William Galloway, the financier of Cedar Heights, was a wealthy Waterloo industrialist. He owned a seed company and the William Galloway Company of Waterloo, a small implement manufacturing facility. In 1908, he and Al Gibson formed the William Galloway Investment Company, which held all the land north of Rainbow Drive to the Cedar River and from Parrish Street to the east to Belle Avenue in the west. Galloway was a man of high principles, morals, and standards, and wanted Cedar Heights to be a park-like community populated with respectable people. The town tried to maintain the desired atmosphere through strict building rules which prevented much commercial development. A lumberyard and a small grocery store were the only businesses in this residential community of two to four hundred people.