CHAPTER XXI.
GROVE TOWNSHIP.

THE FOUNDING OF ATLANTIC.

While Franklin H. Whitney was assisting in the survey of the Chicago, Rock Island & Pacific Railroad through Cass county, his busy mind was also considering the best locations for stations and towns along the route, and it was undoubtedly his recommendation which decided the company to establish its station in the midst of a group of beautiful knolls, surrounded by timber, a short distance west of Grove City. Early in the fall of 1868 the Atlantic Town Company was organized, and when the railroad company had decided definitely upon the location of its station, Mr. Whitney made active preparations to start building operations and found a town. Besides Mr. Whitney, the principal members of the town company, or owners of the proposed site, were B. F. Allen, a Des Moines banker, who was also a member of the railroad company; and John P. Cook.

In the meantime Mr. Whitney's building operations had been somewhat forestalled by an energetic saw-mill operator, builder and carriage maker from Illinois, who arrived upon the ground on September 9, 1868, and commenced the erection of the first house in Atlantic for himself and family. Its location was the later site of the Park Hotel, and the builder of the historic structure was Henry Miller, in reality an agent of Mr. Whitney. He put four men to work, and they made such progress that it was ready for occupancy on September 15th, just six days from the commencement of operations. The house was two stories in height and sixteen by twenty-four feet in dimensions.

It was known that there was to be a town, with the railroad station as its nucleus, and quite a crowd from Grove City and the surrounding country gathered in the vicinity of Mr. Miller's building operations to ascertain where it was to be located. Some of them were looking for work, others for business and residence locations, but all so eagerly plied him with questions that he finally informed Mr. Whitney that it was impossible to make any headway for himself or the town company unless they could be given some definite information. Thereupon Mr. Whitney ordered two furrows, one hundred feet apart, plowed from Mr. Miller's house to the railroad grading; and thus commenced the laying out of the city of Atlantic. It was completed in the following month, and the plat of the original town was filed with the county recorder at Lewis, in the latter part of the year. Lots at once were in great demand, and the boom then commenced which has never really spent itself.

Although would-be settlers swarmed to the town, for a time Mr. Miller's house was the only place where a meal could be obtained. As soon as that industrious man finished his own residence, he commenced the construction of the Atlantic House (afterward the Reynolds House) for the town company. On this building he employed about twenty hands, who boarded with him, and he was what, in the twentieth century, would be called a "hustler." The hotel was commenced on September 20th, was ready for the plasterers on the 16th of October, and was opened to the public about the 1st of November, with fully 200 boarders. The grading of the railroad had then been about finished, but the 'Botna bridge had not been built, and the track-laying force was still far away.

"Compendium and History of Cass County, Iowa." Chicago: Henry and Taylor & Co., 1906, pg. 227-228.
Transcribed by Cheryl Siebrass, July, 2018.