| Lanyon | |
| Settlement Type: | Unincorporated community |
| Pushpin Map: | USA Iowa#USA |
| Pushpin Map Caption: | Location within the state of Iowa |
| Subdivision Type: | Country |
| Subdivision Name: | United States |
| Subdivision Type1: | State |
| Subdivision Name1: | Iowa |
| Subdivision Type2: | County |
| Subdivision Name2: | Webster |
| Unit Pref: | Imperial |
| Population As Of: | 2000 |
| Population Density Km2: | auto |
| Timezone: | Central (CST) |
| Utc Offset: | -6 |
| Timezone Dst: | CDT |
| Utc Offset Dst: | -5 |
| Elevation Ft: | 1138 |
| Coordinates: | 42.2225°N -94.1952°W |
| Postal Code Type: | ZIP codes |
| Postal Code: | 50544 |
| Blank Name: | FIPS code |
| Blank1 Name: | GNIS feature ID |
Lanyon is an unincorporated community in Lost Grove Township in Webster County, Iowa.
It is located 17 miles south of the county seat of Fort Dodge, 2.65 miles south and one mile west of Harcourt (on U.S. Route 169), and 3.3 miles north and 4.5 miles west of Boxholm. Lanyon consists of seven blocks, bounded on the north by 390th Street, and on the east by Lanyon Avenue.
Lanyon's elevation is 1,171 feet (357 m).[1]
The community was founded by Swedish emigrants,[2] part of a migration from Knox County, Illinois in the 1860s.[3] The population was 105 in 1940.[4]
It is located on the diagonal route of a former interurban railroad between Boone and Rockwell City, which was used by the Fort Dodge, Des Moines and Southern Railroad until the 1960s.[5] A station at Layton was opened in 1899 to serve a railway laid that year by the Marshalltown and Dakota Railroad Company to carry coal mined near Fraser northwest to connections at Gowrie.[6] A Lanyon Post Office was established in 1900,[7] the Lanyon Mutual Telephone Company was established in 1903, and the Bank of Lanyon, Lanyon Well Company, and (until the early 1960s) Lanyon Consolidated School. Lanyon is now within the Prairie Valley Community School District.
It includes the Evangelical Covenant Church, founded in 1877 and located in Lanyon since 1909.
Previously it was in the Prairie Valley Community School District,[8] which formed on July 1, 1993 with the merger of the Cedar Valley Community School District and the Prairie Community School District.[9] Prairie Valley CSD merged into the Southeast Valley Community School District in 2023. This district includes the Southeast Valley Middle School in Burnside and Southeast Valley High School in Gowrie.[10]