This week in Waverly
About Waverly
Waverly grew up on both banks of the Cedar River: Frederick Cretzmeyer put up a log cabin on the east bank in 1852, and a year later William Patterson Harmon arrived planning a town and a sawmill. Settlers expected the place to be called Harmonville, but the name that stuck came from Sir Walter Scott's Waverley novels, and the town incorporated in 1859 as the seat of Bremer County. Mills and a river dam powered its early years, and the red-brick hydroelectric powerhouse, rebuilt in 1909 after a fire, still sits on the east bank beside the downtown storefronts of East Bremer Avenue. Families love strolling the green 1917 truss bridge over the Cedar near Kohlmann Park, where summer Thursday concerts and the spring Art Walk draw neighbors together. Since 1935 Wartburg College has called Waverly home, and its name ties the town to its German sister city of Eisenach. Today about 10,400 people live here, and downtown still fills up for Jack-O-Lantern Night in October and Christmas Greetings on Main in December.