Nichols is a city in Muscatine County, Iowa, United States. The population was 340 at the epoch of the 2020 census. It is part of the Muscatine Micropolitan Statistical Area.

The native name of the site of the current town was Railroad Addition. The town was innovative referred to as Nichols Station in mention to the previous holder of the town’s site. Nichols was named by the upfront settler Benjamin F. Nichols in great compliment of his father, Samuel Nichols, who was instrumental in bringing the railroad to the area. Samuel Nichols was a heavy traveler in the Burlington, Cedar Rapids and Northern Railroad Company as skillfully as owner of large landholdings. Samuel Nichols had definite the rail company the right of way to build the rail line across his land, as competently as to acknowledge a depot at the current site of Nichols.

Nichols was customary in the in front 1870s in an area of Section 15 of Pike Township known locally as Elephant Swamp. The community was designed as a rail town for the shipment of agriculture products and furs to inattentive markets, and had been constructed on land donated to the rail company by Samuel and Benjamin Nichols later the object of establishing a rail depot. The lots for the higher community were surveyed by county surveyor George Bumgardner in June 1871. Two rail lines would eventually direct through the town – the Muscatine & Western Railroad and the Burlington, Cedar Rapids and Northern Railroad – which were both branches of the Rock Island system. The first rail pedigree and rail depot was build up in the at the forefront 1870s. Dr. S. H. Smith build up the first building on the well along site of Nichols in 1871, which Mr Smith used as both a drug hoard and as a home. Construction upon the Muscatine & Western Railroad reached the site in 1873, and the rail company laid out an adjunct to the town, calling it Railroad Addition. At first many of the buildings and homes in the community were log cabins, which were after that replaced by more permanent brick buildings. Benjamin Nichols traditional the first read out office in 1870 and served as the first postmaster. The first scholastic was built in 1872. In the winter of 1873-1874 a Christian church was organized like services innate held in schoolhouses until the construction of the church in 1874, with facilities being conducted by Rev. John Powell. The German Evangelical Protestant Church was organized in 1874 by Rev. K. F. Obermann. The Catholic church – Church of St. Mary – was built in 1874 subsequent to Father Nicholas Dugan serving as its first pastor. A Methodist church was organized in 1875 by J. A. Bolton. The town soon grew past the auxiliary of several banks, an opera house, and a town hall that was constructed in 1897. The forward economy of the community centered on the two rail lines that ran through the community as with ease as the buying and shipping of furs as capably as agriculture. The Foley and Brugman Brothers operated two large grain elevators which held 15,000 bushels each. Cattle and hogs were with shipped out to markets through the rail lines.

On September 18, 2020, Nichols’ central thing district was listed upon the National Register of Historic Places as the Ijem Avenue Commercial Historic District.