Why does this Iowa downtown look like Amsterdam? The answer goes back to 1847

Pella’s windmills, canals and tulips aren’t a theme park

About 40 miles southeast of Des Moines, Pella doesn’t look like it belongs in Iowa. The downtown streets are lined with Dutch-style building fronts.

A 124-foot windmill rises above the rooftops. A canal runs through a brick plaza in the heart of town.

This all started with 800 people who left the Netherlands in 1847 and never stopped being Dutch. The deeper you get into Pella, the more that story comes into focus.

800 Dutch immigrants built this town for one reason

Religious freedom. In the Netherlands, a group of Protestant dissenters couldn’t worship the way they chose, so their leader, Dominie Hendrik Peter Scholte, brought 800 of them across the Atlantic in 1847.

They looked at Texas and Missouri and walked away from both because those were slave states. Iowa is where they stopped.

They named their new home Pella after a biblical city of refuge and put “In God Our Hope and Refuge” on the town seal in Latin. That’s not a decorative choice.

That’s people planting a flag.

The tallest working windmill in North America grinds real wheat

The Vermeer Windmill stands 124.5 feet tall, and it works.

A craftsman named Lukas Verbij designed and built it in the Netherlands, where workers took it apart, shipped it to Iowa and reassembled it in 2002.

The design goes back to a 1850s grain mill from the Dutch province of Groningen. Wind turns the sails, the gears spin inside, and flour comes out the other end.

Guided tours walk you through all five floors, from the ground floor at the bottom to the deck at the top, where you can see across town.

Walk through 20 historic buildings right next to the windmill

The Pella Historical Village sits alongside the windmill and covers more than 20 buildings, some original and some reconstructed.

You can walk through a log cabin, browse a general store, and step inside a replica of Pella’s first church. One building, the Werkplaats, shows you how traditional wooden shoes are carved.

Another holds a detailed miniature Dutch village that cycles through all four seasons in scale model form. You can go through on your own or with a guide.

Wyatt Earp grew up Dutch in a row house built in 1855

The Earp family moved to the Pella area around 1850 and stayed until 1864, which means Wyatt spent his early years in a Dutch-style row house built around 1855 by the Van Spanckeren brothers.

That house is on the National Register of Historic Places, and today it holds an immersive exhibit with a self-guided audio tour that covers Earp’s childhood, the people around him, and the life he went on to live.

The exhibit went through a $1 million renovation before reopening in 2021.

A real canal and drawbridge run through downtown Pella

Molengracht Plaza opened in 2001 and doesn’t feel like a replica. The canal holds about 100,000 gallons of water and covers 5,720 square feet.

A working drawbridge crosses it. Brick walking paths and flower beds run the length of the plaza, which stretches more than 100,000 square feet in total and includes shops, restaurants and a movie theater.

You can sit by the water on a warm afternoon and it feels less like Iowa and more like a town square somewhere in the Netherlands.

Mechanical Dutch figures dance near the bakeries at set times

The Klokkenspel is a clock with moving parts, and when it goes off at set times throughout the day, mechanical figures come to life and perform to music.

It sits steps from the town square, free to watch, surrounded by Dutch murals and tulip plantings along the walkway leading up to it.

It’s the kind of thing you stumble onto, watch once, and find yourself planning to catch again before you leave. The bakeries are right there when it’s done.

Try all the Dutch pastries you can find in Pella

Jaarsma Bakery has been making everything from scratch since 1898, when Dutch immigrant Harmon Jaarsma opened it. His great-granddaughter and her husband run it now, no preservatives.

The signature item is the Dutch Letter, an S-shaped pastry with flaky puff pastry on the outside and almond paste filling inside. Originally, Dutch Letters were made only for Sinterklaas Day on Dec. 6.

Now they’re there every day. Vander Ploeg Bakery on the town square makes its own version from scratch as well.

Get one from each and decide for yourself.

300,000 tulips bloom across the city every May

Pella has held its Tulip Time Festival every year since 1935, always the first Thursday, Friday and Saturday of May. In 2026, that’s May 7, 8 and 9.

The city plants more than 300,000 tulips in parks and gardens across town for the occasion, and about 200,000 people show up over those three days. Parades run twice daily.

There’s Dutch dancing, traditional costumes, a Dutch market, street scrubbing and dozens of food booths. If you go, book a place to stay early.

The town fills up.

Scholte’s house is still standing and the garden blooms in spring

The Scholte House Museum preserves the home of Pella’s founder with original furnishings and family items still inside. In spring, the surrounding gardens come alive when the tulips open.

Two blocks north of the town square, Sunken Gardens Park has its own windmill and a sunken pond carved in the shape of a wooden shoe. Come back in winter and that same pond freezes solid.

You can lace up skates and glide across what is essentially a giant wooden shoe carved into the ground.

Iowa’s largest lake sits just minutes from downtown Pella

Lake Red Rock covers more than 15,000 acres of surface water.

The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers finished the Red Rock Dam on the Des Moines River in 1969, and the lake that formed behind it became the biggest in Iowa. Fifty thousand acres of public land surround it.

You can boat, kayak, fish, hike, bike, camp, or watch birds along multiple parks and campgrounds stretched out along the shoreline. It’s a short drive from downtown, which makes it easy to pair with a day in town.

Climb the Midwest’s tallest observation tower for 35-mile views

The Cordova Observation Tower stands 106 feet tall and takes 170 steps to climb. It also holds the record for the longest continuous fiberglass staircase in the world.

The structure started as a water tower in 1972 and was converted into an observation tower by 1999. On a clear day, you can see up to 35 miles out, far enough to spot Des Moines on the horizon.

Entry costs two quarters per person through a turnstile. Bring change.

Visit Pella, Iowa

Pella sits about 40 miles southeast of Des Moines, an easy drive off Interstate 80.

Downtown is compact and walkable, with the windmill, the plaza, the bakeries, the Klokkenspel and most of the historic sites within a few blocks of each other. Lake Red Rock and the Cordova Tower are a short drive out.

You can check current hours and admission for the windmill tours, the historical village and the Earp exhibit on the official website before you go.

The Tulip Time Festival runs May 7 through 9 in 2026, and rooms go fast.

This article was created with AI assistance and human editing.

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