The Hamburg post office opened in 1860, the earliest record of the town by name. Another post office, Austin (1847), opened inside today’s city and later closed.
First census: 167 in 18602020 census: 890166 years
Founding year: the first Hamburg post office (Blevins & Helbock, CC0).The full story ↓
What stands out about Hamburg’s past
Read from the archive, the National Register and the record. The page puts what stands out first.
Peaked at 2,187 in 1940; 890 people lived here in 2020.
17 censuses, 1860–2020.
U.S. Census Bureau decennial counts, from the census table on Hamburg’s Wikipedia page.
Every building
Hamburg, building by building, 1886–1930
Fire insurance maps drew every building, what it was made of and what it was used for, so insurers could price the risk of fire. Pick a year, then a sheet.
The city is less than a quarter mile from the Missouri state line. The first settlers in the community were people who actually thought they were settling in Missouri following the Platte Purchase of former Indian territory there across the state line opened up settlement. The first formal settlement in the Hamburg vicinity were by the brothers James McKissick, Cornelius McKissick, Daniel McKissick who established McKissick's Grove. A survey was made when Iowa entered the union in 1846, and only then did the settlers discover that they were in Iowa and not Missouri.
Passages that mention Hamburg, cut from the printed page as they were published.
History of Fremont County, Iowa1881 · page 337Read the page →
Read the text
Southward from Wilson’s, along the base of the bluffs, several exposures of the lowest members of that section are seen at long intervals, always holding about the same relative position above the level of the flood-plain, all the way to the town of Hamburg, in the southwestern part of the county. The fine-grained micaceous sandstone of No. 1, of the foregoing section, is seen at the village of Plum Hollow, a couple of miles below Mr. Wilson’s, and also at Hamburg, and several intermediate points. A few strata were found resting upon it at all these points, but none were observed beneath it. It is therefore stratigraphic-
Text read by machine from the scan; it may contain errors.
History of Fremont County, Iowa1881 · page 548Read the page →
Read the text
There is no history to this township that has not been given either under the chapter devoted to early settlers and settlements, or under that of the city of Hamburg. The reader is therefore referred to those chapters for full information respecting early settlements. The township is one of the wealthiest and best in the county.
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
Hamburg, 1847 to 1984
Woven from the archive, old maps, post office records, the National Register and the people born here.
Nothing in the archives for these yearsWeddings on Main Street, storms, parades, school pictures, the old store. If it’s in your family album, it belongs here.
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 the Library of Congress (9), Wikidata (1), the National Register of Historic Places (1), 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, Sanborn fire insurance maps (Library of Congress) 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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