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    Red Oak
    Red Oak
    Red Oak
    Ebook197 pages1 hour

    Red Oak

    By S. M. Senden

    ()

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    About this ebook

    Where the Red Oak Creek flowed into the Nishnabotna River, thick groves of walnut, oak, and cottonwood trees crowded about their banks. This gentle intersection of waterways was to become the junction of railroads, highways, and so many people s lives. The seeds of the hopes and dreams of early pioneers where planted in the fertile soil. Nurtured by the promise of the railroad, the town began to grow and earned the honor of becoming the county seat. With the building of the railroad, Red Oak Junction was regarded second only to Deadwood as a wild outpost on the western frontier. With the completion of the railroad, the laborers left, taking that reputation with them, and Red Oak blossomed into a booming city directed by the strong personalities of the city fathers who sought to have it be a leader of culture, building, technological improvements, and businesses in the state. Fires, grasshoppers, hailstorms, and floods could not dampen the indomitable spirit of those who have lived in Red Oak through the years.
    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherArcadia Publishing
    Release dateNov 24, 2008
    ISBN9781439636787
    Red Oak
    Author

    S. M. Senden

    The images of the museum archives of the Montgomery County Historical Society document the evolution of a city from four small houses and one general store on a prairie to a thriving city that is the county seat of Montgomery County. S. M. Senden is the director of the Montgomery County Historical Society Museum, a forensic artist, and a historian with a background in ancient archaeology.

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      Red Oak - S. M. Senden

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      INTRODUCTION

      Iowa was a part of the Louisiana Purchase in 1803 but the area was closed to white settlers until the end of the Black Hawk Wars in 1832. In 1836, the government relocated the Iowa Nation, who had lived on the land for generations, to a reservation so that the eastern part of the territory might be settled. It was from these people that the name of the territory was given.

      In 1837, the United States moved the Pottawattamie, Chippewa, and Ottawa Nations to southwest Iowa. The Pottawattamie, led peacefully by Billy Caldwell, left the village of Chicago, resettling into five villages in the Council Bluffs area traveling through what was to become Montgomery County. Eastern Iowans considered western Iowa to be a vast, mysterious wilderness, peopled thickly with vague and dreadful phantoms of imaginary uninhabitableness, and that the area would never be worth anything.

      Before the 1830s, few whites had traveled across the vast prairie of tall grasses, meandering rivers, thick groves of oaks, black walnuts, and cottonwood trees that grew in the deep, fertile soil. Gentle rolling hills with stunningly beautiful vistas stretched out between the Mississippi and Missouri Rivers, wild game was plentiful, and the Omaha and Otoe people camped on the Missouri River hunted in this land, but there is no evidence of permanent settlement inland.

      In 1846, the Pottawattamie sold their land and moved across the Missouri River into Nebraska. On Monday, December 28, 1846, Iowa became the 29th state admitted into the Union. Montgomery County was surveyed in 1851 and officially became a county in 1853.

      The identity of the first white people to cross the prairie was not recorded, but they came, they liked what they found, and some began to settle in the new state of Iowa. Elk, deer, wild turkeys, and other game were plentiful on the prairie and the soil was rich, thick, and black. In 1851, W. C. Matthews was among a hunting party that came to the area where the Red Oak Creek, named for the thick groves of oaks that blazed a fiery red in the fall, emptied into the meandering Nishnabotna River, a Native American name that means crossed in a canoe. On this hunting trip, he recalled that they found the carcasses of two huge elk with magnificent racks intertwined. They would be an easy marker to find when he returned to settle in what was to become Red Oak Township.

      Pleasant Jones squatted on some land in 1852. On March 11, 1854, James Shank filed the first recorded claim in the area. Jones did not formally file a claim until 1855 and in 1857 sold his land to Daniel Remick, who purchased it from him hoping that the rumors he heard were true about the advent of the railroad.

      Frankfort had been chosen as the location for the Montgomery County seat, a courthouse had been erected, and a city was beginning to grow up around it with great hopes for the future.

      However, late in 1853, everything changed. Col. Alfred Hebard was commissioned to do a topographical survey for an east–west route for the railroad from Burlington, on the Mississippi River, to where the Missouri and Platt Rivers merged, placing stakes every 500 feet. Frankfort, beautifully situated on a rise, was passed by. The railroad’s path went three miles to the south on a more level grade, and the area around the junction of the Red Oak Creek and the Nishnabotna River was seen as an ideal location for the railroad to travel. It was already on the only east–west stage route that passed through the area. Remick is said to have heard Hebard remark about a site in Red Oak, Here will be the depot.

      In 1855, a post office was established at Oro, a few miles north of Red Oak, and Joseph Zuber was the postmaster. His wife, Mary Jane Wiley Zuber, is credited with having named the area for the abundance of beautiful Red Oaks growing along the creek. In 1857, the roller mills were built along the Nishnabotna.

      In 1857, Remick pledged 40 acres for a town site. Within six days, the Shanks, whose land was parallel to his, did the same with another 40 acres, thus was the settlement of Red Oak Junction first established. In that same year, Joseph Zuber built the first house, it served as a hotel called Red Oak House. In 1858, Charles H. Lane opened the first store for business to serve the four houses of Red Oak Junction. They built the town on the hopes and dreams of the future where the rivers met, and soon roads and rail lines would meet as well. The dream of the railroad was put on hold as the Civil War spanned five Aprils in time.

      For years there had been a great rivalry between Red Oak Junction and Frankfort. Red Oak had hopes to become the county seat, especially with the promise of the railroad that would come through Red Oak and bypass Frankfort. The railroad meant a town would either grow or perish. With that in mind, there was a movement to have the county seat removed from Frankfort to Red Oak Junction. When it was put to a vote and after the ballots were counted Frankfort emerged as the winner. But H. Campbell pressed for a recount that included all the ballots. There were many cast aside, considered to be incomplete and therefore invalid; the ballots had only the name Red Oak on them, not the full and official name of Red Oak Junction. After a recount of all ballots with both Red Oak and Red Oak Junction were counted. Red Oak emerged as the winner, and it was ordered that the county seat be removed to Red Oak Junction. The records were to be moved by June 1865 and the courthouse by January 1866. Frankfort was not pleased and dragged their feet about the transfer and the removal of the courthouse to Red Oak Junction.

      A group of Red Oak men, their patience worn thin, decided that they would go to Frankfort and remove the courthouse themselves. They loaded it upon skids, and began the

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