Each edition grades its towns against each other only.
Below: maps from 1978 on and the census since 1900.
The Duncombe post office opened in 1869, the earliest record of the town by name.
Read from the archive, the National Register and the record. The page puts what stands out first.
The first neighbors to add old photos shape how Duncombe’s history is told.
Wikipedia doesn’t have a history of Duncombe yet. The photos, dates and memories neighbors add here are how it gets written.
Duncombe is a city in Webster County, Iowa, United States. The population was 381 at the time of the 2020 census.
Its first post office opened in 1869. Between the 2010 and 2020 censuses its population fell from 410 to 381 (-7%).
Intro from Wikipedia. Population: U.S. Census Bureau.
Passages that mention Duncombe, cut from the printed page as they were published.
Black hills of South Dakota. Here he learned ditching and when he had fully recovered his health went to Clinton, Illinois, where he resided for eight years, following railroading the greater portion of the time. Subsequently in 1895. he came to Duncombe, where he worked at his trade of tiling, in which he has been successful in all for twenty-five years. In the last year he has laid eight hundred rods of tile upon the farms around Duncombe and expects to continue this business after the harvest of 191 2. In 1905
Text read by machine from the scan; it may contain errors.
enterprising, he early manifested unusual business ability and at the age of seventeen years bought out the Breda Watchman, a weekly journal, which he successfully edited for fifteen years. At the expiraion of that time he removed with his plant to Duncombe and. in May, 1909, established and issued the first copy of_ The Duncombe Tribune. It is a clean, wholesome, newsy sheet and independent in politics. Although it has only been founded three years, the Tribune has a large and constantly increasing
Text read by machine from the scan; it may contain errors.Scans and text from the Internet Archive. Books published in 1930 or earlier, which are in the public domain.
The U.S. Geological Survey’s map of Duncombe.
1978Duncombe sheet · 1:24,000U.S. Geological Survey historical topographic maps (public domain), via Esri’s collection of the scans. The red ring marks the center of Duncombe.
Between 341 and 504 people in every census since 1900.
13 censuses, 1900–2020.
U.S. Census Bureau decennial counts, from the census table on Duncombe’s Wikipedia page.
Nobody well known was born in Duncombe itself, so here are the best known from just nearby.
The Duncombe post office opened in 1869, the earliest record of the town by name (U.S. post office records).
What the archives can’t tell you, neighbors can.
Founding dates: Wikidata, Wikipedia, the U.S. post office records of Blevins & Helbock (CC0) and the Census. Homes by year built: Census ACS 2020–24. National Register of Historic Places: National Park Service (list of May 22, 2026). Old photos, postcards and papers: Wikimedia Commons, the Library of Congress and other public archives, credited on each item’s page. Maps: U.S. Geological Survey historical topographic maps (via Esri) and Sanborn fire-insurance maps (Library of Congress). History text and census tables: Wikipedia (CC BY-SA 4.0). Places that used to be: USGS Geographic Names Information System (2021). How TownRatings grades history →
From Wikimedia Commons (2), U.S. Geological Survey historical maps, U.S. Census counts (via Wikipedia), the US Post Offices dataset (Blevins & Helbock), the USGS Geographic Names Information System and old county and town histories (Internet Archive). Archive images are copied here with their credits and licenses, shown on each photo’s page. Refreshed monthly.
2021
2004