Page:History of Iowa From the Earliest Times to the Beginning of the Twentieth Century Volume 3.djvu/410

 settled on the ground where Mason City stands. Clear Lake is a beautiful body of water about six miles long by two miles wide and its greatest depth is about twenty-five feet. The Shellrock River flows through the northeastern portion of the county.

In 1854 the town of Mason City was laid out and the first store was opened by J. L. McMillan one of the proprietors of the new town site. The town of Clear Lake was laid out in the fall of 1856 by James Dickinson on the east end of the lake which bears the same name.

Judge Samuel Murdock of the District Court in 1855 appointed commissioners to locate the county-seat. They selected Mason City. Most of the early settlers in that town were members of the Masonic order and the settlement was first called “Masonic Grove” but when the town was platted in 1854 was named Mason City, by and for that fraternity. The first school in the county was taught by Eliza Gardner, a daughter of Rowland Gardner who, with most of his family, perished in the Spirit Lake massacre in the spring of 1857. Eliza was fortunately absent from home at the time and thus escaped the fate of her father’s family.

The first newspaper in the county was established at Mason City by Datus E. Coon in 1858, and named the Cerro Gordo Press. Its proprietor became a prominent officer in the Union army during the Civil War. The first railroad was completed from McGregor to Clear Lake, through Mason City, in 1870 by the Milwaukee and St. Paul Company. CHEROKEE COUNTY is in the second tier east of the west boundary of the State and in the third south of the Minnesota line, is twenty-four miles square and contains five hundred seventy-six square miles. Its territory was at one time divided between Fayette and Dubuque counties but in 1851 it was established with the present boundaries as Cherokee County, being named for a southern