The daily Gate City. [volume] (Keokuk, Iowa) 1855-1916, 1911-07-18
A Half Century of Iowa.

Marshalltown Times Republican:
Marvel upon marvel. Miracle above
miracle, each succeeding day flower
and fruit of accomplishment in itself,
with what appalling speed the world
do move" And how iowa sticks in
front of this swift and swallowlike
fight of the new and marvellous!
When Peter A. Dey, who died but
yesterday, was division engineer of
the Rock Island railroad and General
Dodge was one of the rodmen of the
survey for the first railway across
Iowa, we are told that THE settle
ments in Iowa then were confined al
most entirely to the country between
Davenport and Iowa City. From Iowa
City west to Des Moines there were
very few people. and from twelve
miles west Of Des Moines to Council
Bluffs there were none 1t might
have been added that all the north
half of Iowa was a wilderness of
prairie. that the little settlements
about the lead mines at Dubuque and
a few scattered communities here and
there fighting back the wilderness
was Iowa north of the thriftier and
more compact settlements OF the ex-
IRENE southern section; that Iowa
was but eight years from its birth into
statehood; that the few trails across
the state were traversed by canvas
covered wagons drawn by oxen driven
| by men who walked beside their teams
and 1t should be set in bold relief be-
! side these recollections that this man
/ who had just died was in the prime of
| his vigor then, that Dodge survives in
a hale old age, and that this period of
( which we speak when Iowa was a
! prairie wilderness open to presumption
4 and its fertile fields on the market at
s1.25 an acre was but ffty-eight years
/ ago; that men We meet in business
| and on the streets OF Marshalltown
were beginning their careers and
that at least one active business an
of this city was forty-four years old
4 on the day when Dey and Dodge be-
gan their labors on the survey OF
Iowa's first railroad. Then we shall
| begin to realize the marvel Of half a
century of progress in Iowa. Won
der Of wonders, the fin de seicle of the
Nineteenth and the first decade Of the
| Twentieth centuries
The OK teams have long passed
through the cooling room of innumer-
able Iowa packing houses The wag-
ons have fallen into dust with the
| yokes and the goads The men who
drove them are whisking across Iowa
and In and out OF her multitudinous
towns and cities, through her popu-
lous countrysides past $3.50 an acre
farms in automobiles at thirty miles
an hour. The flying machines at
which We smiled in fatuous ignorance
Will be in Marshalltown July 20 to
challenge the birds in their own ele.
ment. The wires OF the telephone
have strung the farm houses and the
city residences and the stores and
factories of Iowa on single string
! The state in which there were very
few people Is gridironed with rail
4 roads and towns with busy, contert
ed, prosperous and happy people. II
leads the world as the core Of fertility
of the Mississippi valley. And men
who trayersed It as a wilderness re
main and live to tell US from Iowa
City west to Des Moines there were
few and from Des s4oines to Council
i Bluffs there were none
4 Stop, you busy man of 1911 and give
thanks for the age you live In. Hush