history

The people of Cherokee waited in 1869. They waited for the railroad to come. There were only thirty-nine families on the lonely northwestern Iowa prairie at Cherokee. Sioux City was the nearest place, sixty miles and an eightday round trip away. There would never be very many people at Cherokee without a railroad - but the railroad was coming!

A man bought twenty acres of land in the little settlement and marked it off for town lots. He opened a general store and planned to have his town ready when the railroad came. Soon there was a newspaper, livery stable, and blacksmith. An attorney and physician set up practice. Cherokee was ready.

Finally the railroad owners decided exactly where the railroad route would go. The track curved in and out of the beautiful Little Sioux Valley, making a horseshoe bend. When the rails were laid they were one mile south-west of the town! The business people decided it was better to be as closed as possible to the railroad depot, so they moved their businesses over one mile to be nearer to it.

The town of Cherokee grew rapidly after the railroad arrived. More homes and businesses sprang up, built with lumber brought in on railroad cars. In just one year over two thousand people arrived to live in Cherokee County. Farm people settled on the surrounding prairie and began shipping their produce to market on the railroad. The first people of Cherokee had been right. The railroad had helped their town to grown.

A general store in Cherokee, two years after the town moved to be next to the railroad.

Source: history.iowa.gov
Original Source: THE GOLDFINCH (ISSN 0278-0208) is published four times per school year, September, November, February and April by the Iowa State Historical Department, Office of the State Historical Society, 402 Iowa Avenue, Iowa City, Iowa 52240. Available by the yearly subscription in quantities of ten for $ 24. Second class postage paid at Iowa City, Iowa. POSTMASTER: send address changes to: THE GOLDFINCH, Office of the State Historical Society, 402 Iowa Avenue, Iowa City, Iowa 52240)