Rare images of Lucas County's "New Cleveland"

So far as Lucas County's historical timeline is concerned, if you blinked you easily could have missed New Cleveland, a coal mining company town of up to a thousand residents at the Whitebreast Coal Co. Mine No. 4 site two and a half miles southwest of Lucas. Commenced during the spring of 1899, it lasted about 10 years before, like Brigadoon, just vanishing.

We've taken a look here recently at images from Russell and Derby that were published in the program booklet for Lucas County's Second Annual Chautuaqua Assembly, Aug. 8-16, 1903. At least two copies of that booklet may be found in the Lucas County Historical Society collection.

The rarest images in that little volume are five from New Cleveland, in its heyday at the time the booklet was published.

The original Cleveland was a mining company town adjoining Lucas on the east near Whitebreast Mines No. 1-3. It was launched in 1877 and declined rapidly after 1891, when the last of these first Whitebreast mines closed.

By the time Whitebreast No. 4 opened during May of 1899 as Iowa's largest and most technologically up to date coal mine, the original Cleveland had been reduced to a few scattered houses and public buildings, including Miner's Hall. The Cleveland post office had been discontinued.

The new company town built at the site of No. 4 sprang up quickly and was given the name Cleveland, too,  although it generally was known as New Cleveland. The post office was re-established, Miner's Hall moved on a flatcar from Old Cleveland and near identical white cottages built or moved in to house the families of the 300-400 men who worked No. 4 mine.

There was a company store, a public school, a hotel and at least one church, built by the Latter Day Saints (RLDS, now Community of Christ) for the many Welsh mining families of that faith.

The home of mine superintendent Daniel Owen Campbell probably was the most elaborate in the new village. For a few years, the village --- and the mine --- flourished.

Whitebreast No. 4 closed during 1908 and although attempts to reopen it continued for a few years, it was abandoned entirely during 1912.

New Cleveland vanished almost as quickly as it had appeared. Houses were placed on flatcars and moved to other mining camps in southern Iowa. Some larger buildings were moved, too, and others were recycled for the materials used to build them. The depot was placed on a flatcar and moved to Chillicothe, in Wapello County, during 1910. The Latter Day Saints church may have been moved to a mining camp near Albia.

Before long, silence returned to this little valley along the White Breast although trains on what now are the Burlington Northern & Santa Fe tracks continued to run through it, and not that much has changed since. You can read more about New Cleveland here.