Ringgold remained one of the smaller counties in the State as it emerged into the twentieth century. Far from a line of transcontinental travel, its towns did not grow to become large cities. It reached its highest population in 1900, with 15,325 people, and its most rapid decrease in population came during the first decade of the twentieth century, when it dropped to 12,904.

It was not until 1900 that the Mount Ayr city council voted to have a "dip" well sunk to supply the town with water. Previously, every farm had provided its own water or shared water with a neighbor. The new well, 257 1/2 feet deep, had a rise of 30 feet and provided 100 barrels a day. But water was not piped into the homes and business places for a number of years and there were few other modern inprovements.

Other towns in the county were taking forward steps. The tiny village of Ellston was the first to establish a public library. Dedicated May 13, 1900, the $200 collection of standard books and the traveling library were placed in charge of the Home Culture Club.

In Jun 1900 the Des Moines Register credited Mount Ayr with organizing the first McKINLEY and ROOSEVELT Rough Riders Club in Iowa. According to the Register, Mount Ayr was "situated in the fighting congressional district of the state, and one of the strongest Republican counties in the district proportionally. The Republicans of that county work and vote, and the working and the voting win the victories."

One of the most exciting political events in the county's history occurred in 1901. According to Walter H. BEALL, the mass convention which assembled at Mount Ayr June 27, 1901, and sent a solid delegation to Cedar Rapids to help Albert B. CUMMINS win his first nomination for Governor, was ever afterward considered exception in the annals of polticial history. In the Mount Ayr Record News for July 5, 1928, BEALL stated that no county in Iowa had ever before or since shown such unanimity of purpose.

Ringgold County Republicans asked the county central committee to submit a preference vote on the governorship at the primary, but the committee refused and instead called a mass convention to meet two days before the primary to choose the candidate. According to BEALL, "Every livery team in Mount Ayr was worn down to skin and bones as the opposing campaigners drove over the county by day and night" carrying on the campaign. On convention day Mount Ayr was crowded with Republican voters who assembled at the courthouse from all parts of the county. Physical violence had been predicted, but there was a "free ballot and a fair count." It was a problem to poll so many voters fairly. When the CUMMINS men had been moved to the west side of the square and the GEAR men to the east side, the voters were marched through the east door of the courthouse, down the corridor, and out the west door where Homer FULLER and Clyde DUNNING acted as tellers. At this mass meeting 1,021 voters out of 2,000 Republican eligibles cast ballots. The CUMMINS voters were far more numerous than those of GEAR, and only CUMMINS delegates were sent to the State convention. Ringgold was the one county in the eighth district to stand solidly behind CUMMINS.

Telephones multiplied rapidly during the early 1900's, spreading to the farms and lessening the isolation of farm families. The Mount Ayr Mutal Telephone Corporation organized in May 1901, was connected with all lines operating in the county. Caledonia, which for a time was the second largest town in the county, organized a local line in 1901 with 14 instruments. When the Redding Telephone Exchange started service in January 1901, it had a total of 50 telephones. Late in November the Business Men's Mutual Telephone Exchange was formed among the merchants and tradespeople in Mount Ayr and this service soon included the residences in the town. Carl LUNNEY managed and operated the central board, located in his implement store. A year later he installed a Western Telephone switchboard that had 200 town and 30 farm connections. The installation of the poles and the wiring of the lines provided work for many that year. Twelve years later a larger switchboard with 400 town and 42 farm connections was installed at Mount Ayr. By 1904 the county had a total of 55 telephone miles.

Rural free delivery in 1901 marked another step in ending the isolation of the farm home. The first route out of Mount Ayr was mapped over a trip 26 1/2 miles long. Ed. B. WHITE, the carrier, delivered mail to 100 rural families for an annual salary of $50. A few weeks later two other services were routed out of Diagonal. At first the rural postman blew a whistle if he had mail for the farm family, then became the post boxes with a metal flag on them.

By July 1902 ten other rural routes had been established in the county -- two out of Mount Ayr, two out of Diagonal, three out of Kellerton, and one each from Redding, Beaconsfield, and Benton. At this time there were slightly more than 70 1/2 miles of rural free delivery service, reaching 1,398 homes. According to an announcement in the December 19, 1902, issue of Twice-A-Week News, the Federal Government asked Ringgold County to put her roads in better condition if free rural delivery service were to continue. The following spring, however, roads were so muddy that for three weeks the carriers had to deliver mail on horseback. In some instances they had to walk. In the fall a rural route was started from Tinely. The creation of the rural routes brought abandonment of many of the small, isolated post offices throughout the county.

In January 1902 the Leon, Mount Ayr and Southwestern railroad was turned over to the Chicago, Burlington, and Quincy, which had always managed it as lessee. The Burlington had also acquired the Humeston and Shenandoah soon after its completion. From the following ditty, which appeared in the Ringgold County Chronicle April 22, 1904, we may assume the track and rolling stock in Ringgold County were none too good:

Train wrecks were not the only distrubing events. Fire continued to work havoc in the towns, and when fire destroyed business blocks in the smaller centers there was little capital and little incentive to rebuild them. Small communites that had incorporated ambitiously in the 1890's were stunted in their growth. Benton suffered a serious fire in February 1901 when a grocery store and a furniture store were burned. At Mount Ayr, July 1, 1906, churchgoers were treated to an impromptu display of fireworks when sunlight shining through the window of the C. R. [Curtis Ralph] KEATING Hardware store generated enough heat to set off the display in the window and start a fire that caused a $300 loss. In August 1909 the third destructive fire in a decade almost burned Redding off the map. Fire swept through all but one building on the east side of the square, consuming seven business houses. In January 1910 a fie at Kellerton destroyed four buildings and was checked only by tearing down a storage room and a tin shop that lay in the path of the fire. Kellerton had purchased a $350 fire engine in 1902 and had dug large cisterns on each side of Main Street, but most of the towns still relied on bucket brigades. Mount Ayr Roller Mills, established in 1875 and on of the oldest structures in town, burned to the ground in March 1910. The mill, owned by JORDAN [JODAN?] and rated one of the best in southwestern Iowa, was not rebuilt.

Farmers threshing in the fields must have stopped working and stared when C. C. ANDERSON, automobile agent at Creston, rode by in his Old automobile en route to Mount Ayr on August 19, 1902. His one-seated "bang wagon", much like a buggy, was the first to travel across the county and through the streets of Mount Ayr. The Twice-A-Week News published the story under the caption, "No Pushee; No Pullee", and reported that the new vehicle could travel at the high speed of 25 miles an hour on level roads. ANDERSON gave a number of Mount Ayr people their first automobile ride. Burt WILLIAMS became the county's first automobile owner by winning the machine in a contest, but he sold it at once. Among the first automobiles driven in Mount Ayr were the high-wheeled cars of John ALLYN and Dr. [Dwight Reuben] BEMENT. Other early owners of cars were Dr. SMITH, Dr. DUDLEY, Bert TEALE, and A. I. SMITH, who bought a Buick in 1907. Asa RAINS bought a Huppmobile in 1922 and was still driving it in 1942. It had been registered 32 times. RAINS refused many offers of the Huppmobile company to buy back the car.

  Horse thief chases again furnished excitement for Ringgold County citizens in the early 1900's as they had in the previous decades. Residents of the county were on the outlook for a horse thief who had stolen an outfit of wagon, horses, and harness in Cass County, Iowa, during the summer of 1902. When a man driving a team and leading a mule behind the wagon near Kellerton was identified as the thief, the sheriff kept on the man's trail by the judicious use of telephones. The thief, at last realizing he was running into a trap, cut the mule loose and lashed the horses to travel at full speed. Soon a posse was at his heels and he jerked the harness from one of the horses and fled on the other until he was nearly caught. He then abandoned the horse and ran through the surrounding cornfields to a farmer's house, where he posed as a man hurring to Grand River to get a train to go to his sick mother's bedside. The farmer, not having a telephone, was unaware of the chase, and had his son take the stranger to the station. The thief escaped almost in the face of his pursuers, but his loot, left behind in his precipitant flight, was recovered.

Transportation hopes ran high in Mount Ayr about this time. Talk for a while concerned ambitious plans to connect Mount Ayr and Diagonal with an electric railroad as a convenience to the two towns. Out of this grew a still more ambitious plan for an electric railroad to Des Moines. During the fall of 1902 a group of Mount Ayr citizens formed the Des Moines, Mount Ayr and Southern Railway Company, an electric road incorporated at $600,000. Many meetings were held in towns along the proposed route to interest the people in the project. Although most people were enthusiastic, affairs dragged along for a half dozen or more years before anything was done. Then in the spring of 1904 the promoters traveld by carriage through Tingley, Macksburg, and Winterset, seeking to arouse intrest. Later the acutal surveying of the railroad routed it by way of Denver and Allendale, Missouri, to Mount Ayr, and through Tingley to Des Moines. At this time the projected road, known as the St. Joe, Albany and Des Moines Railway company, signed a 40-year lease with F. M. HUBBELL for property at Southwest Ninth and Mulberry Streets, Des Moines, upon which to erect a terminal freight depot. The whole project, however, was finally abandonded.

Among the events of 1904 and 1905 not forgtten for many years was the failur of the Citizens Bank at Mount Ayr and the subsequent trial of Day DUNNING, president of the bank, for fraudulent banking. He was sentenced to three years in prison, but appealed his case to the supreme court and was acquitted in 1906. The following years three other indictments against him were also dismissed.

The failure of the Citizens Bank may have been one reason for the institution of the Mortgage Security Bank, which opened at Mount Ayr in January 1905. Bank deposits were secured by giving mortgage notes on real estate as a guarantee of deposits. In addition, the bank provided all the services of regular commercial banks. It was one of the first in the State to use the mortgage security plan.

In March 1905 Mount Ayr people participated in a wolf chase right through the streets of town. John SALTZMAN had seen the wolf trying to raid his chicken house and shot at it, but missed. One of his neighbors, Raleigh SHROYER, fired two shots at the fleeing animal, but he also missed it. By this time half a dozen armed men had joined the chase, but they were not very good sharpshooters. The wolf fled to a creek just outside the southern edge of town and got away.

There were many signs of growth in the various towns from 1903 to 1907. In 1903 the Tingley Coal Company was organized with a capital of $10,000 to prospect for coal, but not was found. At Redding, Marion A. COVERDELL and J. Lawrence PARKER established the Rural Messenger, but the paper had a short life. There was a lively flurry in the town when H. M. "Bid" LEONARD moved a brick plant to Redding from Grant City, because there was better clay around the Ringgold County town. In 1903 Redding held a second Farmers' Institute, said to have been one of the best in southern Iowa. Three of the largest stores at Mount Ayr were consolidated into the Ringgold Merchantile Company, with capital of $50,000. The Roman Catholic Parish of St. Mary's erected a fine new church with a 68-foot sprire.

In 1905 the Mount Ayr Gas Company was granted a franchise to install 24,550 feet of pipe and begin operations on January 15, 1906. But the pipe was never installed. Tingley men organized the Great Western Lumber and Mining Company to deal in Oregon lands, and M. J. BRADLEY brought supplies and machinery for a broom factory at Diagonal in 1905. In the fall of that year, Redding organized its first Commercial Club. By this time sales rings had become important through the county. On the last day of February 1906, at Tingley, F. C. SHELDON & Sons sold a buyer one hog for $1,060, the highest price ever paid up to that time.

Various fairs, shows, and organizations were popular in the first decade of the twentieth century. The colt show was often a part of the Ringgold County Farmers' Institute held at Mount Ayr. There was another annual Farmers' Institute held at Redding. The Tingley colt show drew interested buyers and breeders from the surrounding counties and states. During this period there were a number of horse companies operating: the Tingley Shire Horse Company, the Mount Ayr Horse Company, the Liberty Township Horse Company, and others.

In connection with the Farmers' Institutes there were sometimes corn or poultry shows. Town business men usually provided prizes to attract exhibits. At Mount Ayr, during a two-week period in December 1906, the J. C. CRECELIUS Poultry Yard shipped more than 40,000 pounds of fowl to Eastern markets. The poultry business was good at Redding, too. At one time nine wagonloads of turkeys, three of them double-deckers, were shipped from this town. For a number of years poultry shipping brought the county an income of $3,000 a week.

At Mount Ayr the city council still struggled with the town's lighting problems. The council had negotiated with a light and water company in 1901, but the negotiations had ceased abruptly, and nothing further was done until 1907 when the council advertised for bids on a municipal plant. All the bids were rejected because they were too high. A little later, W. Jackson BELL organized a stock company to build an electric lighting plant. Soaring expences almost made the stockholders back out, but the company was at last incorporated and the plant built. By that time many of the stockholders had sold their shares because the total costs had reached $20,000 instead of the originally estimated $3,000. In 1917 the company was sold to the Iowa Southern Utility Company, and several years later, after the building had been damaged by lightning, the structure was razed.

During 1910 and 1911 the Mount Ayr Commercial Club became ardent sponsors of good roads. They invited 500 farmers to meet at a "good-will road improvement banquet" on June 28, 1910. The movement was especially timely because the United States Post Office had only a few years before threatened to stop rural free delivery in the county unless the roads were improved. Since everyone in the county had "stuck and cussed" in the sticky gumbo and knew the irritation of being sunk hub deep, a throng of farmers attended the meeting and accepted the challenge of the Mount Ayr merchants to improve the roads. For the greatest improvement in any main road not less than six miles in length and not more than six miles from Mount Ayr, the Commercial Club offered prized of $100, $75, and $50. The project did not have to be completed until November 1, but an additional prize of $25 was offered to the group making the greatest road improvement by August 1.

Good Roads clubs sprang up all over the county and entered into lively contests. Some took for their slogan: "We get both the $100 and the $25 prize." The improvement on the Rice Township road won first prize. The Liberty Township improvement took second prize, and on Township Line roadwork drew third. The special prize of $25 went to the club improving the Alex MAXWELL road. There were now many miles of graveled highways and 12 miles of paved road. All the Good Roads clubs got together again at Mount Ayr on November 11 to enjoy a fellowship pep meeting and take part in the awarding of prizes.

This enthusiasm over roads was followed in January 1911 by an attempt to vote a bond issue for paved streets in Mount Ayr, but the issue was defeated by 93 votes. Not discouraged, however, the Mount Ayr Commercial Club reorganized and swelled its membership to more than 100. When there was talk of routing the Waubonsie Trail, scheduled to start at Nebraska City and end somewhere between Keokuk and Burlington, the Mount Ayr Commercial Club joined with Leon, Kellerton, and Lamoni in an attempt to secure the routing through the southern tier of counties. The groups had a union meeting at Mount Ayr and heard the reports of Mount Ayr men who had gone to Shenandoah in their interests, and a permanent organization, the Waubonsie Trail Association, came into being. The main line of the trail entered Ringgold County four miles south of Clearfield and crossed the county through Mount Ayr and Kellerton. In May 1911 the Ayr Line Association selected a route to follow the shortest distance between St. Joseph, Missouri, and Des Moines, Iowa. Mount Ayr was selected as the half-way station. The route was marked by identifying poles along the way.

Back to Ringgold County History, 1942 Index

Ringgold County Iowa History The Iowa Writers' Program Of the Work Projects Administration.
Pp. 51-57. 1942.

Transcription by Sharon R. Becker, January of 2011