The Woolen Mill and the Seven Villages

The Amana Woolen Mill dates to the communal era and is often described as one of the oldest woolen mills in the United States. When the Community of True Inspiration moved to Iowa, they needed to produce their own cloth. Wool was practical for the Iowa climate, and the mill became a core industrial enterprise of the communal society.

For generations it produced the plain, durable cloth the community members wore: dark colors, no ornamentation, practical cut. Dress was a matter of humility. The Amana Society did not want its members distinguished by fashion.

After the Great Change the mill continued as part of the society's commercial enterprises, and its woolen products became a draw for tourists. The seven villages themselves are the other surviving artifact of the communal era. They were designated a National Historic Landmark in nineteen sixty-five, and more than four hundred fifty communal-era buildings remain.

The villages are: Amana, East Amana, High Amana, Middle Amana, South Amana, West Amana, and Homestead. Homestead is the exception: the community purchased it, an existing village with a railroad station, rather than building it from scratch. All seven remain inhabited today, their thick sandstone walls and low-pitched rooflines exactly as the German Pietists built them, in a landscape they chose for its isolation and kept for its history.