Crime Scene and Trauma Cleanup in Rippey, IA

Rippey is a city in Greene County in west-central Iowa — and the present town is actually the second Rippey: the original village was platted in 1855 about two and a half miles west, and today only its pioneer cemetery, known as Old Rippey, remains.

Old Rippey was home to Greene County's first school, and in 1862 thirty-two of its students enlisted together in the Civil War alongside their teacher, Azor Mills — a group remembered as the 'schoolboy soldiers,' ten of whom died in the war.

The present-day Rippey was laid out in June 1870 on the Des Moines Valley Railroad, took the older village's name, and was incorporated on April 14, 1896.

In the late 1800s and early 1900s, Rippey and nearby Angus were the centers of coal mining in Greene County, with the Keystone Coal Company working mines south of Rippey — one with a 125-foot shaft near the railroad station — into the 20th century.

The 2020 census counted 220 people in Rippey, living in 103 households and 61 families.

Rippey's population peaked at 421 in the 1940 census, nearly double its 2020 count.

Just outside Rippey stands the 50-megawatt Rippey wind farm, built in 2012 with 20 Nordex turbines mounted on towers 100 meters tall.

Rippey is the destination of BRR, the Bicycle Ride to Rippey — a 24-mile ride from Perry billed as the 'Coldest Day of the Year Bike Ride,' held on the first Saturday of February since the late 1970s and drawing more than 2,000 riders in 2017.

Area residents voted in 1919 to build the Rippey Consolidated School, which opened in 1921; the school was demolished in 2014 and replaced by a park and monument, and Rippey students now attend Greene County schools in Jefferson, the county seat.