Emergency Biohazard Cleanup Near Utopia Park Fairfield, IA

Fairfield became the county seat of Jefferson County in 1839, the year the county was created, when the new town had only 110 residents.

Settler Nancy Bonnifield suggested the name Fairfield for the 'fair fields' of the area — which, author Susan Welty notes, was also a play on her own name, 'bonny field.'

Fairfield hosted the first and second Iowa State Fairs; the first fair, held October 25–27, 1854, drew an estimated 7,000 to 10,000 visitors and cost about $320 to stage.

Fairfield's public library, established in 1853, received a grant arranged with Andrew Carnegie in 1892 and completed in 1893 the first Carnegie library west of the Mississippi River — it became the prototype model for some 2,700 Carnegie libraries worldwide.

Fairfield is one of the few cities in America to have had two Carnegie libraries, after Parsons College received a grant for a second one.

Fairfield was a stop on the Underground Railroad before the Civil War, and more than 1,600 Jefferson County residents went on to serve in the Union Army.

Parsons College, founded in Fairfield in 1875, closed in 1973 — and its campus was bought by Maharishi Mahesh Yogi, whose Maharishi International University opened there in 1974.

Thanks to the university, Fairfield is known as an international center for Transcendental Meditation, famous for the twin Golden Domes on the Maharishi International University campus where practitioners gather to meditate.

Fairfield had 9,416 residents in the 2020 census, in 4,275 households, and was formally incorporated on May 14, 1875.

Despite its small size, Fairfield has a noted entrepreneurial streak — community members have founded more than 400 businesses, many in software, manufacturing and finance, earning it a past description by Iowa's governor as 'one of the state's economic superstars.'