs and valleys; Iowa dedicated it in 1920 as its second state park, and Civilian Conservation Corps structures remain part of the park. Keosauqua also hosts an annual Fall Festival and sends students into the Van Buren County Community School District. It is a county seat with a river town's bones: courthouse work in town, wooded bluffs beyond it, and history running along the water.