Biohazard Cleanup Near North Williamsburg Williamsburg, IA

Williamsburg is the largest city in Iowa County, Iowa — although the county seat is Marengo — and Iowa County is one of only seven counties in the United States that share the same name as the state in which they are located.

Williamsburg was laid out in 1856 by Richard Williams, a Welsh immigrant.

When the town petitioned for a post office in 1860, the first postmaster, Homer Paige, named it Stellapolis after his youngest daughter Stella, likely to differentiate the town from nearby Millersburg.

During the 1870s there was an attempt to rename the town Chester, and deeds from that decade often list it as 'Chester, formerly Williamsburg,' but the dispute ended in 1885 when the town incorporated as Williamsburg, a year after the Chicago, Milwaukee and St. Paul Railroad passed through and brought a population boom.

The population of Williamsburg was 3,346 at the 2020 census, up 9.1 percent from 2010.

Williamsburg has about 1,391 households, according to the 2020 census — and despite its size, the Census Bureau classified 100 percent of Williamsburg's residents as living in rural areas in 2020.

Williamsburg is known for Holden's Foundation Seeds, a foundation seed corn company, and Kinze Manufacturing, Inc., a major farm implement manufacturer.

Williamsburg is home to Iowa's first outlet mall: Outlets Williamsburg opened in 1991 as a Tanger Outlet center, and the more than 260,000-square-foot shopping center along Interstate 80 now operates as Outlets & Marketplace Williamsburg.

Aviation pioneer Eugene Ely was born outside Williamsburg.

Williamsburg sits along Interstate 80 in eastern Iowa, between Des Moines and Iowa City.