This week in Cedar Falls
About Cedar Falls
Cedar Falls began in 1845 as Sturgis Falls, a few cabins beside the rapids of the Cedar River, and within three years the Overman family had put that rushing water to work turning a sawmill, with a gristmill soon after. The river and the railroads kept the town busy for decades, and by the 1890s a local historian counted more than 60 mills, foundries and workshops. Down by the water stands the round clay-tile Ice House, rebuilt in a hurry after a 1921 fire to hold thousands of tons of river ice; neighbors rescued it in the 1970s, and it opened as the Ice House Museum in 1979. Up the hill, a home for Civil War orphans became the Iowa State Normal School in 1876 to train Iowa's teachers, and that school grew into the University of Northern Iowa. Today families wander the brick storefronts of Main Street, catch a show at the 1910 Oster Regent Theatre, hear readings and concerts at the James & Meryl Hearst Center for the Arts, and walk the free woodland trails at Hartman Reserve.