Iowa Populated Places

This coverage contains points that represent populated places, ie. cities, towns, villages or any other named place where people live. The coverage was developed from the USGS Geographic Names Information System (GNIS) database for Iowa. There were many errors in the original GNIS data, including missing points or mislocated points. The GNIS points were compared to two reference sources: USGS 100k scale county maps and Iowa DOT county highway maps. Mislocated and missing point were fixed and each town was designated as having been verified from one or the other reference sources or both. Some GNIS points were not verified from either source and are so designated (use these with caution).