and has exerted a large influence in scientific culture in several of these interests. In 1879 the Boardman Bros. established a large butter, egg, and poultry shipping business, with brick buildings 50x140 feet, two floors and basement, at a cost of $21,000. The first year's business amounted to $50,000, and has so increased that it reached $350,000 in 1889, the shipments being 1,000,000 dozen eggs, 400,000 pounds ladle butter, 500,000 pounds creamery butter, and 500,000 pounds dressed poultry. Their cold storage and pickling rooms for eggs have a 500,000-dozen capacity. They employ twenty men, and have creameries at Roland, Cambridge (Story County), Algona, Whittemore (Kossuth County), Emmetsburg (Palo Alto County), Auburn, Lake City, Carnarvon (Sac County) and Mount Carmel (Carroll County), in connection with which are employed about sixty men and fifty teams. At Nevada, Carroll, Odebolt and Algona are their poultry houses which employ 150 men during the winter months, thus making it one of the largest institutions in Iowa.
The average monthly shipments of the Nevada depot for the past year are fifteen cars live stock, pretty well divided between hogs and cattle with a few horses; thirty-three and a half cars of grain, and nine and a half cars chiefly of eggs, poultry, etc. The receipts are nine and a half cars of lumber and thirty-one cars of general merchandise.
Fires have played a considerable part in Nevada's business history, and, although causing great loss, they have been the indirect cause of her substantial building. The first notable one was the burning of the court-house on the evening of December 31, 1863, as elsewhere mentioned in this volume. The second and most disastrous one occurred just after midnight on the 2d of December, 1880, in the row of blocks on the west side of Linn, between Fifth and Sixth Streets. The buildings were of wood and the entire row was destroyed, excepting the brick-veneered one at the north corner. The loss was estimated at $50,000, with insurance of about $15,000. Scarcely two years later and the row immediately north of this was almost entirely destroyed, between Sixth and Seventh Streets, early on the morning of January 25, 1882. The loss was estimated at $17,300 with $5,203 insurance. Beautiful brick blocks replaced these ashes, however, very soon, and the town rested for about five years, when, on the night of December 21, 1887, the next fire began on the east side of the street immediately south of the First National Bank Building, and cleared out six wooden structures to the south. This loss has been estimated at from $8,000 to $10,000, with some insurance. The establishment of a fire limit provides for the burnt district being replaced with brick or stone when rebuilt.
The incorporation followed the movement of business to Linn Street, and on November 23, 1869, the first council meeting was held with George A. Kellogg, mayor; aldermen, J. S. Frazier, J. H. Talbott, J. C. Mitchell, I. A. Ringheim and W. E. Waring, and John R. Hays as recorder. Excepting the ordinary routine work of a young incorporation, there was little of importance for the first ten years. In July, 1875, it was decided to buy the remaining half of the south public square, and on April 10, 1876, $250 was appropriated for grading and setting out trees to transform the square into a city park. In January, 1879, the council established a city public library, and it is one of the very few councils of equal sized towns that have voted the half-mill tax for this purpose. There has been invested about $1,500 in books, of which fifty-two volumes are poetical, 190 historical, 312 miscellaneous, and 900 of fiction, making a total of