Moravia, IA

Moravia is an Appanoose County city in southern Iowa with a name tied to the Moravian families who left Salem, North Carolina, in 1849 to start a western colony. The town also sits along the Mormon Trail routes that crossed Appanoose County, so two migration stories run through the same county roads: a religious community forming a town and westbound travelers passing through Iowa. The 2020 census counted 637 residents.

Today Moravia is a small city reached by county roads from Centerville and the surrounding coal-country towns. Appanoose County grew around coal mining during the first third of the twentieth century, and the county’s trail markers still identify Moravia and nearby camps along the old routes. The markers remain visible in the county today. The city’s place in that trail network gives its map a longer reach than its size suggests. Moravia is a place where the name points east to a European religious tradition, while the road network points west through Iowa’s nineteenth-century migration landscape.