This week in Algona
Nothing on Algona’s calendar for the next two weeks yet.
About Algona
Algona got its start in 1854 on the East Fork of the Des Moines River, taking a name drawn from an Algonquian phrase about the waters there, and it grew into the county seat of Kossuth, the largest county in Iowa. A Methodist college held classes here for a few years after 1869, and in 1903 the town's own barnstorming baseball club, the Algona Brownies, came home as Western champions. Downtown, people still stop to admire the small brick-and-terra-cotta Henry Adams Building that Louis Sullivan drew in 1913, now the home of the Algona Area Chamber, a few blocks from the 1904 Carnegie library that lives on as an arts center. During World War II the town hosted Camp Algona, and the Nativity scene of 65 half-life-size figures that its German prisoners built in 1945 still opens to visitors every December at the county fairgrounds. Today about 5,500 neighbors fill State Street for Autumnfest, Trunk or Treat, Santa Claus Day and the live greeting card windows of the holiday season.