Marengo, Iowa: Gateway to the Amana Colonies

Marengo was selected as the Iowa County seat in August of eighteen forty-five, its name drawn from the plains of Marengo in northern Italy where Napoleon defeated Austrian forces in eighteen hundred. It is the seat of Iowa County, one of the oldest counties in the state, organized in eighteen forty-five. Marengo sits a few miles from one of the most distinctive cultural landscapes in the Midwest: the Amana Colonies, seven villages established in eighteen fifty-five by German immigrants of the Community of True Inspiration who had been seeking religious freedom since leaving their home country. The colonies were designated a National Historic Landmark and remain a working example of communal German-American heritage, within easy reach of Route Six.