This is the text I used to keep me on track during Tuesday evening's program at the annual membership meeting of the Lucas County Historical Society. The introductory images of the four sides of the Chariton square, taken between 1915 and 1925, were intended to show what a lively place it was a century ago.
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Back in 1953, a British novelist named Lesley Poles Hartley wrote a book entitled “The Go-Between” that opens like this --- “The past is a foreign country; they do things differently there.”
What I aim to do here is take you back to 1923, a full century ago, and tell you a little about what life was like in Lucas County then. We’ll see if Mr. Hartley’s line resonates.
Three landmarks that date from 1923 will be featured as we time travel --- the Chariton High School building, the Hotel Charitone and Yocom Park.
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Now in January of 1923, when the new year dawned, Lucas County’s population was about 16,000 --- approximately double what it is today. That represented at least a 16 percent increase from 1910 and was up a few hundred from 1920.
Chariton’s population stood at 5,300 --- up from 3,800 in 1910 (4,200 now). There were 350 people in Derby, 630 in Russell, 614 in Lucas and already about 400 in Williamson, a new town that had started to rise from George Williamson’s pasture during 1919 and would peak at nearly a thousand 10 years later.
The countryside was packed with people, too --- at that time a farm family could support itself on 80 acres or less and many did. In addition to the graded town schools, there were 90 one-room country schools scattered around the county. And at least 30 active rural churches of various denominations in addition to those located in towns.
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For these and other reasons, 1923 was a year of considerable optimism. The Great War, that “war to end all wars,” had concluded during 1918. More than 700 young men from Lucas County had served, 26 had died and by 1923, the remains of most had been repatriated and laid to rest in cemeteries near their homes.
The farm economy and the coal industry, plagued by worker shortages and uncertainty during the war years, had bounced back.
Chariton was a rail hub of major proportions, served by two depots. From the Burlington Depot, just across the tracks northwest of the Freight House --- where we’re gathered now --- you could catch a westbound train to Omaha and the West beyond, eastbound train to Chicago and East, southern branch train to St. Joe, Missouri, and the great Southwest, and a northern branch train to Des Moines via Indianola.
From the Rock Island Depot on the east side of town, you could catch a north-bound train to Des Moines and Minneapolis or a south-bound train to Kansas City.
Largely because of that rail network, Chariton was a transportation all-star, a retail hub and a wholesale center and would remain so for many years. Livestock, coal and produce poured out; manufactured goods poured in.
Access to rail transport, you might remember, was the primary reason Hy-Vee relocated its headquarters and warehouse from Lamoni to Chariton in 1945.
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On the other hand, there were no paved roads anywhere outside city limits in Lucas County in 1923. Mud still ruled when it rained.
The first pavement was not poured until April 23, 1928 --- at the Lucas-Monroe county line on U.S. Highway 34.
But automobiles were replacing horses and buggies and, increasingly, Highway 34 (then known as the Harding Highway) was becoming a transcontinental route.
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Farming was the bedrock of Lucas County’s economy, as it always had been, as 1923 dawned, but it was coal that fired a booming economy.
Coal had been mined in western Lucas County since the late 1870s, but the new north-south Rock Island line, which opened in 1913, had allowed the great coal fields in the northeast part of the county to be developed.
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| Central Iowa Fuel Co. No. 1 (aka Inland) |
By 1923, three big mines were operating: Central Iowa Fuel Co. No 2, opened during 1914 at Tipperary, employed 450 men; Central Iowa Fuel Co. No. 3, opened in 1916 west of Olmitz, employed 200 men; and Central Iowa Fuel Co. No. 4, opened in 1920 northeast of Williamson, employed 550 men --- a total of approximately 1,200 miners, most of whom had families.
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| Central Iowa Fuel Co. No. 2 (Tipperary) |
Although mining jobs were hard, dangerous and dirty --- they paid relatively well.
In Chariton --- where the Central Iowa Fuel Co. was headquartered --- both the mining company and independent investors were building homes for miners on every scrap of available land --- and many of these remain today.
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| Central Iowa Fuel Co. No. 2 (Tipperary) |
This was when the area we sometimes still call "White City" was developed on the east side of the Rock Island tracks in southeast Chariton. It was called that because all of the cottages for miners that were built or moved to that hilly landscape were painted white.
It was a short walk from White City to the Rock Island depot and the special trains that delivered workers to the mines in the morning and returned them home in the evening.
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The need for a new high school building was declared urgent by community leaders in Chariton during early 1921 when it became evident that the new Williamson mine would attract hundreds of miners and their families to Lucas County within two or three years. Many would live in Williamson, the new company town, but estimates were that housing and services for up to 150 new families would be needed in Chariton.
The existing high school, built during 1900, stood on the site of today’s Johnson Auditorium and Chariton Community Center. Many of us remember it as Alma Clay, a name given to it in 1928 in honor of a much loved elementary school teacher. This was an attractive building, but inadequate in many ways. There were only nine classrooms plus an assembly room that doubled as an auditorium on the top floor. The gymnasium was a low-ceilinged room in the basement.
In addition, it had structural issues. Because of inadequate footings and inadequate roof drainage, the brick shell of the structure was sinking and the heavy roof was pushing walls outward. It had been patched and pulled together with tie rods and steel, but the long-term outlook was not promising.
The school board managed to convince voters of the need to approve a bond issue that year and after examining new buildings in other districts --- Creston, Red Oak, Shenandoah, Newton and Webster City among them --- the board hired the architect who had designed them all, William Gordon of Des Moines, during December of 1921 to develop plans.
Bids for a state-of-the-art structure totaling $216,185 were awarded on June 14, 1922, with C.W. Ennis of Grinnell as general contractor.
The steel, concrete and tile “virtually fireproof” building featured classrooms arranged in a “U” shape around a central gymnasium on the basement and first-floor levels with an auditorium above. Both were to have seating capacities of roughly 1,200.
There were 4 manual training rooms, 3 domestic science rooms, a library, a science department of 3 rooms, a commercial department of 3 rooms and 10 other classrooms. It was designed to serve a maximum of 600 students.
Excavations for the foundation and basement of the new building commenced on July 12 after three houses and related buildings that had occupied the half block east of Alma Clay had been moved elsewhere in town.
Work progressed rapidly and during late May, 1923, the public was invited to tour the new building and it was ready for students when the 1923-24 term opened that September. One of Chariton’s top goals had been met.
Also during 1923, the first part of a new brick Williamson school was constructed, a new building for the consolidated Norwood district was built and an addition was made to the Derby school.
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A new hotel also was on Chariton’s wish list for 1923.
At the time, there were two hotels in town, both 50 years old and frayed around the edges. The Depot House hotel, built during 1872 on the second floor of the Burlington Depot, had offered up to 36 rooms in its heyday. But those days were long past and the railroad had no interest in making the investment needed to bring it up to date.
The Bates House, a three-story brick structure a half block west of the northwest corner of the square, offered 50 rooms. Built in 1874, it was better maintained than the Depot House but was not up to standards of the 1920s.
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An ideal spot for a new hotel was available --- a large vacant lot at the northeast corner of the square, the only piece of vacant land on the square. This was just a block north of the intersection of Highways 14 and 34 at the southeast corner of the square, and midway between the city’s two depots.
But Investors willing to take a financial leap in excess of $100,000 were in short supply.
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This had been the site of one of Chariton’s first hotels, opened during 1867-68 as the Opposition House --- a two-story frame structure. This hotel operated under various names until September of 1899 when it was torn down.
Soon thereafter, the Palmer Department Store --- in its time a big-box retail showplace --- was built on the site. Sixteen years later, during January of 1916, that department store burned.
The lot lay fallow until 1921 when the preachers of five of the city’s Protestant churches decided revival was in order and partnered with the Fairfield-based Businessmen’s Gospel Team to bring the biggest series of revival meetings ever seen in the south of Iowa to the Chariton square.
To house the meetings, a temporary wood-frame “tabernacle” that seated 2,000 was built on the vacant lot. The meetings commenced on Sept. 11, 1921, and continued until Oct. 23. When all was said and done, organizers said, 503 souls had been saved and more than 60,000 sinners had shown up for the preaching.
Once the tabernacle had been torn down during 1922, investors who had been eyeing the property began planning. They were William D. Junkin, editor, publisher and major stockholder in The Chariton Herald-Patriot for 10 years, and his son-in-law, Henry McCollough, a Chariton native related to the city’s most affluent families.
They negotiated purchase of the vacant lot and a building next to the alley just to the east from George W. Larimer, then owner, and hired rising young Chariton architect William Lee Perkins to design a state-of-the-art hotel for the site.
Their plans were revealed on Tuesday, Jan. 30, 1923, and excavation for the hotel’s basement began on February 5.
Nine months later, on November 3, the building was complete and thrown open for public inspection.
It contained space for 75 rooms on its upper three floors and in an adjoining 1917 building that had been incorporated into it. Each room featured a sink and a telephone. The lobby, dining room, party room and kitchen filled the first floor. The tiled basement was designed to house a barber shop, a luggage room and another large room where traveling salesmen could display their wares.
It was another showplace and another Chariton goal that had been met.
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About a month after excavations for the new Hotel Charitone commenced, crews began work a block and a half east down Braden Avenue in an area that a year earlier had been a swamp and public dump, characterized as an embarrassment to the city.
The goal was to create a public park the city could be proud of. The major movers and shakers were members of the Chariton Woman’s Club and allies that included John C. Flatt, chair of a newly formed Chariton Park Board, and William Lee Perkins, architect and city engineer.
Thirty-five years earlier, during July of 1889, the area had been turned into a sizeable pond known as Lake Como when a long dam was built parallel to North 6th Street between Court Avenue on the south and Roland Avenue on the north.
A new coal-fired electrical generating plant was constructed on the west shoreline, alongside what now is Highway 14, where the pond water was turned into steam to power the turbines that produced the power.
During 1914, however, a new power plant was built a block northeast, right alongside the new Rock Island Railroad tracks, so that coal might be unloaded directly; the old plant was torn down; and the Lake Como was drained when the dam threatened to fail. The result was a swampy mess where residents began to deposit their garbage.
This was the area that the Woman’s Club and their allies targeted. During 1922, City Council authorized a park project for the site and agreed to drain and level the lake bottom, tasks accomplished later that year.
Perkins developed plans for an innovative four-level amphitheater-like park --- the first at street level containing among other attractions a playground for children; then two sets of terraces descending to the former lake bottom, each landscaped with shrubs and outfitted with picnic tables; and finally the lake bottom itself where playing fields, a performance stand and two tennis courts were to be constructed.
As excavation continued for the new hotel basement, earth was transported down to the emerging park and used to help form the terraces.
It would be a full year before the park, called East Park then and for many years thereafter, had been shaped, seeded and was ready in part for use. The massive foundations of the old light plant, for example, had to be removed with dynamite.
But at least the project had been launched, meeting another long-term goal for Chariton --- a good city park.
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Chariton city leaders had another goal in mind during 1923 --- a new hospital. But this one would have to wait a couple of years.
Dr. Albert L. Yocom Jr., whose wood frame hospital was located just west of the high school in north Chariton and after whom Yocom Park would be named in 1968, was anxious to build --- but his father, Dr. Albert L. Yocom Sr., advised caution.
The success of the new high school and the new Hotel Charitone as well as the promising economy encouraged both father and son and so during 1924 Albert Jr. employed architect Perkins to design the state of the art hospital that rose during 1925 on the site of what now is Constitution Park and opened its doors during January of 1926.
It was a remarkable hospital for its day, but that is a story for another time.
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As far as epilog is concerned, the 1923 Chariton High School building, greatly enlarged during 1951, still is with us and going strong. It suffered a setback in 1970 when the state fire marshal condemned old Alma Clay as unsafe, leaving 300 junior high school students homeless when the old building was torn down that summer.
That brought the end of the 1923 high school auditorium, divided into classrooms to serve Alma Clay refugees.
The current Johnson Auditorium and Chariton Community Center didn’t come along until January of 1985 after generous gifts from the Johnson Foundation, Hy-Vee and other donors. A new middle school was built during 1993.
The Hotel Charitone suffered a near death experience during the opening years of the 21st century --- until it was rescued and revived during 2012-1914 by Hotel Charitone LLC, incorporating major financial input from Hy-Vee. It has returned to its position as a showplace on the square.
And East Park, of course, took the name Yocom Park during 1968, in honor of Dr. Albert L. Yocom Jr., who built that new hospital in 1924. Plans currently are in the works to undertake major revitalization there.
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