Onawa: Named for Hiawatha's Bride

Onawa takes its name from a character in Henry Wadsworth Longfellow's eighteen fifty-five poem The Song of Hiawatha, where Onawa is the bride of the hero. The town was platted in eighteen fifty-seven in the Missouri River bottoms and chose the poetic name to give the new settlement a romantic air.

It won the county seat from Ashton the following year. When the railroad arrived in eighteen sixty-seven, the town physically relocated to meet it.

Monona County's name is perhaps named for a Native American word meaning beautiful valley, making this a rare corner of Iowa with two Longfellow-era poetic place names at once.