It pays to advertise. We wanted to know something about the old “Octogon” house that stood somewhere over by Saunder’s School. We asked for information, and here it is from the pen of Mrs. Olive Cole Smith of Chicago. From what we have heard this “Octogon” house must have been the forerunner of the modern concrete house. At least it appears to have been made of concrete, but being of faulty construction collapsed. It was built about 1860, but who built it is not known. It stood at the northwest corner of Henry and Marion and later it was dismantled and part of its material went into the well-known home of the late W.R. Cole. Mrs. Olive Cole Smith writes of the “Octogon”:

“The Octogon” was made of gravel, held together by some kind of cement. It stood on the hill facing the street one block west of White Street and north of Henry Street. It was a large house. My father, mother and their two children lived on one floor. My grandfather, grandmother, Uncle John and Aunt Delilah Cole and some of the others lived on another floor. There may have been a third floor where Uncle Throop and Aunt Rowena lived or they may have shared the floor with my father and mother.

One rainy day during a long, continued rainy spell, one side fell out. Of course they were sure the rest of the walls would follow. My father was away from home. Uncle John hustled all out in the rain, into an empty house nearby. The remaining walls stood till the first installment of our house on White Street was built, when with considerable labor some of the floors, windows and doors were extracted from the walls that refused to fall and were hard to tear down. With what could be salvaged from the old “Octogon”, they built the first part of the house where most of us were born. My brother Ralph was a very young baby when the wall fell out, so it must have been spring of 1860.

I do not know the name of the man who built the house. Mr. Anthern afterward built his home on the same site, perhaps farther north in the same yard.

*****

Mrs. Smith, also in congratulating Mt. Pleasant, on its proposed ice plant, gently protests against “kicking” the town’s old friend, Cole’s Pond, now that it is not needed. She writes the “News”:
I am glad Mt. Pleasant is to have an ice plant connected with the City Water Works. However, it is not kind to kick the old friend now that you are through with the pond. I am sure the water has been examined again and again and while it has not looked appetizing it has stood the test for germs and the city has not been menaced by using the ice from the pond if it had been, the cows would be in danger that drink the water.

The pond will continue to serve the city. While it remains, the price of ice will be kept within reason. We will again have old fashioned winters when we get re-adjusted to the Sun Spots and a good supply of natural ice is so cheaply put up, it will discourage any thought of high prices. The ice houses will in time cease to grace the landscape, but the pond will continue to freeze perfectly good ice for cooling purposes. If all Mt. Pleasant now starts in to drink iced drinks because of more appetizing ice, the health of the city may demand a return to ice from the pond that prevented many people from drinking iced drinks. You never will know how much sickness has been prevented because Mt. Pleasant used ice from the pond, so at least be fair to an old friend.

*****

And Mrs. Smith is right. It is an old friend and we must not forget it. Spring and autumn, winter and summer, Cole’s Pond has never failed to attract. The pretty pond, the green slopes, the sunshine and the shade, the beautiful trees, have in spring and summer and autumn been a playground for children, young men and maidens and those still older. Our people have skated on the pond, fished on the pond, loafed under the trees on its banks, mused there, dozed there, philosophized there, loved there. It has been the hunting ground for those piscatorially inclined and generations of Isaac Waltons have angled there and not entirely in vain. Its watery expanse has been measured time and time again by embryo civil engineers, the survey of Cole’s Pond by the Wesleyan class in surveying being as much a part of the curriculum as the text itself. And the still higher mathematics, astronomy. The hours that have been spent on the slopes of the pond in that eager search of the heavens for planets, constellations, the big bear and the little bear and the whole menagerie of the stellar country. And to what depths and reaches of eternity have mortal eyes penetrated from the vantage of the banks of Cole’s Pond. Poetry and romance. The whole acreage oozes and reeks with romance. It trickles and drips from the very bows of the trees. It seeps out of the hillsides, streams of the elixir of eternal youth. Beneath the trees on the slopes of Cole’s Pond, stalwart youth and gentle maiden for years have drunk deeply of the cup of love. It is indeed an old friend to the town and its people. May the old slopes be ever green, may the stately trees forever cast their grateful shade, may the old pond keep its liquid level and glimmer and glisten in the sunlight and the moonlight as long as time shall last.

*****

We went to Keokuk the other day, Keokuk made famous by the great dam and the Nifty-Thrift store. Also, the southern terminus of the “K” line which daily, except on the Sabbath, opens up a line of communication for the people living along the fifty mile stretch of country between here and the Gate City. We had not expected to go to Keokuk at all. Why go to Keokuk when you can go somewhere else? But fate in the person of Henry Melcher and the flip of a dollar sent us to Keokuk instead of Burlington. Melcher was buying a ticket for Burlington and looked as if he was buying transportation to the penitentiary. We expected to buy a ticket to Burlington and felt as depressed at the prospect as did Melcher. C.E. McLeran had bought his ticket and looked as if he had heard bad news from somewhere.
“Well, if you feel so badly about it, why don’t you go to Keokuk,” said Melcher.
“We would on the flip of a penny,” we retorted.
“All right,” said Henry, pulling a silver dollar out of his pocket, return car fare we suppose. “Heads it’s Keokuk, tails it’s Burlington.”
He flipped and it was “Keokuk.” Henry wanted to flip again, but we said “No, opportunity seldom knocks at our door. We are going to Keokuk.”

*****

The “Keokuk” branch train pulls for the south at precisely 10:40 a.m. every day except Sundays. Like a good many men we know, the “K” line puts in an idle day on Sunday. But other days, summer and winter, rain or shine, it makes the round trip of fifty miles each way. The train is now in new hands and has been since last July when Conductor Haines retired and Conductor Elzea was brought up from Hannibal and given the run. He had been running out of Hannibal on the Burlington for a long time and hence his transfer here. Mr. Elzea moved here with his good wife, leaving a fine home at Hannibal. They have no children and now live on North Harrison St. John Reichelt and O.E. Kirby are the two brake men to make up the rest of the train crew.

*****

In the old days the “K” line was a joke. It started any convenient time and got there when handy. Sometimes it did not get back the same day. One year, there was registered against the train seventy-nine derailments. The track was neglected, the rails light and worn out, joints down, ties rotted, bridges suspiciously weak and the whole thing about ready to scrap. But it is different now. Many of the bridges have been filled in, many of the grades have been cut down, and some of the curves straightened, thousands of new ties put in, heavy steel rails laid and the whole line is safe and reliable. Last year there were but two serious delays, both engine trouble. Not a derailment during the year. The train clips along from twenty-five to thirty miles an hour and rides very smoothly.

*****

I have often wondered why it was that so little freight traffic was dispatched over the “K” line. Seldom is the train over five cars long. One would think that with a direct line to the south a good deal of bulk freight would be diverted over the “K” line, instead of going two sides of a triangle, that is, east to Burlington and then south to Keokuk. But Conductor Elzea explained why not much freight can be hauled either way over the “K” line. It is not a question of miles, or track or grade, but a question of water and coal. There is no water tank between Mt. Pleasant and Keokuk, nor is there a coal shute. The engine starts from here with its tender full of water and if by overloading it runs out of water the engine simply goes dead and has to be hauled in. As a result of this the train conductor carefully figures out the amount of switching along the road, the condition of the weather and then makes up his train to a tonnage that will not use up all the water. Once or twice the engine had so much work, or so large a train, that the water was used up and the train pulled into Keokuk, and twice recently the last drop of water was in the boilers when the train reached its destination. This lack of water along the line explains why the “K” line train never exceeds 700 tons. Several years ago, it was planned to provide water at Donnellson for the use of the “K” line and the “K-C” line, but it fell through.

*****

What should be done on the “K” line is an improvement of service. At the present time there is one mixed train a day each way, but on week days only. Considering the fine country through which the road passes there should be an improved service. Everything suffers from this infrequent transportation. There should be put on this road one of those new gasoline driven motor cars which carry passenger mail, baggage, and express, and run opposite to the present train. The people are entitled to better service. As we understand it the “K” line is the only branch line in the state of Iowa with but a single train each way per day. A move should be inaugurated to secure this added service.

*****

We had a queer looking train when we started out. There was the engine, a car of coal, a car of merchandise, the combination coach and two cars of cinders on behind. And right here it might be mentioned that last year, nearly two hundred cars of cinders were hauled down the line and used on the road bed. We started on time and with the car full of passengers. That augurs well. On time and full. That’s Conductor Elzea - on time and better still, back on time. Only twice since he went on the run last July has his train missed connections for No. 4 in the evening.

*****

If you keep your eyes open you will see a lot of interesting things as you go to Keokuk over the “K” line. If you get in a train and do nothing but count the low joints, you won’t get much out of it, but if you look and listen you can see an eye full every lapse of a telegraph pole. For instance, the first place of interest was Cole Junction, west of town where the “K” line leaves the main line and has its official designation. There is much to be seen even at Cole Junction. To the north is Cole’s Pond, set down in the midst of green slopes and surrounded by handsome evergreens and deciduous trees among which also nestles the old “Cole” mansion, which for years was the intellectual and social center of town and college circles. It’s a place worth seeing and knowing. Mrs. Olive Cole Smith now owns the place and will always keep it. After leaving the Junction on the right is seen the fine building of the Ditching Plant, a decaying monument to the hopes and endeavors of some of our men to establish industry here on a large scale. It is understood that the monument cost these men about $70,000.00. For a while a fine ditching machine was made here but it could not be sold with profit and finally the business was given up and the place eventually went into the hands of traders and now is owned by strangers who are doing nothing to preserve what is really a fine industrial plant. There is a move on to get the Burlington railroad to put in a “Y” there on which to turn engines and then take out the turntable in town, which is not only an eyesore but a source of needless expense and annoyance. Only small engines can be turned, whereas if the “Y” was put in the largest engines could be turned.

*****

The next turn of the road brings the train into Mt. Pleasant’s industrial center. The Gas works, the Tile Factory, and the Silo plant. Also the graveyard of many an infant industry. Down there by the Gas plant was a favorite location for planting young infant industries and there they all died one by one. Once there was a woolen mill there and a chair factory, and a planing mill and may be a salted gold mine or an oil proposition. It is all the same. The Gas works is stable and a lusty going concern. So is the Tile works, but the Silo plant appears to be going the way of the ones of the dim and distant past. At the Gas plant we set out the car of coal. That company always has plenty of coal on hand which means plenty of gas.

*****

Just south of the Gas plant is the West Washington Street crossing. This a marked place, for here the Iowa Highway Commission proposes to cross the railroad with the Blue Grass trail. That is, come in from Burlington on East Washington, proceed west on Washington over or under the “K” line and west to just south of the first overhead bridge over the main line of the Burlington road and thence north. The highway commission has not lost sight of this route, remember that, and in some ways, it would not be so bad either. Passing over the proposed primary highway, we enter an area of particular interest. On the right upon the crest on the hill is the home of Mr. Joseph Thompson, the most persistent democrat ever developed. He would vote for King Tut if he was a democrat. There is a historical interest in the large brick buildings owned and occupied by Mr. Thompson. These two buildings were built by the state of Iowa in the 70s to house the Girl’s Reform School. It operated for a number of years and then the school was transferred to Mitchellville. Some one slipped a cog in letting this institution get away from us. On the left are two houses on Clay Street, well remembered by the older of our people. The Cole home, now owned by Mrs. Mason and once the center of college and town social gaiety and across the street, the home of the late James A. Throop, with its grove of handsome trees. Next comes the Grove, Mt. Pleasant’s play ground where the city is spending money to a fine purpose, one of the handsome public parks among the smaller towns of the state. And upon the crest of the hill is the Henry County Hospital which is proving a blessing to the people of this part of the state.

*****

But the train is hurrying on. The regular engineer is off sick and a new one is at the throttle and he is running very recklessly. He has not learned the trick of coasting down hill. Half the time going to Keokuk you are coasting down hill and the other half, pulling up hill. Some of the grades are so steep that the boiler head raises so high that the water is all back over the fire box or else it is all down at the head of the boiler and the fire box is dry. After leaving the Grove, we glided through a cut and came out at the site of the old Pork House. There is nothing left of this old local industry, but it may be interesting to know that many years ago a start was made to rival Armour and Swift in the pork packing line and William Davis, long since dead, built a very ambitious pork packing establishment along the line of the railroad and for a time it promised a real future. And then it died. For many years it gradually drifted into ruin and finally C.B. Goe bought what was left and out of the best of the material built his present garage on Jefferson Street. Just a little beyond is the disposal plant of the city sewerage system and then the train thunders over a long trestle which spans “Snipe Run” just below its confluence with “Saunder’s Branch.” These streams are not navigable. “Snipe Run” starts at the now nearly filled up pond at the Canning Factory then south and wiggles along until it crosses East Washington at the international tournament grounds for horse shoe throwing near George Crane’s, thence on until it reaches the old city cemetery, thence by the Dawson place where formerly was operated a brewery and to the railroad. “Saunder’s Branch” drains ???, west watershed of the town starting up at the Willowbank School, thence over to and down by Cole’s Pond, then by the Gas plant through the Grove by the pork house to “Snipe Run” and then following the right of way of the “K” line, empties into the creek at the covered bridge by the quarry, thence into the river, thence into the Mississippi and on down to the sea. How romantic! How often I have cast a stick or a leaf on a banana skin into the placid bosom of the branch and mooned over its journey to the rolling sea. I nearly wrote a poem on a long, once down there in the Grove. I was sitting on a log I mean when I was seized with the vine afflatus. But I blew up before a poem developed. I think that I was playing a game of golf with I.P. Van Cise, George E. Throop, H.E. Snider, one or two other devotees of the game. Perhaps W.E. Keeler was along. I know that at every game someone was driven into poetry or profanity, which after all are mere manifestations of about the same state of mind.

*****

One of the most interesting places in Iowa is right here along both sides of the “K” line, at what is known as the “Quarries”. Incidentally, thirty-five years ago these quarries were a scene of wonderful activity and during their workings the town reached the zenith of its population. Perhaps like a penitentiary the bigger the stone pile the bigger the population. The Burlington road was being blasted with broken rock and for this purpose the different quarries on both sides of the “K” line were opened up. After being stripped, the lime stone ledges were blown down with black powder then broken by sledges into smaller pieces and then actually broken up by hand into a size from a hens egg to a croquet ball. A man would select a good place close to the ledge and sitting down on a sack of hay go to breaking up rock with his particular hammer. As he broke up the rock it was carefully shoveled into piles so high, so wide and so long like a loaf of bread and there measured and the man was paid so much per cubic yard of broken rock. Switches were run into the quarries and the broken rock was wheeled by hand on to flat cars and each evening the loaded cars were pulled out of the quarry and taken west for ballast of the railroad. When I came here thirty years ago, the men were still breaking rock by hand down there. Thousands of trains of this broken rock was taken out. The Beckwith and the Winters families loomed large in the industrial life of the town then and the pay roll was very heavy. The year I came here was the last of the quarries and there has been no stones broken down there since. Of course, the suspension of the quarries was laid at my door, but I always felt that this was an unjust criticism. Following broken stone for ballast came the demand for burnt ballast and east of town was developed a great ballast pit. I went out to visit it once and the next year it also suspended. Then they went back to gravel, but now and then you hear that the Burlington is going to go back to broken rock and that there is a chance of reopening the “K” line quarries. But there is no cause for real estate to advance down that way yet.

*****

But here is what I was going to get at. One of the richest deposits of fossils were uncovered at the quarries and when I was in College it was quite the thing to spend an afternoon frequently down there looking for fossils, either in the rock or on the floor of the quarry. Thousands of fossils of various kinds were found there. I had a peck of them once, mussels, crinoids, shell fish of all sizes, and there on the flat surface would be traced the sand drifts caused by the lapping of the waves on the ancient bottom of a forgotten sea. Nowadays when looking for fossils we do not get so far from town.

*****

Right here by the quarries still remains the old fills and cuts of the proposed railroad that was to revolutionize north and south transportation. It was a promotion scheme evidently and cost Henry County a vast sum of money. The road came in from the south about as the present “K” line came in, but just as it reached the run at the disposal plant, it turned to the left by the old brewery and crossed South Jefferson Street at the old City Cemetery. Just where it got through town, I am not informed, but it next appears today in the grades up at Stringtown north of town where the approaches to a bridge across Big Creek are still plain. The road was graded more or less as far as Washington. No rails were ever laid. Just the grading, but enough was done to allow of the issue of a heavy bond issue and Henry County in its enthusiasm voted splendidly in support of the new road. The road was never built and the county refused to pay the bonds issued. But the court held otherwise and Henry County was forced to pay the bonds and nearly as much more in interest. Afterwards, the present line was built using much of the old right of way.

*****

It is downhill and very crooked through the quarries, but as pretty as a picture. The train crew was kind enough to go to house cleaning for my benefit and the observation tower in the car was handsomely dusted and the windows washed for my benefit and I was enthroned where I could see everything within and without. The train crew was very nice. I shall never refer to the line again as the “Grapevine route”. I shall refer to its derelations from the straight and narrow way in kindlier language. Just as we whirled around a curve off a bridge near the creek, we passed a point where grows every spring the first trilliums. When I was young and restless I always knew just where to go for the first spring flower. Right up there on a spur looking out to the south will always be found the little white trillium. I shall go down there pretty soon and look for one.

*****

Just this side of the Creek is the new quarry, but deader than a sad mackerel. Another monument to men who have sought to make this a manufacturing center. Thousands of dollars are invested in buildings, machinery, switches. Everything is there which makes for success but rock. A quarry without rock is doomed to die. They can’t lay that failure onto me. I had nothing to do with the distribution of the rock formation of Henry County. This was all done before I got out here. There is rock there to be sure, but it is poor in quality and too much dirt over and in it. They tell me that it is closed down for good.

*****

But we must hurry on. We have gotten to the Creek and it has taken four columns to get there. At this rate it will take a serial story to go to Keokuk and back. Ahead I can see the stack of the engine and out of it smoke and steam is pouring furiously. There is a big hill ahead and the new engineer is going to make that hill or blow up the boiler. We make a rush for that hill like a bull for a red flag. We are going over the top or know the reason for our failure. We roared through the wooden tunnel over the creek and snorted on up the hill. Over to the right was Barton’s Ford and the little lonely cemetery, church now gone, high way closed up, but the graves are still there and in the sunlight were glistening the white head stones on the face of which were chiseled the brief story of those long since returned to dust. And the faithful old evergreens are still there protecting arms thrown out over the beds of the silent sleepers. We made the hill all right and then coasted down to Oakland. Down by the famous old sugar camp and through the fine old trees until through the openings we could see the towering chimney of the Oakland Hydro-electric plant and which has cost somebody nearly as much as the national debt. We stopped at Oakland long enough to throw off a milk can and two passengers and proceeded. The river was pretty low and Oakland was quiet. I could not see whether the plant was running or not. It made no difference anyway, as the juice all goes to Fairfield. The Oakland Club house was there, but its season of social gaiety is over evidently, but to the left and swarming over all creation was the famous Oakland State Park. I never think or write of the State Park, but I am overcome with emotion. I was talking with Curator Harlan of Des Moines about it and he also gave way to his emotions. Whenever the state park is discussed, someone always gives way to their emotions. That state park is the most emotional subject I ever heard of. It is not used yet, although paid for. We leave it with swelling emotions. It will be there when we get back.

*****

From Oakland to Denova is one of the prettiest stretches of country we know of. Glades and groves, hillside and meadow, stately trees and thick growing shrubbery, and the track winding like a corkscrew up and up, hither and thither, on and anon. It is the crookedest section of track I ever saw. You lose all sense of direction. The curves are short and snappy. They double back on another, they crowd and jostle each other. They run in parallels, in triangles, in ellipses, parabolas, hyperbolas, circles, and enescent. They twist and turn, revert and controvert and scramble all the rules and regulations of the orderly processes of geometry and the higher mathematics until the passenger gives up and just hangs to his seat with the consciousness that the same train on the day before emerged from the labyrinth in safety.

*****

It was here that we had our only accident. Our train was one car too long. Behind the coach were still the two cars of cinders. If we had had but one car of cinders there would have been no trouble. Conductor Elzea did not know this. It was the first time he ever hauled two cars of cinders as trailers. Conductor Haines would never have committed that error. He would have hauled one each day. But two cars made the train one car too long and at the worst place in the galaxy of curves the engine slam banged into the last car of cinders.

*****

The engineer being a new man did not know that he was running into the rear of his own train, but thought that an extra work train was on the line ahead of him but stopped in time to reduce the impact to a severe jolt. It took him a long time to realize that his own engine had run into the rear of his own train. We backed out of that circle and left one car on the track and pulled the rest of the train to Denova and then went for the other car and pulled that up and went on. Mere words fail to describe the situation. Kirby tried it and merely got blue in the face and stuttered. Reichelt tried to express himself, but all he could do was spout brimstone and the paint on the side of the mail compartment is all blistered with the heat of his feelings. Conductor Elzea contained himself admirably, but as for the engine crew we went into Salem without the necessity of throwing more coal into the fire box. As for the passengers, they were in a stupor.

*****

At Denova we stopped for a can of milk. To the left was the old Denova store, now gone the way of so many of the old cross roads stores. Rural delivery and the automobile. A mile further south was the Cedar Creek church, one of the liveliest religious organizations in the county, but we did not see any creek or any cedar trees. Perhaps it was named for the Cedars of Lebanon. From Denova to Salem the country is level and good. About like Canaan township and the improvements are fine. This stretch of country is known as the Salem prairie and no better ground can be found. Considerable fall plowing was noted, also that there the tendency is toward red hogs. We reached Salem on time.

*****

Salem is the best place on the line between Mt. Pleasant and Keokuk, Donnellson being a close second. Lots of business at Salem and lots of livestock shipped out. An average of a car a day they said, and running even with Houghton. A.A. Carlson got off here as he had closed a deal for a Victrola. Salem is entitled to a special chapter, so we pass it up for the present.

*****

We left Salem on time, everybody in good humor and steam blowing off at the engine. The next point of interest was the old Friends cemetery in the south part of town. Nearly all of Salem’s illustrious and live ones are there, Phillip Brody isn't however. Nearby is the old Whittier College building. When I was in college here, Whittier College was a standard school and doing fine work. Its graduates are scattered all over the earth. But it could not live and so died and is now the high school. Further on, we came to the Hartley place. Big barns, broad fields, great bands of sheep and many hogs, but we saw no horses and looked in vain for the buffalo and elk. A little tenant house is being occupied by the family recently burned out. The famous Hartley orchards need pruning or spraying. There are thousands of trees of every variety of apples, but they look disconsolate and dejected.

*****

But we must hurry on. The track is fairly level and straight and the new engineer steps on’er and gets up a speed of thirty miles an hour. We left the cinders at Salem on the main line and when we come back, we shall be very careful or we will have another head on. South of Salem we cross over the Burlington branch that runs from Ft. Madison to Ottumwa and gives service to Hillsboro. It has two trains a day and ??? puts it over the “K” line. On we swept with reckless speed. Houghton and Hamil were reached on time. Milk was thrown up, mail on and off, a few passengers exchanged “Hello Bill” “Hello Frank” and on we hasten. LaCrew and then Donnellson, where we crossed the “K-C” branch of the Burlington, but that did not stop us. Set out another car of cinders, more milk. Dairying must be good down on the “K” line. Milk going down. Eggs coming back. We did not stay long at Donnellson, Charleston, New Boston and then over the main line of the Santa Fe and on to Mount Clara, Mount Hermon, or Hebron or some other kind of an imaginary elevation. More milk. Then we rolled into Summitville. I asked John Reichelt why they named such a low-down place Summitville. He said that passengers going south reached the zenith of endurance at this place and from then on descended into a state of abject resignation. They were nearing Keokuk, you see. The next stop was Mooar. This is a bigger thing than you realize from the cupola of a combination coach. One of the largest plants for the manufacture of black powder is located here. On account of its dangerous proclivities, the plant is away off down under the bluffs, but about three hundred men are employed. It really is a suburb of Keokuk. More milk. From Mooar to Keokuk, it is just like the path of sin, so easy to slide down. The engineer moves the train just enough to get steerage way and then shuts off steam and lets her go. If his brakes broke, the train would run to Alexandria, Missouri. We went down this grade full tilt. Around curves back and forth, but always downhill. It is evident that we had been climbing up hill for forty-five miles and would go down in five. Pike’s Peak has nothing in the way of thrills on the descent into Keokuk. But we got there on time. The train crew lifted me down from the cupola and carried me into the station with admonition that they would return in just an hour and a half. And they did.

(“Mt. Pleasant News”, March 1, 1923, pages 1 & 3)

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Resource provided by Henry County Heritage Trust, Mount Pleasant, Iowa; transcription done by Liam Christensen, University of Northern Iowa Public History Field Experience Class, Spring 2025.

Contributed to Henry County IAGenWeb, March 2025.