Eddyville is a city in Mahaska, Monroe, and Wapello counties in the U.S. state of Iowa.

[3] Circa 1839,[4][5] a Sauk village was established on this site following the end of the Black Hawk War.

[7][8] In 1840 or 1841, before Iowa became a state, Jabish P. Eddy was permitted to open a trading post in Hard Fish's village.

[5] It was a place for trade with the Indians and for pioneers to provision and ford the Des Moines River.

[5] J.P. Eddy became the Indian agent for the area and set aside some of his land for the eponymously named town.

Local oral history has it that a two-story house that once stood at the northwest corner of Seventh and Vance Streets served as a stop on the Underground Railroad until the Civil War made that unnecessary.

Several 'coal banks' were in operation in 1857, including the Roberts Mine, directly across the Des Moines River from town.

The Rock Island depot with a warehouse was between Walnut and Mill Streets, on the west side of the line.

In the late 1950s, the school bus barn burned and the department saved two International Metro buses.

Klein, owner of the furniture store and funeral home, decided to stop running ambulance calls and donated some of his equipment to the fire department for the rescue truck.

The department worked hard with training, fund raising and obtaining equipment, such that when the state became interested in improving ambulance services, they looked at Eddyville's well-developed program as a model.

For many years, the library, jail and upstairs meeting room and city hall, with adjacent fire station, were located at the corner of Walnut and First (or Front) Streets.

In the mid-1960s, the city, with a grant and a low-interest loan from the Farmers Home Administration, constructed a sanitary sewer system, with lagoon treatment.

The Des Moines River has been a fact of life for the community throughout its history, with major flooding in 1947, 1965 and more recently.

The road to Albia originally crossed the river on a one-lane steel superstructure bridge from the west end of Walnut Street.

Demand for electricity continued to grow, Iowa Southern had built bigger, newer plants at Chillicothe and Burlington, and the Bridgeport station was obsolete.

Cargill had a new process that worked in the laboratory, but they needed a cheap source of large amounts of steam to see if it worked in practice, so they purchased the Bridgeport Station for this purpose, and the Cargill plant was constructed, and continues to grow.

As a result of a petition drive, citizens agreed to pay 25 cents a month extra to call Ottumwa, Oskaloosa and Albia without long-distance tolls.

According to the United States Census Bureau, the city has a total area of 1.18 square miles (3.06 km2), all land.

Across the street, Ajinomoto North America, inc. has a plant that turns the glucose into mono-sodium glutamate.

A tiny park at the foot of Walnut Street has a bench that looks out on the Des Moines River.

It includes a covered band stand, a statue of a Union soldier, and a log cabin.