| Official Name: | Amber, Iowa |
| Settlement Type: | Unincorporated community |
| Pushpin Map: | Iowa#USA |
| Pushpin Label: | Amber |
| Coordinates: | 42.1281°N -91.1803°W |
| Subdivision Type: | Country |
| Subdivision Name: | United States |
| Subdivision Type1: | State |
| Subdivision Name1: | Iowa |
| Subdivision Type2: | County |
| Subdivision Name2: | Jones |
| Elevation Ft: | 1027 |
| Timezone: | (CST) |
| Utc Offset: | -6 |
| Timezone Dst: | CDT |
| Utc Offset Dst: | -5 |
| Postal Code Type: | ZIP code |
| Postal Code: | 52205 |
| Area Code: | 319 |
| Blank Name: | GNIS feature ID |
| Blank Info: | 454164[1] |
Amber is an unincorporated community in Jones County, Iowa, United States. It is located northeast of Anamosa, northwest of Center Junction, south of Monticello and north of Olin. Amber is located approximately in the center of Jones County.
What would become Amber started with the Midland railroad depot of the Chicago & North-Western Railway. The founders of Amber were the Hartmans, the Sanfords and J.C. Ramsey. Mrs. C.E. Sanford & son opened a general store and J.C. Ramsey was the agent for the Midland depot. The post office was established in 1873 with T. Hartman being the first postmaster, he was also a trustee for Wayne Township. Originally called Blue Cut, due to a wide strip of blue clay nearby, the name was changed to Amber on July 1, 1878.[2] Amber was named after a character in a novel that a resident had read.[3]
The population of Amber was 82 in 1940.[4]
Amber was the home of the Hula Hoop Tree from 2015 until it was cut down in 2020. The lifeless tree which was made so after having been set ablaze not long after the first hula hoops were hoisted upon it, was decorated with hundreds of the plastic hula hoops before it was felled.[5] [6] The tree had its own Facebook page, which remains up despite the tree being down.[7]
Nobody knew why the first hoops came to rest upon the tree but after the initial plastic rings many more hoops made their way onto it. Because the first two hoops appeared after a 2015 storm, there remains the possibility that a guest of wind carried them up there.[8]
Anamosa Community School District operates local area public schools.[9]
During her research for her book Culture Warlords Amber was chosen by the journalist Talia Lavin as the residence of "Ashlynn", a persona which was a honey pot for the white nationalist dating site WhiteDate. A parody of the perfect Aryan female, Lavin had simply plopped "Ashlynn" in the Midwest.[10]