New London, IA

New London is a Henry County city of 1,910 people at the 2020 census, in the farm country around Mount Pleasant. The settlement began as Dover after Abraham C. Dover built the first log cabin here in 1833 or 1834; by the late 1830s it had a village, a public square, and children in school. The name later became New London, and the square has remained the town's organizing point. Roads connecting it to Mount Pleasant and the surrounding county keep that older center tied to the wider southeast Iowa map.

Education is unusually visible in New London's local story. The first school met in a Methodist log cabin in 1839, a one-room school followed in 1844, and an academy opened on the public square in 1872 before returning to public use. The present New London Community School District carries that long thread through elementary, middle, and high school, with the football complex, track, library, city office, fire department, and park filling in the current map. New London feels like a town that has kept its square and school at the center while the farm roads spread out around them.