Page:History of Iowa From the Earliest Times to the Beginning of the Twentieth Century Volume 3.djvu/387

 In June, 1855, Jesse Wasson laid out the town of La Porte in the southern part of the county. The Cedar River runs diagonally through the county from north to south and the Wapsipinicon runs through the northeastern portion, both having many tributaries. The county was named for the famous Sac chief. In 1861 the Dubuque and Sioux City Railroad was completed to Cedar Falls. The Burlington and Cedar Rapids road follows up the valley of the Cedar River. BOONE COUNTY is near the geographical center of the State, lying in the fifth tier from its north line, in the eighth west of the Mississippi River and containing sixteen congressional townships with an area of five hundred seventy-six square miles. It was created by act of the Legislature in January, 1846, and named for Captain Nathan Boone who, in 1832, commanded a company of Rangers in an expedition which explored the Des Moines and Boone River valleys. Lysander W. Babbitt, a young man with the expedition, was so fascinated with the beauty of this region, that in the spring so 1842 he, with two companions, went into the Boone valley where they spent several months hunting and exploring. They traveled nearly to the headwaters of the Boone, then crossed to the Des Moines and camped where Moingona stands. There they found the ruins of an Indian village, near which they made claims. They were at one time robbed of their furs by a band of Sioux Indians and finding it dangerous to remain so far from white settlements, surrounded by roving bands of Sioux, early in the winter of 1844 prudently abandoned their claims and returned to a settled country. They were the first white men to select homes in Boone County. In 1846 another member of Captain Boone’s company, Charles G. Gaston, with his family ascended the Des Moines valley as far as Elk Rapids where he made a claim and built a log cabin. Soon after John Pea, James Hull, J. M. Crooks and others built