Onawa, Iowa

The "widest Main Street" in America is actually called Iowa Avenue. There’s
enough room here for a 10-lane highway. Besides the four lanes of Highway
175 that run down its middle, Iowa Avenue has a frontage street on each
side with parking on both sides of the street. The street's unusual width was
established by Charles and Bernard Holbrook, who laid out the town in
1857. They decided it should be 150 feet wide, anticipating that Onawa
would become a major city because of its proximity to the Missouri River.

Onawa never became the important city the Holbrooks envisioned, in part
because the Missouri shifted course, moving farther away from the town.
According to the 2000 Census, the town's population was 3,091. Though the
town may be small, it produced one of the biggest success stories in the
history of the frozen dairy industry. The Eskimo Pie was born here about
1920. A display at the Monona County Historical Museum is devoted to the
story of its creation by Danish immigrant Christian Nelson, with a little help
from future candy magnate Russell Stover.

The museum is located in Onawa's "museum district" at the north end of
12th Street. It is open weekends from 1-4:30 p.m. and also Memorial Day
and Labor Day. Also in this area is the Monona County Veterans Memorial
Museum, open 2-5 p.m. weekends from Memorial Day weekend to Labor
Day weekend. The third and final museum in this area is the Kiwanis
Railroad Depot Museum. The depot was built by the Chicago &
Northwestern Railroad in 1902. Next to it is a C&NW caboose. Several other
historic buildings also are found on the grounds, including the Franklin No. 7
School (built in 1862), the Eggleston log cabin (1866), and the Evangelical
Covenant Church (1875). The museum is open from 1-5 p.m. Thursday
through Saturday, from May through October.