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O'Brien County, Iowa

Historic newspapers, landmarks, and county history layers for genealogists and local historians.

—newspaper titles

—digitized titles

3historic places

—earliest paper

1851formed

14,182pop. 2020

22cemeteries

—CW battlefields

At a glance

Summary

The National Register of Historic Places includes 3 listed properties in the county, first listed in 1966; 1 is also National Historic Landmark. Most listings are in or near Sheldon, Sutherland, Primghar.

Summary generated automatically from the source data on this page.

Newspapers

Library of Congress

Newspaper directory data for Iowa is not yet loaded on this site. Browse O'Brien titles at the Library of Congress.

National Register of Historic Places

NPS NRHP

2 of 3 listings mapped; some locations are restricted by NPS to protect sensitive sites.

3 listed properties

Property	City	Type	Listed
Carnegie Library	Sheldon	Building	1977
Indian Village Site NHL	Sutherland	Site	1966
O'Brien County Courthouse	Primghar	Building	1981

Source: National Park Service, National Register of Historic Places. Property links open NRHP nomination files at the National Archives.

County formation

Newberry AHCB

O'Brien was formed in 1851 (1851-01-15) from unknown / original county.

O'BRIEN created from Non-County Area 9 attached to POLK.

Source: Newberry Library, Atlas of Historical County Boundaries.

Population by decade

Census

O'Brien County population from 1860 to 2020 (Census historical series).

1860	1880	1900	1920	1940	1950	1960	1980	2000	2020
8	4,155	16,985	19,051	19,293	18,970	18,840	16,972	15,102	14,182

Sources: U.S. Census Bureau historical county population (Forstall 1790–1990) and public-domain / CC0 county population series through 2020.

Cemeteries & historical places

USGS GNIS

22 cemeteries and 1 historical populated places (ghost towns / former settlements) recorded in USGS GNIS for this county.

Cemeteries — 22 of 22 listed

Name	Lat	Lon
Calvary Cemetery	42.96842	-95.48582
Center Township Cemetery	43.11502	-95.53541
Covey Church Cemetery	43.06825	-95.48747
Doyle Cemetery	43.06184	-95.52457
East Lawn Cemetery	43.17989	-95.83398
Fred Fieldman Grave	42.94442	-95.3975
Friends Cemetery	43.00222	-95.62244
Hannibal Waterman Cemetery	42.93721	-95.41872
Liberty Cemetery	42.92432	-95.59347
Pleasant Hill Cemetery	43.09805	-95.63759
Pleasant View Cemetery	43.17189	-95.4755
Prairie View Cemetery	42.96887	-95.70227
Randolph Cemetery	43.12824	-95.5257
Roseland Cemetery	43.18494	-95.6819
Saint Anthonys Catholic Calvary Cemetery	43.09853	-95.63628
Saint Cecilia Cemetery	43.17094	-95.65308
Saint John Cemetery	42.95637	-95.78045
Saint Patricks Cemetery	43.17792	-95.83253
Saint Paul Lutheran Cemetery	43.1746	-95.84106
Steuck Cemetery	43.12083	-95.54452
Waterman Cemetery	42.96636	-95.485
West Prairie View Cemetery	42.96884	-95.70408

Historical populated places — 1 of 1

Name	Lat	Lon
Evander	43.17859	-95.76251

Source: USGS Geographic Names Information System (public domain). Cemeteries from the 2021 NationalFile archive; historical places from GNIS HistoricalFeatures topical extract.

Historical markers

HMdb link

Marker text and photos from the Historical Marker Database (HMdb) are not embedded here. HMdb allows non-commercial reuse with attribution, but commercial/compensated use needs written permission; this is a commercial site, so we only link out.

Search HMdb for O'Brien County, Iowa

Terms: hmdb.org/copyright.asp. Linking is encouraged by HMdb.