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Cities Near Centerville, IA
Local city information for Centerville, IA
Centerville is a city in and the county seat of Appanoose County, Iowa, United States. The population was 5,924 at the 2000 census. After the turn of the 20th century Centerville had a booming coal mining industry that attracted many European immigrants. The city today remains the home of many Swedish-Americans, Italian-Americans, Croatian-Americans, Albanian-Americans and others descended from immigrants who worked in the mines.
Founded in 1846 by Jonathon Stratton under the name of Chaldea, the city was planned around a unique two-block long city square. The name was later changed to Centerville and incorporated in 1855.
Centerville experienced its peak population in the early 1900s as the popularity of coal peaked. After that point, as coal usage dwindled, the coal industry that had been the community's life blood collapsed. In the 1950s and 1960s a civic movement to promote new industries began. This effort culminated in the building of Rathbun Dam, near the city of Rathbun, Iowa, forming Rathbun Lake, known as "Iowa's Ocean", that was dedicated on July 31, 1971 by President Richard M. Nixon.
Today the city is supported by several small industrial plants, mostly in the area of plastic products. In June 2006 the Centerville Daily Iowegian reported that the city's largest employer, a Rubbermaid plant, that opened in Centerville in 1985, would shut down in September 2006 displacing 500 workers. In 2007, the former Rubbermaid building was purchased by Lee Container Corp. of Homerville, Georgia, and is planned to be re-opened in 2008. Lee Container is a manufacturer of H.D.P.E. blow molded containers for Crop Protection, Lubricants, Pet Care, Beverage, Specialty and Household Products. The city (and county) is also served by several other manufacturing operations, including Curwood, a Bemis Company, a major supplier of flexible packaging and pressure sensitive materials used by leading food, consumer products, manufacturing, and other companies worldwide. The Barker Company, of Keosauqua, Iowa that manufactures many lines of refrigerated, non-refrigerated and hot display cases for the supermarket, convenience store and food service industries located a manufacturing plant in Centerville in 1998.
As county seat, Centerville had a thriving retail sector, serving people from smaller communities and farms in the area as well as local residents. Many shops were located around the Courthouse Square Historic District, which has hundreds of parking spaces between the shops' sidewalks and the courthouse lawn--in effect, six-lane wide streeting around the Appanoose County Courthouse provides four lanes of public parking. In the latter decades of the 20th century, Centerville, like many other small American communities, experienced a change in its retail economy as many long-established locally owned shops closed, due in large part to loss of business to large nationally owned retailers. Many of the former stores have been replaced by specialty gift shops and antique stores, catering to tourists as well as locals.
In 1999, the Lake Center Mall was destroyed by an act of arson. The entire site sat unoccupied until a cineplex and a Pizza Ranch was built there in the early 2000s.
In 1984, the Appanoose County Community Railroad was formed out of discarded pieces of the Wabash and Rock Island lines to maintain a rail link to the outside world. Forming the railroad helped to bring Rubbermaid to the city.
Since the 1990s, Centerville has focused on quality-of-life issues in an attempt to attract and keep young families in the area. A new emphasis on the arts, culture and local history has emerged, culminating in the Townscape project to beautify the Courthouse Square Historic District.
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