Tama, IA

Tama is a city of 3,130 in central Iowa, two miles south of Toledo, the Tama County seat—close enough that the two communities have nearly grown together. Tama began with the railroad in 1862, when the Cedar Rapids and Missouri line placed its station away from Toledo. The settlement was first called Iuka, then Tama City and finally Tama; the name is tied in local accounts to Meskwaki leader Taimah, though the town has carried more than one explanation over the years.

The town’s signature object is the 1915 Lincoln Highway Bridge over the Iowa River, one of the rare original Lincoln Highway structures still standing, with the road name cast into its concrete side panels. The bridge sits in a landscape shaped by the Meskwaki Nation, whose people returned to Iowa after forced removal and began buying land in Tama County in the 1850s and 1860s; the Meskwaki Settlement remains nearby. U.S. 30 and the old Lincoln Highway keep the town in the path of cross-Iowa travel, while South Tama County schools and local trails connect the everyday present to that older railroad-and-road story. Tama is small, but it has a lot of history packed into the space between two neighboring towns.