Founding year: the first Pleasantville post office (Blevins & Helbock, CC0).The full story ↓
History grade
What drives Pleasantville’s History grade
On its age, its old homes and the National Register, Pleasantville is more historic than 33% 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 Pleasantville’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 Pleasantville’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 C+. The pre-1940 share is a Census survey estimate (±6.1 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 →
Pleasantville was surveyed and established as a town on August 1, 1849 on land then owned by William Wesley Jordan. Previous to the ownership of Mr. Jordan, the land comprising the original town plot of Pleasantville changed hands for one horse and $30.
A petition for incorporation was filed in District Court on June 11, 1872 with an election subsequently held in which there were 46 votes in favor and 16 votes against.
The completion of the Chicago, Burlington, and Quincy Railroad Line through Pleasantville in 1879 caused an increase in development and Pleasantville became one of the active business centers in Marion County and the principal shipping point between Knoxville and Des Moines.
Passages that mention Pleasantville, cut from the printed page as they were published.
History of Marion County, Iowa, and its people1915 · page 4Read the page →
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white spot upon its breast was once killed near the stream. There was also an Indian chief called White Breast who lived in what is now Polk Township. The largest tributary of the White Breast is Butcher Creek, which rises near the town of Pleasantville and flows toward the southeast until it empties into the White Breast near the railroad station of Donley.
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History of Marion County, Iowa, and its people1915 · page 120Read the page →
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Daniel Shea taught the first school, in the spring of 1847, in a cabin on the farm of Gilmore Logan in the southwest quarter of section 16, a little southwest of the Town of Pleasantville. The term was for three months, the tuition fee being $2 per scholar. Mr. Shea has been described as "a warm-hearted, visionary Irishman, once a flourishing merchant in Montreal, Canada; a fine scholar, a good mathematician and an honest man."
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Pioneers of Marion county, consisting of a general history of the county from its early settlement to the present date. Also, the geography and history of each township, including brief biographical sketches of some of the more prominent early settlers in1872 · page 323Read the page →
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The town of Pleasantville was surveyed by Stanford Doud, Aug. 1, '49, on the south-west quarter of the north-west quarter of section 15, and then owned bv W. F. Jordan. TTeslev Jordan built the first house, a frame, that is now occupied as a dwelling. He also kept the first postoffice in connection with the store. The first hotel was kept by Wm. H. H. Alley.
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
Pleasantville, 1849 to 1960
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.
Every edition of the U.S. Geological Survey’s map of Pleasantville. Tap a year, or press play to watch the town change.
1910Milo sheet · 1:62,500
U.S. Geological Survey historical topographic maps (public domain), via Esri’s collection of the scans. The red ring marks the center of Pleasantville.
Then & now
Stand where they stood
No then-and-now pairs yet. Take a photo from the same spot as an old one and they appear here side by side.
Retake this viewCows in pasture - Marion County, IA Farm 1957, 1957
Find the spot, match the angle, and add your photo. It becomes the first then-and-now pair on Pleasantville’s page.
The Pleasantville post office opened in 1850, the earliest record of the town by name (U.S. post office records).
How does Pleasantville rank for history?
Pleasantville is more historic than 33% 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 Pleasantville?
15% of Pleasantville’s homes were built before 1940 (Census estimate, ±6.1 points), against a typical 22% for an Iowa town; the median home was built in 1970.
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 (6), 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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