Ghost Towns of Mills County, Iowa ST MARY Chapter 2, pages 11-16
The first white settlement in Mills County was established nearly a dozen years before the Pottawattamie came. Captain Merriweather Lewis and Captain William Clark made
their historic journey up the Missouri river in 1804, reaching the southwest corner of what is now Iowa (it was then included in the Territory of Michigan) July 18th of
that year. Their journal, which was a masterpiece of shrewd observation and poor spelling, described the high bluffs along the river, the lack of timber, the type of soil
or rock and the wildlife seen.
One notation, as listed by Dr. William J. Petersen in his The Story of Iowa, strikes a familiar condition today: “Saw a Dog nearly starved on the bank, gave him som meet,
he would not follow . .” Current visitors can still find stray dogs almost any place in the county. Lewis and Clark also found excellent catfish in the Missouri’s turbid
waters, and a large number of rattlesnakes. “Musquitos so thick and troublesom that it was disagreeable and painfull to Continue a moment still,” were noted. But they were
able to live very well as their hunters brought in ample supplies of turkeys, geese, deer, elk, buffalo and bear; and “our Camp is above the high water level and rich
covered with Grass from 5 to 8 feet high interspersed with copse of Hazel, Plums, Currents. . Rasberries & Grapes of Dift. Kinds . . “
Eight years later a large company of traders came up the river from St. Louis and established a post for the American Fur Company, to trade with the Indians. Colonel Peter A.
Sarpy was the fourth person to be in charge of this post, taking up his duties in 1823. His operations extended to both sides of the river and his settlement on the east
bank was known as Trader’s Point. This was in what is now the northeast corner of Mills county, opposite the city of Bellevue, Nebraska.
Col. Sarpy, with several other men, established the town of St. Mary, some three miles down the river, in 1836 and this soon developed enough to have not only the usual
commercial establishments to serve pioneers heading west, and the Indians, but also its own newspaper, The St. Mary Gazette, started in 1853 with Col. Sarpy as owner
and a young man named Reed as editor and printer. W. H. Taft, who wrote a history of Mills County in 1884 that was published serially in The Malvern Leader, stated that
St. Mary was second only to Glenwood in size and importance.
A peculiar feature of St. Mary, wrote Mr. Taft, was “its windmills of which several were in operation, some for flouring purposes, others for making shingles and running
machinery of various kinds. Two of them were large, well-built structures, and with their enormous vertical sails, reminded one of another flat country, Holland, as the
books describe it: He pointed out that most of the settlers were from the Netherlands and Germany, with a sprinkling of French.
St. Mary was located on a low ridge about a miles east of the river. “The town was well laid out, the streets were wide and level, with neat residences occupying well-kept
grounds filled with shrubbery and flowers charmed the eye. Two hotels or taverns, a number of stores and a Catholic chapel gave evidence that the wants of wayfarers and
consumers could be supplied and the consolations of religion administered,” wrote Mr. Taft. The village had not post office of its own but the facility at Cerro Gordo, a
nearby settlement, served it. The Cerro Gordo post office was established September 6, 1853, by Daniel E. Reed and discontinued August 15, 1862.
Col Sarpy acquired considerable property along the river in Mills County and Nebraska, in addition to his interest in St. Mary, and his ferries. He died in Plattsmouth,
Nebraska, in 1864, “leaving o posterity,” wrote Mr. Taft.
St. Mary enjoyed a vigorous growth and the Mills County Abstract Company has a plat of Engle’s Addition to the town, although no plat of the main village could be located.
They brought 188 lots into the community, in some fifteen blocks.
But the vagaries of the Missouri river decided the fate of this community. In the map of part of St. Marys Township, the river channel of 1851 was more than a mile west
of the town. In a few years it shifted eastward. Within ten years of the death of Col. Sarpy the river had taken all of St. Mary, including all property except such as
could be removed. In fact, it shifted almost to the edge of Oak township at the base of the bluffs at one time before heading slowly west again. Eventually the Missouri
river channel was stabilized in its present position under the Pick-Sloan Project that used upstream dams to minimize floods and control the flow, and rock and piling
abutments to hold the channel.
In 1846, seeing some possibility for profit from ferrying the Mormons across the Missouri as they started their great migration, Col. Sarpy established a ferry at his
post, with Trader’s Point as its eastern, or Iowa, terminal. The first ferries were hazardous and slow and passengers had to help pole or push them across the river,
frequently being carried far downstream from their planned landing point. In the course of time Col. Sarpy obtained a steam ferry and was able to offer better service.
One of the residents of Trader’s Point was a missionary, Henry Allis, who resided there in 1853, having served earlier as representative of the American Board of Foreign
Missions to the Pawnees in Nebraska... He was listed in the History of 1881 as “the first white man who afterward became identified with the county’s earlier history.” He
acquired some land and farming interests and his son continued these after his death. Henry was buried in what is now known as the Wall Cemetery in Oak township, a mile
and a half south of the Allis farm. There is some disagreement as to his name for the cemetery there is a historical marker, visible from the road which goes south to
Pacific Junction that reads: “Wall Cemetery, Gravesite of Rev. Sam Allis.”
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