Emergency Biohazard Cleanup Services in Chelsea, IA

Chelsea is a small city in Tama County, Iowa, laid out in 1863 and incorporated in 1878, on a site that began as Otter Creek Station when the railroad arrived in 1861.

One local tradition says Chelsea was named for Chelsea, Massachusetts, by landowner Seneca Breese, while another credits railroad builder John I. Blair with naming it for Chelsea, England.

The entire city sits in the floodplain of the Iowa River and Otter Creek, and its largest floods came in 1918, 1944, 1947, 1960, 1969, 1993 and 2008.

After the 1993 flood swamped about 85 percent of Chelsea's homes, the city council voted in 1994 to relocate the whole town to a hilltop with $7 million in federal funds authorized — but the farmer who owned the hill refused to sell, and the move never happened.

Chelsea flooded again in 2008, and residents once more debated relocating before deciding to stay in the valley.

Chelsea lies on the original route of the Lincoln Highway, America's first coast-to-coast highway, and residents preserved the lamp posts from the old Otter Creek bridge when it was replaced in 2007.

The 2020 census counted 229 people in Chelsea living in 88 households, down from a peak population of 575 in 1930.

Nearly a third of Chelsea's residents — 31.4 percent in the 2020 census — are Hispanic or Latino, giving the small farm town an unusually diverse population for rural Iowa.

Chelsea students attend the South Tama County Community School District, and the town's public library, housed since 1972 in a former bank building shared with city hall, had to relocate after the August 2020 derecho tore part of the roof off the building.