Crime Scene and Trauma Cleanup in Garnavillo, IA

Garnavillo is a city in Clayton County in northeastern Iowa, and its motto is 'Gem of the Prairie.'

Garnavillo began as Jacksonville, the town to which the Clayton County seat was moved from Prairie La Porte in 1843.

Jacksonville was renamed Garnavillo on April 15, 1846, because the postal service kept sending its mail to Jacksonville, Illinois; Judge Samuel Murdock, an early resident, proposed the new name after singing the Irish song 'Kate of Garnavilla' at a social gathering, adjusting the lyric slightly to 'Garnavillo,' and the name is derived from Latin words meaning 'beautiful village.'

Garnavillo defended its county-seat status in 1849, beating Guttenberg 279 votes to 245 in a runoff election to remain the county's permanent seat of justice, though the seat later moved to Elkader.

Judge Samuel Murdock, who settled near Garnavillo in the early 1840s, was Clayton County's first lawyer and later became the first judge of Iowa's Tenth Judicial District.

Garnavillo's post office opened in 1846, the year it took its new name.

The town sits on top of the St. Peter sandstone formation, and Garnavillo is the headquarters of the Pattison Sand Company, which has mined that sandstone since 1983 — including silica 'frac sand' proppants — building a fleet of more than 500 rail cars by 2015.

The 2020 census counted 763 people in Garnavillo, living in 315 households — the most residents the town has ever recorded, after growing slowly from just 314 people in 1920.

Garnavillo's public schools belong to the Clayton Ridge Community School District, formed in 2005 by the merger of the Guttenberg and Garnavillo districts.

Garnavillo was the home of Marion Murdoch, the first woman in America to receive the degree of Bachelor of Divinity.