History of Cherokee County |
History of Cherokee County |
| Northwestern Iowa in 1878 Northwestern Iowa is a somewhat indefinite expression, yet may be said to embrace some fifteen or twenty counties in the north-western portion of the state, bounded on the west by the Big Sioux and Missouri Rivers, on the north by Minnesota, and extending east and south a hundred miles or more. It embraces the newest part of the state, and consequently is the most sparsely settled, yet is the home of 100,000 people, the seat of several populous towns, the busy mart of extensive mining and manufacturing interests, and a field that supplies five great lines of railway with the freight products that might suffice a state. This extensive region is drained by noble rivers and almost innumerable small streams; its soil is rich and fertile, its grasses the very finest in the world, and its capabilities in grain or stock producing absolutely inexhaustible. It has been called the great treeless plain of Iowa, a term that might have suited it before being settled, but now, with its tens of thousands of beautiful groves, the term will not apply. Along its principal rivers are heavy bodies of timber, so much that saw mills turn out annually very large quantities of native lumber, which, before the advent of railways, was the only kind in use. The Illinois Central Railroad Company leased in 1870 the principal line of railway passing through this belt, connecting it with Chicago as a great through line, and operating it in a superb manner, with a full complement of rolling stock, and abundance of everything to make it what it really is, a first class line of travel. This road runs in Iowa from Dubuque, on the Mississippi, to Sioux City, on the Missouri, and as it approaches within one hundred miles of its western terminus it penetrates the very garden of the state, crosses high table lands, sweeps over rivers, winds along the banks of silvery rivulets or circles around the billowy bluffs and everywhere traverses a land that no sketching can over paint nor the floweriest poetry exaggerate. In the center of this beautiful Northwestern Iowa is located Cherokee County. Source: History of Cherokee County, Published by Cherokee County Historical Society, based on Cherokee Times articles, January 1878 |
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