Walnut, IA

Walnut is a Pottawattamie County city on Interstate 80, with 747 residents in the 2020 census. It was incorporated in 1877, and its brick streets and old storefronts now support the town's title, Iowa's Antique City. Antique shops line the visitors' route through town, while the Walnut Creek Historical Society and Museum adds a local place to sort through the area's objects, photographs, and family history.

ATTRBill Whittaker ( talk ) / CC BY-SA 3.0

The surrounding landscape has a newer signature. More than a hundred wind turbines stand around Walnut, making the city a regional center for wind-generated electricity and giving the approach across the open country a distinctly modern skyline. School lines changed in 2016, when the Walnut district joined AHST to form AHSTW Community Schools; students now attend classes in Avoca. I-80 brings travelers through, the antique trade gives them a reason to turn off, and the turbines make the horizon part of the town's identity. Walnut is a small western Iowa city where brick streets, collected objects, school consolidation, and wind power sit side by side.