The Bismarck tribune. [volume] (Bismarck, N.D.) 1916-current, 1933-08-16
Mira, Ia., Is Noticed Again
Through Publicixed Name
letters Conform With Abbrevia-
ton For Industrial Re-
covery Act

NNd, La, mug. S.-AO dt AcooV ~
people in the country, the magic
term MIRA that everybody is learn
ing to say these days, is an old story.
Those 20 are the population Of this
Iowa village Of nine houses which
was named Mira IS years ago when
its first house was built.
Mira doesn't mean National Indus
trial Recovery Act to them, or at
least didn't until few weeks ago.
It just meant home, the only town
in the United States Of that name,
according to the Postal Guide.
This town, with its graSS-grown
railroad track, its general store and
postoffice at the intersection Of two
dirt roads in Lime Creek township,
Washington county, is normally Re-
publican. But it expects to gain by
the New Deal, just the same.
BOOM TOWN IN 's2
"And it's about time" observes
John Whetstine, 84-year-old whittier,
Nira's oldest inhabitant. 1.-THE presi-
dent talked sense the night he ex-
planned his plan," went on Whetstine,
the shavings falling rhythmically
from a soft-wood stick. Everybody
in Nira-all 20 Of us-is for him."
Mira looks forward to something
like its boom days Of 1892. When that
boom collapsed, the little hamlet fell
asleep, and it has been quietly dis
migrating ever since. Two OF its
three stores closed in 1925. The front
of the other fell in recently, exposing
shelves OF canned goods, candy
counter, and the postmaster, E. j.
Yoder.
POLITICS A MYSTERY
BY long tradition Republican, Mira
turned Democratic in the landslide
Of last March. Or did it? Residents
are divided on the point, and as the
Mira voting is pooled with the Lime
Greek township tabulations, no one
can be sure. But the New Deal has
already brought better feeling to
Mira, both Postmaster Yoder and
farmer Ross Miller agree.
conditions around here aren't
really any better than they were six
months ago." appraises Miller, but
people feel better. They feel good
times are on the way, and that We'll
share in 'em. We ought to, with the
name we got"
Postmaster Yoder, who also ope-
rates the store, is awaiting word from
the other MIRA in Washington as to
what is expected OF him in the way
Of salary increases and increased en-
ployment.
TWO daughters and a son help him
with the store, he says, and one
daughter, Orpha, serves as assistant
postmaster But Yoder faces real
dilemma when it comes to increasing
employment.
II don't see how I can very well put
anyone else at work at the store"
Yoder laments, because there is no
body else on hand to be put to work.
But want to do whatever can"
THE RUSH Inland OUT
Once there was cheese factory at
Mira. Those were the days! And
there was the great coal rush OF 80.
Workmen digging a well struck what
they thought was q six-foot vein Of
coal. It was a second Klondike! But
the boom collapsed when they found
that whatever that six-foot vein
might have been it wasn't coal. The
promoters, the prospectors, the set
tiers, vanished, and then the cheese
factory vanished, too.
Mira, disillusioned, sank back to the
condition that President Cleveland
described as inocuous desuetude.
Since 1892, then, Mira quietly resigned
itself to watching its walls sag, its
siding warp, its paint flake off, for
getting the outside world, and by that
world forgotten.
= = y
THE FIRST NIRA-A PUZZLE
Eight families, 20 Inhabitants, five
Of them children. That IS the town
whose name IS more often in the
papers today than that Of any other.
John Whetstine reflectively watch
ed q white shaving curl up under his
knife and drop to the ground. He
recalled how he came to Mira and
helped build the first house there, SIS
years ago. He came from Indiana in
q wagon train. 1--WE stopped here
because land was cheap" he said
cts still cheap"
Mira was named for Mira Moffit.
the first white child born in the
Or was it the other
way-was Mira Moffit named for the
town? Nobody remembers.
Most Indian elephants are broken