Biohazard and Crime Scene Remediation in Salem, IA

Salem is one of Iowa's oldest towns, founded in 1835 by Quaker settlers in Henry County.

Quaker Aaron Street is said to have named the town on first seeing the site, declaring that 'our city shall be called Salem, for thus was the city of our fathers.'

Fellow Quaker Isaac Pidgeon brought his family to the area in 1835 as well, and Aaron Street Jr. and Peter Boyer laid out the village in 1839, using a grapevine as a measuring rod because no surveyor's chain was available.

The Salem Monthly Meeting of Friends, opened in 1838, was the first Quaker monthly meeting established west of the Mississippi River.

Sitting only about 20 miles from the slave state of Missouri, Salem became an important depot on the Underground Railroad.

The Henderson Lewelling House on West Main Street, a documented Underground Railroad station, is listed on the National Register of Historic Places and is now the Lewelling Quaker Museum.

In 1847 Henderson Lewelling left Salem by wagon train carrying more than 700 young fruit and nut trees; the surviving trees became the parent stock of the early orchards of the Pacific Northwest.

The Society of Friends founded Whittier College in Salem, an institution unrelated to the California college of the same name, which operated from 1868 to 1910.

Salem Elementary School still operates in town, while older Salem students attend the Mount Pleasant Community School District's middle school and high school in Mount Pleasant.

Lorenzo D. Lewelling, who went on to become governor of Kansas, was born in Salem.