Biohazard and Crime Scene Remediation in Bradgate, IA

Bradgate is a small city in Humboldt County, Iowa, sitting in Avery Township near the banks of the West Fork of the Des Moines River.

Bradgate was platted by the Western Town Lot Company in 1881-1882 on the Chicago and North Western Railway, with the plat filed on March 7, 1882, a post office established that April, and incorporation following on June 20, 1893.

Bradgate was named after Bradgate Park at Newtown Linford in Leicestershire, England — several English families emigrated directly to the Bradgate area — and the Iowa town is still twinned with Newtown Linford today.

Bradgate's official motto is "The town that wouldn't die," adopted in 1976 after a 1950 Life Magazine profile portrayed the little farm town as dying, a slight residents never forgot.

On May 21, 2004, an F2 tornado nearly wiped Bradgate off the map, severely damaging 30 of its 42 homes; remarkably there were no fatalities, and the town's new fire station was the only building left undamaged.

Avery's Hill, just west of Bradgate, was the site of the last battle ever fought between two Native American tribes in Iowa, an 1854 fight between Sioux and Winnebago warriors in which the Sioux leader Inkpaduta reportedly took part.

The Bradgate State Fishing Access sits on the town's southern edge along the West Fork of the Des Moines River, and the 35-mile Three Rivers Bike Trail passes through town on an old railroad grade.

The 2020 census counted just 75 people in Bradgate, in 33 households, down from a peak of 261 residents in 1940.

Bradgate children attend the Gilmore City-Bradgate Community School District, which carries the town's name.