Muscatine County, Iowa COMMUNITY NEWS

Source: The Muscatine Evening Journal, Muscatine, Iowa, Thursday, 5 May 1871, page 4
Submitted by Phyllis Hazen, February 1, 2021

NICHOLS STATION – We spent yesterday in Pike township, attending the railroad election, and had some time to look around this new town and future city. Six months ago its site was a bleak prairie, but now it is a thrifty and growing village, with bright prospects, especially since Pike has voted in favor of the tax, thus securing the Muscatine Western Railroad through Nichols.

Dr. S. H. Smith, late of Corning, N. Y., has just put up a fine dwelling and drug store, and is acquiring a lucrative trade as well as a good practice as a physician and surgeon. Joseph Crane is buying grain and selling agricultural implements, coal and lime. Jacob Henning is dealing in dry goods and groceries, James Kerney in groceries and queensware, Shellpepper & Iseman in groceries, and A. Bruntink in boots and shoes. B. Nichols is building a new dry goods store, which will shortly be opened. He has also recently completed a fine grain warehouse, which is intended to be used as an elevator.

The Nichols brothers (Benjamin and Townsend) are perhaps the largest land owners in this county. The former owns the ground upon which the town of Nichols is located and considerable to the north of it – in all 1500 acres. Townsend Nichols owns 3,000 acres immediately south of the town. They are enterprising and public-spirited young men, having been warmly in favor of the railroad tax and having generously agreed to pay one-half per cent of the whole amount for the entire township in addition to paying the same rate (4 ˝ per cent.) as their neighbors. Their proportion of the tax will not be much below $5,000, which is nearly a third of the whole amount paid by the township. These young men live in a splendid new dwelling about a mile from the station – but, strange to say, neither has yet realized his duty and pleasure to invite a “fair one” to share his fortune.