The ins and outs of Chariton's two birthdates

Chariton could be preparing to celebrate its 174th birthday as we launch into September 2023, generally a glorious month in these parts. Instead, City Council will cut the cake and blow out 167 candles next February 26, generally a dreary time of the year.

I've never been able to figure out exactly why.

Sept. 11, 1849, always has seemed to be the logical start date for the Lucas County seat, although the 2001 terrorist bombings of the World Trace Center and Pentagon darkened its memory.

If you look carefully at the bronze plaque mounted on that big Mormon Trail boulder at the southwest corner of the square you'll note that it reads, in part: "Here upon the trail September 11, 1849 was located the townsite of Chariton."

That was the date that the committee appointed by Lucas County's organizing commissioners to locate a county seat met with the commission at Buck Townsend's Chariton Point cabin and informed its members that they had selected 160 acres a couple of miles northwest. The landmark was a surveyor stake at what now is the southwest corner of the square.

So Chariton actually was eight years old when it was incorporated formally on the 26th of February 1857. And 1957, a century later, was the centennial year selected by those who organized a grand 100th birthday party for out town back in the mid-20th century. The sesquicentennial celebration came 50 years later, during 2007.

I've never been able to find anything to tell me why Chariton decided to celebrate during 1957 rather than 1949, but suspect it had something to do with the fact Iowa's centennial, as well as the end of World War II, had been celebrated in a big way three years earlier, during 1946.

But whatever the reasons, Chariton has two birthdays --- Sept. 11, 1849, and Feb. 26, 1857 --- and is either 174 or 166 years old. Feel free to celebrate either, or both.