Amana Colonies

The people who built Amana belonged to the Community of True Inspiration, a Pietist movement that arose in Germany in the early 1700s and believed that God still spoke through inspired human voices. Facing persecution and military conscription in Europe, the group emigrated to the United States in the 1840s and first settled near Buffalo, New York, in a colony they called Ebenezer.

As that land grew crowded and expensive, the community looked west and bought a large tract along the Iowa River in the 1850s, naming their new home Amana, a biblical word meaning to remain faithful. They laid out seven villages close enough for oxcart travel, each with its own church, communal kitchens, school, and workshops, and organized every part of daily life around the church and the common good.

In the Amana of the communal era, no member held private property. Families lived in assigned houses, took their meals in neighborhood communal kitchens run by the village women, and received their clothing, food, and a small annual credit from the church-run society. Men and women alike were assigned jobs, in the fields, the woolen mill, the print shop, the calico works, the smithies and carpentry shops that made the colonies nearly self-sufficient.

This way of life held together for almost eighty years, a remarkable span for a communal experiment. The strain of the Great Depression, the pull of the modern world, and a younger generation's desire for private life led the community in 1932 to what residents call the Great Change, separating the church from the businesses and reorganizing the economy into a joint-stock company. Members became shareholders and wage earners, and Amana entered the modern age without losing its identity.

The trades that once served the communal society survive as the colonies' living heart. Amana furniture makers still turn out solid walnut, cherry, and oak pieces prized across the Midwest, and shops carry handwoven baskets, wool blankets from the old woolen mill tradition, and tall-case clocks. Walking the villages, you pass workshops where you can watch craftspeople at work.

The kitchens have their own fame. Amana's German-rooted cooking is served family style, with platters of ham, fried chicken, sauerkraut, spaetzle, and pickled vegetables passed around a shared table. The villages also carry a long tradition of winemaking, especially fruit and rhubarb wines, along with brewing and old-fashioned meat smoking, all of which visitors can sample from the local makers.

The Iowa River valley the Inspirationists settled had long been the homeland of the Ioway, for whom the state is named, along with the Meskwaki and Sauk peoples who hunted and lived along these rivers. Their descendants remain part of Iowa today, with the Meskwaki owning their Settlement not far to the west near Tama.

The colonists were skilled at bending the land to communal use, digging a seven-mile canal, the Amana Millrace, to power their woolen and grain mills, and managing thousands of acres of forest and farm in common. That legacy of stewardship shows in the woodlots, the preserved millrace, and the tidy village greens that still give the colonies their gentle, ordered feel.

The closest Boutel™ stays, so you can turn this stop into an overnight. Each is an independently owned, editorially selected place to stay.