Chapter 9, page 69-73

Sometimes the rise and fall of a town may seem mysterious, especially if it was established in those early days when public records were not always kept. Such a community was that of Louden which was located in Center township, for it has been possible to find only the sketchiest evidence of the town in histories and early-day accounts of Mills County. Yet there exists in the archives of the Mills County Abstract Company in Glenwood, an excellent plat of the town, its size including one hundred eighty-six blocks, each block divided into twelve lots - nearly twice as many blocks as the present city of Malvern.

This was Louden. It was located in the southwest quarter of Section 23, the northwest quarter of Section 27, the east quarter of the northeast quarter of Section 28 and approximately the southeast quarter of Section 21, all in Center township. About two-thirds of this plat was on the east side of present Highway 275 and the other third to the west. The north-south street of Ada was on the section line and is now Highway 275.

Some twenty blocks of Louden occupied the site of the earlier town of Fayette. The southeast part of Louden was the later site of Hillsdale. The plat shown on another page in this book is a reproduction of one copied in 1912 by Seth Dean, Surveyor. Mr. Dean noted that he had copied a plat made in 1858 by Gustave Seeger, County Surveyor, and that it included portions of a plat of Fayette made in 1855, and of a plat of Hillsdale made in 1870.

Mr. Dean indicated that all of the streets in Louden were surveyed for 60 feet width, except Main and Broadway, which were 70 feet. No doubt these were to serve as major business arteries. A full block public square was located between these wider streets and bordered also by Seventh and Eighth Streets.

At the east border of the town, bounded by College Street on the west and Fifth and Seventh Streets on the north and south was a four-block reserved space labeled "Seminary Square." It gives substance to a story heard many years ago by the author, but never verified by any public record he could find, that the citizens of Louden, having great hope for the development of their new community, had planned to build a college and the Seminary Square, no doubt was reserved for a site for this. The story continued that some funds had been raised and the first building started when an unusually bad storm struck the area, wrecking both the new building and hope for a major educational institution. At that time, 1858 or 1859, Tabor College was developing into an influential school and today it would seem ambitious indeed to try to develop two institutions of higher learning only a half dozen miles apart, especially in so sparsely settled an area.

Fayette, reported Elmer Stone when he wrote a brief historical sketch of Mills County for the 1910 Atlas, was a community started some three miles or more east of Glenwood which had but a short career. It was reported that several of the buildings of that community were moved to Louden - but the plat copied by Mr. Seth Dean indicated that no moving would have been necessary.

Mr. Stone also reported that "An ambitious attempt was made by a promoter to found an educational institution. The attempt was a failure and Louden gradually disappeared." Evidently it had faded well before the time the Burlington & Missouri River Railroad was completed across Mills County in the fall of 1869 or it would have been revived by that facility.

Louden's east-west streets were given numbers for names. First being the north boundary street and Fifteenth the last at the south. But the north-south streets carried names. Starting from the east were Brooks, College, Main, Broadway, Grayson, Nuckolls, Corning, Ada, Coolbaugh, Davis and Prairie. While there was a project two blocks wide that extended five more blocks to the west. the north-south streets for this section had no names on the plat. A study of the full Hillsdale plat shows that its West Street (which was also its west boundary) is the same as Ada Street on the Louden plat: and that Hillsdale's Fourth Street (now County Road H-38) was also the south boundary of Louden.

That Louden's ambitious plat was never filled is suggested by the location of the Mt. Olive Methodist Protestant Church, which would have been near the northwest corner of Ada and Tenth Streets. But when the church building burned, it was reported that services were moved to the Louden school house, which was north two or three blocks and on the east side of the street.

Some fifteen years elapsed between the time of the survey for Louden's plat and the platting of Hillsdale. It is logical to assume that had any appreciable part of Louden's commercial community survived when the surveys for the coming railroad were made just following the Civil War, that community would have developed and there would have been no need for the new town of Hillsdale.

A post office had been established at Fayette July 24, 1856, with Levin Anthony as postmaster. This was renamed Mt. Olive June 20, 1860, but was closed just a few weeks later on July 30. It was reopened October 16, 1861, with Henry A. Tolles as postmaster and discontinued September 5, 1867. These offices must have served the proposed community of Louden and the fact that no post office had been named Louden, is evidence that the village never developed to an important, or even viable, status.