(This article was in the Mount Ayr, Iowa paper June 12, 1896.)

Benton, located on the C.G.W.R.R. about midway between St. Joseph, Missouri, and Des Moines, Iowa, is a flourishing little town of 200 inhabitants, surrounded by as rich farming and grazing lands as southern Iowa produced. It was first platted in the fall or summer of 1889 on a part of the Samuel IRWIN farm.

At present the following lines of business are represented: Hardware and furniture store, blacksmith shop, lumber yard, two stocks of general merchandise, millinery establishment, hotel, livery and feed stable, restaurant, barber shop, creamery and butcher shop.

For a small place we are proud of our record for churches. In the summer of 1890 the Methodist built themselves a good roomy house of worship, followed in 1894 by the Adventists, who built a neat and substantial building to shelter their flock. In 1895 the United Brethren moved their Siloam church from Washington township to our town. The members of the Christian church also hold their services in the United Brethren church until they can build. Three churches and no saloons or drug store speaks well for our town.

We have a splendid two-room schoolhouse just completed which is an ornament to our town. The I.O.O.F. Lodge of this place is erecting a hall 22x46 feet, two-story and cellar, the upper room to be occupied by the order and the lower by some business firm.

Benton lies on a gentle southeast slope and is as pretty a site for a city as there is on the C.G.W.R.R. It has an abundance of water, three wells having been made which have a distance respectively of 95 feet, 106 feet, and 110 feet to water which stands 25 feet deep and cannot be dipped or pumped dry.

The writer of these lines well remembers hunting wild turkeys and deer on the present site of our town then, in 1865, covered with scrub oak and hazel brush, but "since that time how things have changed."

SOURCE: 1887 - Benton, Iowa Centennial - 1987. p. 116. Courtesy of Mount Ayr Public Library, Mount Ayr IA

Transcriptions and notes by Sharon R. Becker, October of 2012

Return to Ringgold County Home Page

To submit your Ringgold County materials, contact The County Coordinator.
Please include the word "Ringgold" in the subject line. Thank you.