Emergency Crime Scene and Biohazard Cleanup in West Branch, IA

West Branch is the birthplace of Herbert Hoover, the 31st President of the United States and the only president born in Iowa, who was born here on August 10, 1874, in a small two-room cottage.

West Branch was laid out in 1869 by Joseph Steer and incorporated on April 12, 1875.

The town was settled chiefly by Quakers from Ohio, and its name comes from the West Branch Quaker meeting and its location on the west branch of Wapsinonoc Creek.

Before the Civil War, West Branch was a stop on the Underground Railroad, and abolitionist John Brown stayed at the Maxson farm east of town and at the Traveler's Rest inn during the winter of 1856.

The Herbert Hoover National Historic Site, authorized by Congress on August 12, 1965, preserves Hoover's birthplace cottage, his father's reconstructed blacksmith shop, an 1853 schoolhouse, the Quaker meetinghouse and the gravesites of Herbert and Lou Henry Hoover.

The Herbert Hoover Presidential Library and Museum in West Branch was dedicated in 1962 by Hoover himself alongside his friend, former President Harry Truman.

The 2020 census counted 2,509 people in West Branch in 1,034 households and 649 families; the city straddles Cedar and Johnson counties, and its Johnson County portion belongs to the Iowa City metropolitan area.

The West Branch Times has been in continuous publication since 1875, the same year the town incorporated.

West Branch High School plays football at Butch Pedersen Field, nicknamed the 'Little Rose Bowl,' a Works Progress Administration project built by excavating a hillside to create natural seating on three sides.

The town's industrial park hosts a 550,000-square-foot Procter and Gamble distribution center and the wind turbine assembly plant Acciona opened in 2007 as its first in North America.