Emergency Crime Scene and Biohazard Cleanup in Independence, IA

Independence is the county seat of Buchanan County in northeast Iowa, founded on June 15, 1847 near the exact center of the county.

The original Independence town plat was a simple nine-block grid on the east side of the Wapsipinicon River, and the village had fewer than 15 residents when the county seat was transferred there from Quasqueton.

Independence was incorporated in 1864, by which time it was already growing fast - it counted about 1,500 inhabitants by 1859.

The 2020 census counted 6,064 residents in Independence, up from 5,966 in 2010, living in 2,625 households.

The six-story Wapsipinicon Mill, built in 1867 on the river's west bank, generated electricity for Independence from 1915 to 1940 and now serves partly as a museum.

The Buchanan County Courthouse in Independence, built in 1939 in the Moderne style, replaced an original 1857 courthouse that stood on the highest tract of land in the neighborhood.

The Independence Mental Health Institute opened on May 1, 1873 as the State Hospital for the Insane on a 300-acre campus west of town, and it still serves a 20-county area of northeast Iowa today.

At its custodial-era peak in 1946, the Independence state hospital held about 1,800 residents; by 1970, as treatment replaced custodial care, that number had fallen to roughly 300.

In the late 1880s Independence was a nationally famous horse-racing center nicknamed the "Lexington of the North," after local entrepreneur Charles W. Williams' trotting stallions Axtel and Allerton set world records and he built a figure-eight racetrack, hotel, and opera house at Rush Park - a boom that collapsed in the Panic of 1893.

The lobby of Independence's 1934 post office holds a WPA mural, Postman in the Snow, painted by former resident Robert Tabor.