The Orleans post office opened in 1894, the earliest record of the town by name. Another post office, Minnie (1883), opened inside today’s city and later closed.
2020 census: 521132 years
Founding year: the first Orleans post office (Blevins & Helbock, CC0).
What stands out about Orleans’ past
Read from the archive, the National Register and the record. The page puts what stands out first.
Wikipedia doesn’t have a history of Orleans yet. The photos, dates and memories neighbors add here are how it gets written.
Orleans is a city in Dickinson County, Iowa, United States. The population was 521 at the time of the 2020 census. Orleans is part of the Iowa Great Lakes region, located along Spirit Lake. Numerous state parks are located within a few miles of the town, including Marble Beach and Mini-Wakan.
Its first post office opened in 1894. Between the 2010 and 2020 censuses its population fell from 608 to 521 (-14%).
Intro from Wikipedia. Population: U.S. Census Bureau.
From the old history books
What they wrote about Orleans in 1917
Passages that mention Orleans, cut from the printed page as they were published.
History of Emmet County and Dickinson County, Iowa1917 · page 411Read the page →
Read the text
The summer of 1860 I attended school in Spirit Lake, which was the first school in town, if not in the county. It walked from the farm and for a time had to go around the lake near where the Hotel Orleans now stands, as the bridge down at the foot of Lake Street was not yet completed. The schoolhouse was a one-room garret over a residence. It had two windows, one in each gable. The building stood on the present site of E. D. Carleton's residence and the teacher was Miss Mary Howe.
Text read by machine from the scan; it may contain errors.
History of Emmet County and Dickinson County, Iowa1917 · page 43Read the page →
Read the text
and Indian War." This war was concluded by the treaty of Fontainebleau on November 3, 1762, by which France ceded to Great Britain all that part of Louisiana lying east of the Mississippi River, "except the City of New Orleans and the island upon which it is situated." The treaty of Fontainebleau was ratified by the treaty of Paris on February 10, 1763, at which time it was announced that, by an agi'eement previously made in secret, "the city and island of New Orleans, and all that part of Louisiana lying west of the Mississippi, including the whole
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
Orleans, 1883 to 1953
Woven from the archive, old maps, post office records, the National Register and the people born 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 Wikimedia Commons (3), 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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