This week in Waterloo
About Waterloo
Waterloo grew up on both banks of the Cedar River, which still splits the city into an east side and a west side; the Hanna family settled the east bank in 1845, back when the spot was called Prairie Rapids Crossing. In 1893 a group of local businessmen started building gasoline tractors here, and once Deere & Company bought the Waterloo Boy tractor works in 1918, the "Factory City" became home to John Deere tractors for more than a century. Waterloo also keeps the memory of the five Sullivan brothers, who served together aboard the USS Juneau and were lost in 1942; their story is told at the Sullivan Brothers Iowa Veterans Museum, part of the Grout Museum District. Down by the river, the Waterloo Center for the Arts holds the largest public collection of Haitian art anywhere, Grant Wood paintings, the hands-on Phelps Youth Pavilion for kids, and the Waterloo Community Playhouse, Iowa's oldest community theatre. Today about 67,000 people live here, the bigger half of the Cedar Valley with Cedar Falls next door, with free summer concerts at the RiverLoop Amphitheatre and 40 acres of gardens at the Cedar Valley Arboretum.