Wever, Iowa


Wever is an unincorporated community in northeastern Lee County, in the southeastern corner of Iowa, United States.

Geography

Wever lies along U.S. Route 61, approximately eight miles northeast of the city of Fort Madison, one of two county seats in Lee County. It is just South of the Iowa Army Ammunition Plant and the Skunk River, which empties further east into the Mississippi River.. Its elevation is 561 feet.

History

Wever was a station on the Chicago, Burlington and Quincy Railroad.
Although Wever is unincorporated, it has a post office, which opened on. This post office has a complicated name history: it opened as 'Sand Ridge', changed to 'Green Bay' on, to 'Jollyville' on, and finally to Wever on. Its ZIP code is 52658,
Wever was built around a station of the Chicago, Burlington and Quincy Railroad within Green Bay Township, and superseded the nearby town of Jollyville. It had 300 inhabitants when mentioned in the 1879 History of Lee County and was enjoying "good trade" because of the surrounding very fertile country.
The community has been part of the Micropolitan Statistical Area.

21st century

In 2012, plans were announced to build a $1.4 billion fertilizer plant in Wever. The plant will use natural gas and is built by Orascom. Groundbreaking occurred in November 2012. The WSJ wrote that US economic rebound and cheap energy from the shale-oil boom was luring investment from companies such as Egypt's Orascom.