Biohazard and Crime Scene Remediation in Waverly, IA

Waverly is the county seat of Bremer County in northeast Iowa, set along the Cedar River, and is part of the Waterloo-Cedar Falls metropolitan area.

The Waverly area's first permanent residents were Winnebago (Ho-Chunk) people placed there against their will after the Black Hawk War of 1832, before the tribe was removed again beginning in 1848.

Frederick Cretzmeyer, credited as Waverly's first European settler, bought 160 acres and built a log hut on the east side of the Cedar River in 1852, and settler William Patterson Harmon bought most of the townsite from the federal government in 1853 for $1.25 an acre.

Local tradition says Waverly was named after Sir Walter Scott's popular Waverley novels instead of the proposed name Harmonville, and the town was incorporated on April 25, 1859.

Bremer County is thought to be the only Iowa county named for a figure eminent in literature - Governor Hempstead named it in 1850 for Swedish author Fredrika Bremer.

Waverly grew up around Cedar River waterpower, which drove the flour and saw mills of its early decades.

The first school in Waverly opened in a log cabin in 1854, the first Waverly High School graduating class finished in 1875 with just two students, and the public library was established in 1866.

Wartburg College moved to Waverly from Clinton, Iowa in 1856; the Lutheran college, founded in 1852, is named after Germany's Wartburg Castle, and Waverly's sister city is Eisenach, Germany, where the castle stands.

The 2020 census counted 10,394 people in Waverly, up from 9,874 in 2010, in 3,823 households.

In 1993, the municipal utility Waverly Light & Power became the first public power system in the Midwest to own and operate its own wind generation.