Jasper Co. IAGenWeb
Past and Present of Jasper Co.

CHAPTER XXIV
MARIPOSA TOWNSHIP

Past and Present of Jasper County Iowa
B.F. Bowden & Company, Indianapolis, IN, 1912


Mariposa Township is the second from the east and lies on the north line of the county, comprising congressional township No. 81, range 17 west. It is almost entirely a prairie township, having a few small streams. Its soil is fertile and its farms are among the most valuable and productive of any in the county. To its north is Marshall County; to its east is Hickory Grove Township; to its south is Kellogg Township and on its west is Malaka Township. Its population in 1905 was placed in the state enumeration reports as being six hundred and twelve.

Mariposa was organized in the month of February 1857, by the county judge then in office, The record says, "Ordered that there be a new township formed by the name of Mariposa, bounded as follows: Commencing at the northeast corner of township 81, range 18; thence west to the northwest corner of said township; thence south to the range line to the southwest corner of section 19, in township 80, range 18; thence on the section line to the southeast corner of section 24 in said township and range; thence north on the range line to place of beginning."

Among the first to enter government land in this township were: Benjamin Springer, in the fractional half of the northwest quarter of section 7, on May 15, 1854; Almond Bird, in the southeast of section 33, July 1, 1854.

The settlement prospered and the lands became equally valuable to that of older and timbered portions of the county. In 1878 the records show that this township had a personal tax valuation amounting to $40,322, on which they paid into the treasury the sum of $700. In 1877 the total value of all taxable property, personal and real, was $218,239, which caused the taxpayers to deposit in the county funds the sum of $33,365.13.

This township has always kept abreast with the average township in Jasper County in the matter of roads, bridges and schools, the people being fully up-to-date and possessed of the true American spirit of "go-ahead." With the advent of the rural mail delivery and the telephone system in the county, Mariposa has been greatly benefited by these necessities, as viewed from a modern farmer's standpoint.

The schools, churches, etc., connected with this township are treated in general chapters on these topics, hence need not here be repeated.

Transcribed by Ernie Braida in July 2003