Hope Hollow - This settlement was the first stopping place for Wilson Brewer and his family as they moved up the Boone River in 1850. Its approximate location was in SW Sec. 31-88-25 of what is now called Independence Township. He wintered here and named the area Hope Hollow because he and his family hoped for a better life in Iowa.

With Brewer were his nephew, William Brewer, and William Stanley and his family. Brewer staked out a claim just south of what was later called Bone's Mill, but he soon sold out to his nephew and continued upstream the next spring to found Newcastle and become the first settler in what we now call Webster City.