Walnut, Iowa: Iowa's Antique City

Walnut began as a railroad stop. When the Rock Island line came through in eighteen sixty-eight, a depot called Walnut Creek Station sprouted here, and within a decade the population reached one thousand. The town incorporated in eighteen seventy-seven.

For most of its history Walnut was a quiet Pottawattamie County farm town, but in the nineteen seventies something unexpected happened: antique dealers started moving in. The first shop opened in nineteen seventy-eight. By nineteen eighty-two an annual antique show was drawing over three hundred dealers.

In nineteen eighty-seven Governor Terry Branstad made it official, designating Walnut Iowa's Antique City. Today a town of fewer than nine hundred people hosts fifteen antique shops, drawing collectors from across the Midwest to what was once just a whistle stop on the Platte River plain.