Palo, IA

Palo is a Linn County city of 1,407 residents in the 2020 census, part of the Cedar Rapids metro and set between the Cedar River and Pleasant Creek State Recreation Area. The river forms Palo's entire eastern border, giving the city a continuous natural edge and a history of flood risk. The town's name came from a regional post office named after the 1846 Battle of Palo Alto, a small historical detail that gives the Spanish-sounding name its Iowa connection. Pleasant Creek - known locally as Palo Lake - puts a 1,927-acre recreation area at the edge of town, with a 410-acre lake, trails, hunting grounds, swimming beach, boat ramps, and camping.

Palo is in the Cedar Rapids Community School District, so its local connections run outward to a metro school system and inward to the river-and-lake landscape. Palo's map is water in both directions: a river that has shaped the city's edge and a state recreation area that makes the lake part of town's daily orientation.