Founding year: the first Fairbank post office (Blevins & Helbock, CC0).The full story ↓
History grade
What drives Fairbank’s History grade
On its age, its old homes and the National Register, Fairbank is more historic than 37% of U.S. towns. Its share of homes from before 1940 holds the grade up; its National Register listings pull it down.
C+
HistoryA character grade: shown, never part of Fairbank’s overall grade.
Iowa towns list more on the Register than most of the country (a typical Iowa town has 9.1 per 10,000 residents, the U.S. 2.4), so Fairbank’s 0.0 sits below most of its state (17% of Iowa towns have fewer) while its 0 listings outnumber those of 23% of U.S. towns.
How sure. Graded on any two of the three inputs instead, the letter would range from D to B−. The pre-1940 share is a Census survey estimate (±7.8 points). The founding year is the first post office, not a stated founding date.
Founding year: the first post office (other dates in Quick answers). Homes: Census ACS 2020–24. National Register: National Park Service, May 2026 list; each listing counted once (boundary changes and added documentation belong to their listing), and a historic district counts its contributing buildings. How TownRatings grades history →
What stands out about Fairbank’s past
Read from the archive, the National Register and the record. The page puts what stands out first.
The first recorded permanent Euro-American settlement in what became Fairbank Township was established in 1849 by William S. Clark. In 1853, F. J. Everett and C. W. Bacon arrived from New York and established a log cabin and sawmill along the Little Wapsipinicon River. In 1854, they laid out the village of Fairbank, naming it after Bacon's grandmother, whose surname was Fairbank.
A post office was established in 1854, with Bacon serving as the first postmaster. John McCuniff opened the village's first store in 1855, using lumber produced at Everett and Bacon's sawmill. Frederick Patterson subsequently established an addition to the original village, known as Patterson's Addition.
Passages that mention Fairbank, cut from the printed page as they were published.
History of Buchanan County, Iowa, with illustrations and biographical sketches1881 · page 31Read the page →
Read the text
Little Wapsie close to the Fayette county line, we see the smart village of Fairbank, which is getting sufficiently ambitious to look for a railroad in the near future. Letting the eye turn toward the east, passing over the wellwooded Otter creek, we come to the village, situated in the midst of the timber, growing small by degrees and beautifully less, from its contiguity (only about a mile away) to the railroad station, which has stolen its name,
Text read by machine from the scan; it may contain errors.
History of Buchanan County, Iowa, with illustrations and biographical sketches1881 · page 333Read the page →
Read the text
They had not been there but a short time before they built a saw-mill on the Wapsie, in what is now the village of Fairbank. They worked in the mill themselves, and were quite successful in this enterprise. In the fall of 1854 Mr. Everett was married to Sarah L. Baldwin, with whom he went to keeping house in the cabin built by himself and Bacon the year before. In i86o he opened a general store on the very land where he first
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.
Timeline
Fairbank, 1855 to 1971
Woven from the archive, old maps, post office records, the National Register and the people born here.
The Fairbank post office opened in 1855, the earliest record of the town by name (U.S. post office records).
How does Fairbank rank for history?
Fairbank is more historic than 37% of U.S. towns. The History grade combines the town’s founding era, the share of homes built before 1940 and its National Register listings. It’s a character grade, so it isn’t part of the overall grade. How it works.
How old are the homes in Fairbank?
19% of Fairbank’s homes were built before 1940 (Census estimate, ±7.8 points), against a typical 22% for an Iowa town; the median home was built in 1972.
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).
From Wikimedia Commons (4), Wikipedia, Wikidata and Wikipedia for famous people, 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.
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