About Us

 Safety Village was created after a conversation with children that he visited a temporary “Safety Town” in Hinsdale, IL. Those children were the grandchildren of Dr. Charles Skaugstaad, a pediatrician at Mercy Hospital, here in Iowa City. A tireless child safety advocate, Dr. Skaugstaad took the “vision” of his grandchildren and gathered many talented individuals in our community that undertook the design, layout and the construction of Safety Village. Land was leased from the Iowa City Community School District on the Grant Wood Elementary property 

The Safety Village was constructed in less than two years with private donations of time, materials, and money.  It opened to the first “campers” in June of 1995. The goal was to provide a 2-week safety camp for children 5-6-7 years old. Topics have included: Fire Safety, Traffic/Pedestrian Safety, Water Safety, Animal Safety (farm and urban), Electricity Safety, Bicycle Safety, Gun Safety, Medicine/Pharmacy Safety, Burn Safety, Weather Safety, Machine Safety (farm and urban) just to name of few. The original Board of Directors agreed that the camp curriculum would be guided by a Certified Teacher (Camp Director) and went on to partner with Grant Wood Elementary for a place to conduct the classroom portion of each camp. The “Village” is run by our local Law Enforcement, Fire and Ambulance Agencies. The “day at camp” consists of five (5) parts. There is a reading component, a craft component (after all, Mom and Dad like kids to bring things home), a hands-on component where campers go through a fire truck, police car, an ambulance, the Fire Smokehouse, etc., and of course visiting the Village. When campers come out to the Village on Day 1 they take a tour. The Village offers most of the traffic signs and signals we see in our community every day, including a working railroad crossing. The campers then get to experience moving about the “village” driving pedal cars or walking as pedestrians. Their movement is guided by police officers/deputies,  fire fighters and paramedics which provides positive interaction in a no stress environment. The fifth part of the day is a large group presentation guided by the topic of the day. Members of our professional community come and share their knowledge and expertise in their professional field. 

To date, there have been over 5,000 children in Johnson County that have participated. In the beginning, a group of 20+ children could visit the Village while the other three groups were involved in the 3 other aspects of the day. Half could drive the pedal cars and half could experience being a pedestrian. For the past 20 years, we’ve grown to 25-30 children in each of the four groups in colored T-shirts (Red, Blue, Green and Orange). As we grew, so did our inventory of pedal cars. We have enough that each child may choose to ride the pedal cars their entire time in the Village. However, almost all still enjoy the exploration of the Village and the business’, schools, police dept., fire dept. The pass the “Founder’s Residence” on the way to the Railroad Crossing. In the beginning, all the windows in the various buildings in the Village contained hand drawn artwork created by the students to represent a “business”. Over the years, the weather elements took a devastating toll on the “windows”. The artwork was replaced/donated in 2020 by a family with high schoolers working on completing their Silver Chord Hours. The new artwork is graphic art created with imagination, fun and of course a sense of humor. 

2024 brings us to a new era of Safety Village. After the derecho and emerald ash boar took the majority of the trees destroying the shade canopy, we have begun to replace the trees for future generations. The Old Capitol and two side buildings are denigrated to the point of needing serious repair / replacement. The Capitol Campaign is underway to raise $50,000 to allow Safety Village to continue another 30 years.