Bremer County, IA

Settlement & growth (pre-1960)

Before European settlement, the area that is now Bremer County was part of the homeland of the Meskwaki (Fox) and Dakota Sioux nations, who used the Cedar River and Wapsipinicon River valleys for seasonal hunting and fishing. The first Euro-American settlers arrived in the 1840s, following the Black Hawk Purchase of 1832 and subsequent treaties that opened eastern Iowa to white settlement. These early pioneers were primarily Yankees from New England and upstate New York, drawn by the promise of fertile, rolling prairie land priced at $1.25 per acre under the Preemption Act of 1841. They founded the county seat of Waverly in 1852, naming it after Sir Walter Scott’s novels, and established the first farms along the Cedar River.

The defining demographic wave came between 1850 and 1880, when German immigrants—many from the regions of Hanover, Westphalia, and Pomerania—flooded into Bremer County. They were attracted by railroad land grants from the Illinois Central and the Burlington, Cedar Rapids & Northern Railway, which opened the county’s rich soil to commercial grain farming. These Germans settled heavily in the northern and eastern townships, founding the towns of Sumner (1874) and Tripoli (1875) as agricultural service centers. German became the dominant language in many rural schools and churches well into the 1890s, and Lutheran and Catholic congregations—like St. John’s Lutheran in Waverly and St. Joseph’s Catholic in Sumner—remain pillars of community life today.

A smaller but significant wave of Norwegian and Danish immigrants arrived in the 1870s and 1880s, clustering in the western part of the county around the town of Readlyn and the unincorporated settlement of Denver. These Scandinavians brought dairy farming and cooperative grain-elevator traditions that still influence the local agricultural economy. By 1900, Bremer County’s population had reached 16,000, with nearly all residents being of German or Scandinavian descent. The county’s growth slowed sharply after World War I, as the children of these farming families began leaving for cities like Waterloo and Cedar Falls, and the population plateaued at around 20,000 for most of the 20th century.

Modern era (post-1965)

The 1965 Hart-Cellar Act, which dramatically reshaped U.S. immigration, had almost no effect on Bremer County. Unlike Iowa’s urban centers—Des Moines, Iowa City, or Waterloo—which saw significant growth in Hispanic and Asian populations after 1970, Bremer County remained overwhelmingly white. The foreign-born population today stands at just 0.4%, compared to 5.6% statewide. The small Hispanic community (2.0% of the county) is concentrated in Waverly and Sumner, where a handful of families work in meatpacking and food processing at plants like the Tyson Foods facility in nearby Waterloo. The East/Southeast Asian population (1.0%) is almost entirely tied to Wartburg College in Waverly, which recruits international students from South Korea, Vietnam, and Japan; most leave after graduation.

Domestic migration has been the more significant force since 1970. The county has experienced a slow but steady outflow of young adults to the Waterloo-Cedar Falls metropolitan area and to Des Moines, offset by some in-migration of retirees and remote workers drawn to the low cost of living and rural quiet. Suburbanization has been minimal: Waverly, the largest town with about 10,000 residents, has expanded modestly with new housing developments along Highway 3, but the county lacks the exurban sprawl seen in counties closer to Des Moines. The Black population (1.1%) is tiny and scattered, with no distinct enclave; most Black residents are military families stationed at the nearby Waterloo Air National Guard base or professionals at Wartburg College.