Youngville Cafe

Iowa, United States

Exterior only

Visible from the street; the inside is private.

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Heritage registerNational Register of Historic Places↗

Located northwest of Watkins, Iowa, on the historic Lincoln Highway (U.S. Route 30), the Youngville Cafe is a Tudor Revival building constructed in 1931 by Joe Young as a multipurpose roadside enterprise for his widowed daughter Lizzie Wheeler. The complex originally housed a café, a Skelly gas station, three traveler cabins (since removed), and residential quarters for the family, while also serving as a depot for Greyhound and Jefferson bus lines. The building exemplifies early twentieth-century opportunities for women in business; Wheeler operated the café until her retirement to Cedar Rapids, after which she leased the property to successive operators. Financial pressures from changing highway traffic patterns forced closure in 1967, though the structure remained in residential use into the 1980s. Acquired by the Benton County Sesquicentennial Commission in 1996 and later transferred to the Youngville Highway History Association, it was listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 2007 and has reopened as a café on a limited basis.