Unattended Death and Biohazard Cleanup in Glenwood, IA

Glenwood is the largest city in and the county seat of Mills County, Iowa, tucked into a hollow of the Loess Hills on the east side of the Missouri River.

Glenwood was established by Mormon settlers in 1848 as Coonsville, named for Dr. Liberius Coons, one of the first arrivals.

Coonsville prospered during the California Gold Rush thanks to the grain mill on Keg Creek, and it became the Mills County seat in 1851.

After most of the Mormons left for Utah, the town was renamed Glenwood in 1852 for a Presbyterian minister named Glenn Wood.

The Burlington and Missouri River Railroad was completed through Glenwood in 1869.

In the late 19th century, Glenwood was widely known as Iowa's center of fruit production, particularly of apples, and it hosted an annual Apple Carnival.

Evangelist and former professional baseball player Billy Sunday lived as a boy at the Iowa Veterans' Orphans Home in Glenwood.

In 1876 the orphans' home campus at Glenwood became the Iowa Asylum for Feeble-Minded Children — the first institution of its kind west of the Mississippi River — and today the site operates as the Glenwood Resource Center.

After World War II, Glenwood became a center of meatpacking, and in the early 1950s it had one of the largest kosher packinghouses in America, shipping most of its product to New York and the East Coast.

The 2020 census counted 5,073 people in Glenwood living in 1,918 households.