Emergency Crime Scene and Biohazard Cleanup in Fonda, IA

Fonda is a city in Pocahontas County in northwest Iowa, spread across about one square mile at the western edge of the Des Moines Lobe, the most recently glaciated part of the state.

Fonda was originally called Marvin, but because the name was too similar to Manson, Iowa, and mail kept getting mixed up, town officials renamed it Fonda in 1874.

The name Fonda was picked by two mail messengers, A. O. Garlock and George Fairburn, partly because the nearest other town with the name was far-off Fonda, New York.

Fonda boomed and busted dramatically in its first decades of record: the census counted 1,684 residents in 1880, then just 625 in 1890.

The 2020 census counted 636 people in Fonda, living in 248 households, a near-complete leveling off after a long slide from 863 residents in 1980.

Fonda is strikingly diverse for a small Iowa farm town: in the 2020 census nearly one in five residents was Hispanic or Latino, and about 3.6% were Native Hawaiian or Pacific Islander.

Four miles northwest of Fonda, the Sunken Grove Wildlife Management Area and the adjoining Leo Shimon area preserve 1,148 acres of undrained prairie-pothole wetlands, forest, and prairie that draw large populations of migrating birds.

Big Cedar Creek flows past the west end of Fonda on its way to the Raccoon River, part of the watershed that supplies much of the drinking water for Des Moines, 135 miles away.

Fonda students attend the Newell-Fonda Community School District and Newell-Fonda High School in nearby Newell; Fonda's own district consolidated into Newell-Fonda on July 1, 1993.

Fonda was the birthplace of Ruth Stafford Peale (1906–2008), who co-founded Guideposts magazine with her husband, Norman Vincent Peale.