Emergency Biohazard Cleanup Services in Clear Lake, IA

Clear Lake is a resort city in Cerro Gordo County on the eastern shore of the natural lake it is named for, along Interstate 35 in north-central Iowa.

The lake itself is a spring-fed natural body of water of about 3,684 acres; the country around it was a summer home of the Dakota and Winnebago peoples, and Nathan Boone, son of Daniel Boone, mapped the lake during an 1832 survey.

The first settlers, Joseph Hewitt and James Dickirson, brought their families to the lake's east shore in 1851, and by 1855 the settlement had its first school, a steam sawmill and a hotel.

The city of Clear Lake was incorporated on May 26, 1871.

The 2020 census counted 7,687 people in Clear Lake in 3,586 households; reflecting its resort character, nearly a quarter of its 4,749 housing units stood vacant and the median age was 49.1 years.

The Surf Ballroom in Clear Lake — a National Historic Landmark whose current building opened in 1948 after the original ballroom burned the year before — still hosts concerts and dances.

On February 2, 1959, Buddy Holly, Ritchie Valens and J. P. 'The Big Bopper' Richardson played their final concert at the Surf Ballroom during the Winter Dance Party tour.

In the early hours of February 3, 1959, the small plane carrying the three musicians crashed in a cornfield north of Clear Lake shortly after takeoff, killing them and pilot Roger Peterson — the tragedy Don McLean later immortalized as 'The Day the Music Died' in his song 'American Pie.'

Clear Lake honors the musicians each February by re-staging the Winter Dance Party at the Surf, a street by the ballroom was renamed Buddy Holly Place in 1988, and a guitar-shaped memorial marks the crash site.

Visitors can cruise the lake aboard the Lady of the Lake, a sternwheeler ferry with an enclosed lower deck and an open upper deck.