Walcott, Iowa

Walcott (/ˈwɔlkɔt/ WAWL-cawt, sometimes locally [ˈwɔlkət]) is a city in Muscatine and Scott counties in the U.S. state of Iowa.

Most of Walcott is part of the Davenport–Moline–Rock Island, IA-IL Metropolitan Statistical Area, but the Muscatine County portion of the city is considered part of the Muscatine Micropolitan Statistical Area.

The first passenger train route west of the Mississippi River began service in 1855 and helped Walcott grow.

William Walcott, who was a director of Chicago and Rock Island Railroad, donated $500 in 1855 for the construction of a school building, with the stipulation that the fledgling town along the railroad tracks near Davenport be named after him.

The Kaskaskias were later driven out of the Quad Cities area by the renegade Meskwaki tribe.

This tribe, a splinter of the Canadian Iroquois, was America's largest Indian nation.

In 1857, much of the Walcott land was sold for as low as 75 cents an acre, enabling many German and Scotch-Irish immigrants to settle in the area.

Many of the Scotch-Irish worked for the railroad builders and settled on the farmland south and west of the town.

While they contributed much to the early development of Walcott, circa 1871 they began to move farther west.

By 1910, nearly 90 percent of the farmland in Scott County was owned by German immigrants or their descendants.

As early as 1897, the people of Walcott banded together to provide an organized way of fighting the terror and destructiveness of fire.

In those early days, the department consisted of a small number of volunteer firemen and two hand-pulled hose carts.

On April 1, 1904, the Farmers Savings Bank began business with at capital stock of $25,000.

In 1911, Walcott was declared the richest town in the US in consideration of the bank deposits for its population of 300, according to Dunn & Co. in the Bankers' Journal of New York.

Additional ground was annexed in 1973 to include the Interstate 80 interchange area and the French and Hecht Building, which currently houses FirstCo Inc.

In 1997, Walcott joined in a sister city partnership with Bredenbek, Germany.

The Iowa 80 Truck Stop main building.
Walcott water tower
Walcott City Hall
Map of Iowa highlighting Muscatine County
Map of Iowa highlighting Scott County