You may hear of a place called Swede Bend, but you won’t find it on any map.

Swede Bend isn’t — and never was — a proper town. The name refers to a sweeping curve in the Des Moines River along the border of Hamilton and Webster counties. In the 1800s many Swedish immigrants settled there. People started calling the area Swede Bend and the name stuck.

The history of those immigrants is preserved in a small museum in Stratford, the town that is closest to that bend in the river. Located at 819 Goldsmith St., it’s called the Swedish Immigrant Museum and Research Library. It is owned by the Swedish Foundation of Iowa’s Swede Bend Settlement.

Established in the 1990s, the foundation and museum is a volunteer organization dedicated to preserving the history of those Swedish immigrants who left their homes more than a century ago to establish new homes in Iowa. The story of those immigrants is worth preserving and passing along to future generations. We salute the efforts of those who work to preserve that history.

The museum got a boost recently in the form of a grant from the Enhance Hamilton County Foundation.

The grant will help pay for creating an online listing of all the documents and other items in the museum, a step that will make it easier for people to learn about the museum’s collection. The grant money will also help pay for purchasing new museum display cases.

Everyone is invited to see the museum during a St. Lucia Day event to be held there from 10 a.m. to 4 p.m. Sunday.

We encourage people to go and learn more about the unique Swedish element of our region’s history.