Crime Scene & Biohazard Cleanup Near Downtown Iola Iola, KS

Iola is the county seat of Allen County in southeast Kansas, situated along the Neosho River at the confluence of Elm Creek, with a population of 5,396 in the 2020 census.

Iola was founded on January 1, 1859, when citizens met at the Deer Creek schoolhouse to organize a town company, and it was named in honor of Iola Colborn, the wife of town founder Josiah Colborn.

Dissatisfied with the county seat being at Humboldt, Iola's founders pushed their new town from the start, and Iola became the Allen County seat in 1865 before being chartered as a city in 1870.

Iola is known for having one of the largest downtown town squares in the United States, a centerpiece of the roughly 4.8-square-mile city.

Iola's rapid growth dates from the discovery of natural gas there on Christmas Day 1893 — the population jumped from 1,706 in 1890 to 5,791 in 1900 and peaked above 9,000 by 1910.

Allen Community College is located in Iola; it was established in 1923 as Iola Junior College, holding its first classes with 93 students on the third floor of Iola High School, and became a countywide community college in 1965 before opening its 90-acre campus on Iola's northern edge in 1970.

Iola's public schools are part of Unified School District 257, which serves grades K–12 across six campuses, including Iola High School.

The Bowlus Fine Arts Center gives Iola a performing-arts venue that is unusual for a city of its size.

The first building erected after Iola was surveyed in 1859 was a dwelling completed that June by J. F. Colborn, whose family became the town's first settlers.

Allen County around Iola is crisscrossed by a network of trails, including rails-to-trails paths, that are a noted recreational draw in southeast Kansas.