The pioneers planned many towns and built some

     The earliest towns in Iowa were founded as soon as the settlers arrived in the early eighteen thirties. In the two following decades eastern and southern Iowa was thickly dotted with town names whose existence as towns often didn't get beyond the plat of streets and lots on the surveyor's map. Almost every ambitious settler wanted to be the founder of a town. In the race, or one might say, the craze, for founding towns, rival towns sometimes rose close together. The successful towns might perhaps conquer by founding a college or becoming the county seat. In some cases on of the rival absorbed the other. This was true of Clinton which absorbed Lyons. Boonesboro and Montana became Boone. Sometimes two towns grew up as twin cities. Instances of this are Mount Vernon and Lisbon, Tama and Toledo, Cedar Rapids and Marion, Waterloo and Cedar Falls.

Sioux City, Council Bluffs, Dubuque, and Des Moines

     Thee earliest towns in Iowa were located along the rivers -- the Mississippi, the Iowa, the Des Moines, and the Missouri. In the interior, towns arose as settlers moved west and north. Boone was settled in 1848, but not incorporated until 1866. Sioux City was also settled in 1848, when a certain William Thompson built a cabin there. In 1854 it was platted and incorporated in 1857. At that time it had a population of 400. The railroad reached the city in 1868. In a few years the first packing plants were built and a boom period followed in the eighties.

    Council Bluffs, first called Kanesville, was a busy burg in the late forties. It became the eastern terminus of the Union Pacific Railroad, which was opened to traffic to the the Pacific in1869. In spite of its larger rival Omaha across the river in Nebraska, Council Bluffs has continued to hold its own as the leading city in southwestern Iowa.

    The largest city in Iowa before the Civil War was Dubuque, beautifully situated on the bluffs, commanding wonderful vistas of the Mississippi to the east and the rolling prairies to the west. Naturally, it aspired to become the capital at the time Iowa attained statehood, but its location was against it, being to far, as it was, from the center of the State. In 1860 Dubuque had a population of 13,000. Many Catholic institutions were located there....

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.... elementary schools, academies, colleges, churches, and mother houses of sisterhoods. Dubuque also became the seat of a Catholic bishop, and later a Catholic archbishop.

    Furthermore, Dubuque became the home of a Presbyterian college and a Lutheran seminary for the training of ministers. Des Moines grew up around Fort Des Moines at the confluence of the Raccoon and the Des Moines rivers. It became the capital in 1857. After the turn of the century it took on a new lease of growth under a commission form of government, and it has become in many respects a real metropolis for Iowa and the Midwest. The commission form of city government has recently given way to the manager-council type.

Railroad towns

     The building of the railroads brought a new era in town building. Many new towns sprang up along the railroads without much planning, except that Main Street or Broadway was usually much wider then the other streets. Realtors often added haphazardly addition after addition.

Typical grade and high school building in the nineteen twenties.

Like Topsy, the railroad towns simply grew and grew. They soon outstripped the towns off the railroads, many of which sank into ruins or were bodily moved, houses and all to the new towns along the gleaming rails.

    In the eighties and nineties small villages not infrequently grew up around creameries. The latest species of such little burgs are the bright and shining villages along the paved highways with their oil stations, snack bars and motels.

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The City Beautiful

     After the Civil War more thought was given to municipal improvements. City planners caught the vision of the "City Beautiful"-- a world dream intimately connected with the progress of civilization. Action followed thought. Streets were paved and lighted, parks and boulevards were laid out; fire, police and sanitary departments were improved. About the turn of the century, separate zones for homes, business houses, and factories were included in more ambitious city planning system having also provisions for park districts where street wound in and out contrary to the older checkerboard plan. Cedar Rapids, Des Moines, and other Iowa cities built civic centers where public buildings are grouped in places centrally located and easily accessible.

    In time there was -- and is-- much talk about slum clearance -- much talk, but never enough action.

    Towns incorporate to improve their business methods and to strengthen confidence in them as going concerns. At first, towns in Iowa were incorporated by special acts of the General Assembly. Davenport, Camanche, Muscatine, and Wapello are still operating under charters granted in that way. The special charters soon proved unsatisfactory and a general act for the incorporation of towns and cities was passed by the General Assembly.

    Cities having populations of 15,000 or more may incorporate as cities of the first class. There area 16 such cities in Iowa now. There are nearly a hundred cities incorporated as cities of the second class. These smaller cities must have at least populations of 2,000. Still smaller places may incorporate as towns. Of them there are nearly 1,000. Some of the smallest towns or villages are not incorporated. They have township government- not town government.

    At first all incorporated towns and cities in Iowa had the mayor-council form of government. In the present century some Iowa cities have changed to the commission form and some to a manager-council form of municipal government. Des Moines was the second city in the United States to adopt the commission form of municipal government. It did not prove satisfactory, and Des Moines is now trying out the manager-council kind of city government. It is still debatable which is the best form. Some Iowa cities, which had changed to the new forms, have changed back to the old.

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What's in a name?

     The names of Iowa towns and cities have their interest. It is not hard to understand that religious people, as many of the early and later settlers in Iowa were, should have put such names on the Iowa map as Bethlehem, Bethesda, Tabor, Pella, New Sharon, Salem and Mount Zion. Iowa has no town by the name Jerusalem, but there is a little place named Jerico in northeastern Iowa. The presence of European immigrant groups account for many Iowa town names; instances are Wales, Glasgow, Parnell, Oxford, Holstein, Schleswig, Hanover, Swedesburg, Luxemburg, Holland, Calmar, Norway, and Ringsted. Denmark in Lee County, however, was settled by

Typical Iowa home in the einteen nineties

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     The following names of Iowa town seem especially fitting for a prairie state with groves and streams: Woodland, Garden Grove, Prairieburg, Bloomfield, Greenfield, Gladbrook, Eagle Grove, Strawberry Point, Plover, Curlew, Clear Lake, Wheatland, and Fruitland.

     One can't help but smile at names as Hard Scratch, Climbing Hill, Jolley, Mount Joy, Morning Sun, and What Cheer; but they are all on the map of Iowa.

     Some Iowa towns display signs indicative of their pride or aspirations. One little burg asks outsiders to watch it grow; another proclaims itself the biggest little town in that section of the State. Several claim to be the cleanest town in Iowa. One larger city in central Iowa proudly proclaims that it is the best city in the world.

Questions and exercises: Approximately how old are the oldest towns in Iowa? Why did so many of the early settlers want to start towns? Where were many of the towns located? Write a list of the towns and cities named in this chapter and the counties in which they are located.

The present State Capitol of Iowa