Lake City, IA

Lake City is a Calhoun County city built around a square and a railroad story. The community took its name from Lake Creek, and its early growth accelerated after the Chicago and Northwestern Railroad arrived in 1881. The line put Lake City on the route between Des Moines and Sioux City and helped turn a courthouse settlement into a regional farm-town stop. The lake itself is gone—the pond east of town was drained—but the old joke “Everything but a Lake” still fits the town’s signboard and local shorthand.

ATTRImage taken by Joe Elliott, HAER Photographer / Public domain

The square remains the civic hinge, with locally owned businesses, the Capri Theatre, city offices, and community events close together. South Central Calhoun High School is in Lake City, and Dobson Pipe Organ Builders has designed and restored instruments from its Illinois Street shop since 1974. The city also keeps an aquatic center, parks, a library, and a community building in the ordinary service mix. Lake City’s story is agricultural and small-town, but the railroad past and the organ shop give this Calhoun County place a couple of details you would not confuse with another Iowa town.