Crime Scene and Trauma Cleanup in Bancroft, IA

Bancroft is a city in northern Kossuth County, Iowa, about 20 miles south of the Minnesota state line, and it was platted in 1881 when the Western Town Lot Company surveyed the townsite as a railroad and agricultural hub.

Bancroft was named for George Bancroft, the American historian and diplomat who had also served as Secretary of the Navy.

The long-vanished Bancroft County, created in 1851 and abolished in 1857 without ever organizing a government, was named for the same George Bancroft, and its land was folded into Kossuth County, helping make Kossuth the largest county in Iowa.

The 2020 census counted 699 people in Bancroft living in 324 households, down from a peak of 1,103 residents in 1970.

Bancroft has been called 'the garden spot of Iowa' for almost 90 years.

Bancroft is famous across Iowa as a baseball town, and its Bancroft Memorial Park opened in 1948 with a classic wooden grandstand and covered seating for nearly 1,000 fans, an enormous venue for a town of a few hundred people.

Tiny Bancroft produced major league baseball players including Denis Menke, a two-time All-Star infielder, and Joe Hatten, who pitched for Jackie Robinson's Brooklyn Dodgers.

The Bancroft Register newspaper was started by D. A. Ellis in April 1882 and is still in publication today.

Formal schools were already operating in Bancroft by the winter of 1881-82, the town's very first winter.

East of Bancroft, wetlands that resisted drainage efforts became the Union Slough National Wildlife Refuge, preserving a glimpse of what northern Iowa looked like in the 1850s.