The City of Malvern invites you to explore our great community! A wide variety of great events, organizations and businesses make Malvern, Iowa a fantastic place to live and work. Come visit our specialty stores, dine in our great restaurants, shop in our first class grocery store, play a round of golf on our newly renovated course, or take a bike ride on the Wabash Trace!
The town of Malvern was founded in the year 1869, originally as Milton. It was later renamed after it was discovered that another Milton, Iowa existed. It was one of four communities in the area that came into existence with the completion of the Burlington and Missouri River Railroad on November 18, 1869. John D. Paddock and his bride were the first residents of Malvern. They arrived in September and put up a small 1 1⁄2-story building that served as their home and the community’s first store.
The completion of the railroad soon brought a flood of new residents and business enterprises and Malvern grew almost explosively in its first two years. In its fifth year, Mr. Paddock reported a population of 800 in his Brief History of Malvern. It served a particularly productive farming area. It soon had a number of factories, including a hog packing plant, an electric generation plant (in 1892) which permitted a municipal water system, and in the early part of the twentieth century, developed a varied poultry industry that at one time furnished employment for up to 200 persons. Malvern started a school system in 1870, a county fair in 1873, a Chautauqua in 1905, built the town library in 1916 and the present Liberty Memorial Community Building in 1926. Today Malvern is a rural community with much to offer. Population in Mills County is growing at one of the top ten rates across the state of Iowa.
Malvern, Iowa is situated just 38 miles southeast of Omaha. Located in Mills County, Malvern sits just off U.S. Hwy 34 which runs from Colorado to Chicago. In the most recent census, Malvern had a population of 1,142.