Malvern is a city in Mills County, Iowa, United States.

It was one of four communities in the area that came into existence with the completion of the Burlington and Missouri River Railroad on November 18, 1869.

They arrived in September and put up a small 1+1⁄2-story building that served as their home and the community's first store.

The completion of the railroad soon brought a flood of new residents and business enterprises.

White Cloud, a town of perhaps 200 persons and a variety of businesses, was located about where the present Wabash Trace Nature Trail crosses the Nishnabotna River three miles southeast of Malvern.

Several business enterprises and White Cloud residents moved to Malvern.

It soon had a number of factories, including a hog packing plant, an electric generation plant (in 1892) which permitted a municipal water system, and in the early part of the twentieth century, developed a varied poultry industry that at one time furnished employment for up to 200 persons.

Malvern started a school system in 1870, a county fair in 1873, a Chautauqua in 1905, built the town library in 1916 and the present Liberty Memorial Community Building in 1926 When the “good roads” movement came to Iowa, the town was omitted from Highway 34, causing some economic stress.

At the time it also had the Wabash and Tabor & Northern Railroads, which were also having some economic stress.

The town experienced additional stress in the 1950s when much of Iowa's poultry industry moved to Arkansas.

Today Malvern is a rural community with a golf course, swimming pool, new library and Carnegie Conference Center, agricultural businesses and government offices, a bank, physician's offices, Mills County Fair Grounds, the Wabash Trace Nature Trail, and numerous other businesses.

[3] According to the United States Census Bureau, the city has a total area of 1.19 square miles (3.08 km2), all land.

27.5% of all households were made up of individuals, and 11% had someone living alone who was 65 years of age or older.