Blood, Trauma, and Biohazard Cleanup in Centerville, IA

Centerville is the county seat of Appanoose County in southern Iowa, just north of the Missouri state line.

Centerville was founded in 1846 by surveyor Jonathon Stratton under the name "Chaldea" and was platted around an unusually large two-block-long town square.

The town was renamed Senterville for Tennessee politician William Tandy Senter, but when incorporation papers were filed in 1855 a clerk "corrected" the name to Centerville, and the city was formally incorporated on January 23, 1857.

Centerville is home to the largest town square in Iowa, billed locally as the "world's largest town square," with the 1903 Appanoose County Courthouse at its center and more than 100 buildings in the surrounding Courthouse Square Historic District listed on the National Register of Historic Places.

Centerville's first coal mine opened in 1868, and its booming coal industry drew immigrant miners from Sweden, Italy, Croatia, and Albania, whose descendants still shape the city's character today.

Centerville's population peaked in the early 1900s coal era and has declined since; the 2020 census counted 5,412 residents, down from 5,924 in 2000.

Centerville has about 2,474 households according to Census Bureau QuickFacts, with an average of just 2.09 people per household.

Every late September since 1949, Centerville celebrates Pancake Day, when local merchants serve free pancakes on the square — roughly 20,000 pancakes a year — and in 2021 the town set a Guinness World Record for the most pancakes served in a single setting.

Centerville hosts a campus of Indian Hills Community College, which began in 1930 as Centerville Junior College.

The city's Drake Public Library was built by Francis Drake, a Civil War general who served as governor of Iowa from 1896 to 1898.