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MILESTONES OF PROGRESS

       The first mayor of Stanwood was J. N. Boling. Over a period of fourteen years he was elected to this office several times, but it seems he did not serve continuously. It was during one of his terms as mayor that the town records were destroyed by fire. One result of this fire was that the Kolhase addition was never recorded with the county recorder and therefore never became an official part of the town. This addition was to have included the land from the present Ray Linder home south to Highway 30, east on that road and then north to a line east of the Hoyman farm, now the Harry Hegarty farm.

       Another result of the fire mentioned above was that the town had to be resurveyed. Four more feet west of the proposed town hall was discovered. When the town hall was built this extra land was used. That town hall is now referred to as “the old fire station.”

       Electricity came to Stanwood in 1913. Previously the street lights were kerosene lamps on posts—on some of the street corners. Each evening the village lamplighter would take a large can of kerosene oil on a push cart, go from post to post, filling the lamps with oil, cleaning the lamp chimneys, and then lighting the lamps. Since the original electric light installation, new and updated street light fixtures have taken their place. This year vapor lights are to be installed along Highway 38 through town, that is, on Ash Street.

       Stanwood’s city water tower was built one year after the town got electricity. There was as much controversy over getting the city water system as there was to be years later in getting the city sewer system. One of the workmen who helped build the tower was Harold “Spike” LaPlant. In 1927 when the tower was cleaned and repaired, Phyllis LaPlant Portewig helped her father, “Spike,” do the work.

       Construction of the Lincoln Highway (Route 30) across Cedar County was started in March 1927. It was an unusually wet spring and summer with mudholes developing in the road where there never had been any before. Despite the delay caused by those conditions, construction was completed on schedule and the road was open to traffic in November 1927. The closing of the Cedar County gap in the road made Highway 30 a hard surfaced road to the Atlantic Ocean. In 1954 this great road was widened.

       It was in 1928 that Highway 38 was paved northward on what is now Main Street, past the Methodist Church and west through the main business district, then north on Ash Street. The route of this highway through Stanwood was slightly changed in 1952. It now uses Ash Street entirely, leaving Route 30 at the Lutheran Church corner.

       Town records show that the specifications for the city sewer system and treatment plant were filed with Mayor B. F. Young in 1950. Hennessey Brothers of Cedar Rapids installed the main sewer lines. Streets were named and street signs put up in 1962-’63. In 1964 a combination town hall-fire station was built. The town purchased an ambulance in 1966. In the same year a contract was signed for weekly garbage collection. The town dump was then closed and the site graded.

       In 1880 the population of Stanwood was 302; five years later it had grown to 420. In 1900 there were five fewer of us, but by 1960 the census showed 598 citizens. The assessed value of the town was $194,000 in 1900. In 1968 the assessed value on real estate and land in the corporate limits was $630,625.

       Mayors of Stanwood during the past forty years: Dr. C. H. Waite, Louis Portewig, Russell Rhoads, Sr., L. W. Meyer, John Smeltzer, B. F. Young, Carl Wigger, C. L. Hanks and Virgil Walters.