Iowa Almanac
Iowa Almanac -- Wednesday, August 07, 2024
The train reaches the station, more from the Iowa Almanac in a moment. Aloha! Attach at the island! Right here in Iowa. Hi there, Andy Peterson, joined Gary Dolphin and I as we host the annual Tate and Dotty Cummins Memorial Pineapple Gala to benefit Camp Courageous. It's Friday, August 16th at 6 p.m. at the Double Tree Convention Center in downtown Cedar Rapids. Enjoy a Hawaiian dinner, live and silent auction, and more. To view auction items or for tickets, simply go to kibcorages.org and we'll see you there! Calhoun County and Western Iowa wasn't always called that. In honor of the SAC and Fox Indians, two Iowa counties were named SAC and Fox in 1851. But a friend of former U.S. Vice President John C. Calhoun did not like the name Fox and got the county named for Calhoun two years later. The county seat wasn't always Rockwell City either. It was originally Lake City but was moved when the tracks of the Illinois Central Railroad were laid through the county in 1870 and Manson and Pomeroy sought the designation. Ultimately though, leaders decided a more central location was best and Rockwell City became the county seat. The town was planted in 1876 and named for its founders John and Charlotte Rockwell. The importance of being on a rail line with a regular train schedule was not lost on Mr. Rockwell. At that time, the survival of cities depended on it. So in 1880, when John Rockwell learned that Des Moines businessman Frederick Hubble was bringing his railroad as far as Jefferson, Rockwell went to Des Moines and promised to give Hubble half of the building lots in the town if Hubble would bring the railroad to Rockwell City. Hubble did. And the first train arrived there on August 7th, 1882. After the arrival of the railroad, the population of Rockwell City doubled in a year, making John Rockwell's trade a pretty good investment. All that growth came after the first train arrived in Rockwell City on this date in 1882. And that's Iowa Almanac for August 7th. There's more online at IowaAlmanac.com. Until tomorrow, I'm Jeff Stein.