Biohazard Cleanup Near North Decorah Decorah, IA

Decorah is the county seat and largest city of Winneshiek County, with a population of 7,587 at the 2020 census, and it was incorporated on June 30, 1857.

The first European-American settlers, the Day family, arrived in June 1849, and the settlement was named Decorah after Waukon Decorah, a Ho-Chunk leader who had allied with the United States in the Black Hawk War of 1832.

Decorah is home to Luther College, a private liberal arts college founded by Norwegian immigrants in 1861, which moved to Decorah in 1862 and enrolls roughly 1,400 undergraduates.

Decorah is known for its Norwegian-American heritage and hosts the Vesterheim Norwegian-American Museum, the largest and most comprehensive museum in the United States devoted to a single immigrant group.

Every July since 1967, Decorah has hosted Nordic Fest, a celebration of Norwegian culture that grew out of Luther College's Norwegian Constitution Day celebrations.

Decorah sits in Iowa's Driftless Area along the Upper Iowa River, where limestone bluffs, cold-water trout streams, Dunning's Spring, and the Decorah Ice Cave - a rare algific talus slope cave - draw visitors year-round.

Just south of town, the Chuck Gipp Decorah Fish Hatchery raises about 130,000 catchable-size trout a year beside Siewers Spring, the second largest natural spring in Iowa.

Decorah became internet-famous for the Decorah eagles - a pair of bald eagles nesting near the fish hatchery whose lives have been broadcast worldwide by the Raptor Resource Project's nest camera.

The Trout Run Trail is an 11-mile paved loop that circles the entire city, passing the fish hatchery, limestone bluffs, and the Oneota Valley.

North of Decorah, the 890-acre Heritage Farm serves as headquarters of Seed Savers Exchange, one of the world's leading organizations for preserving heirloom seeds.