Walcott, IA

Walcott is a city of 1,551 people at the 2020 census, split between Scott and Muscatine Counties near the Davenport area. The townsite was platted in 1854, the first passenger train west of the Mississippi reached it in 1855, and the city incorporated in 1894. Railroad director William Walcott donated $500 for a school building on the condition that the settlement carry his name. German and Scotch-Irish immigrants later filled the surrounding farm country, leaving Walcott with both a rail-town grid and a broad agricultural edge.

ATTRKepper66 / CC BY-SA 3.0

Interstate 80 changed the scale of the place. The Iowa 80 Truckstop opened at the Walcott interchange in 1964 and grew into the world's largest truck stop, with restaurants, fuel, truck service, showers, a trucking museum, and more than 900 parking spaces. The Walcott Truckers Jamboree began in 1979 with truck displays, a beauty contest, food, and entertainment, and the event still puts the city on a national trucking calendar. City hall, local schools, the Walcott Historical Society, and a sister-city relationship with Bredenbek, Germany, fill in the smaller-town side of the same map.