Page:History of Iowa From the Earliest Times to the Beginning of the Twentieth Century Volume 3.djvu/454

  the first newspaper at Eldora in 1856, the Hardin County Sentinel, with J. D. Thompson as editor. A town was laid out in the northeast corner of the county by J. W. Ackley in 1857 to which he gave his own name. No houses were built until the advent of the Dubuque and Sioux City Railroad in 1865 when Ackley began to make a rapid growth. Steamboat Rock was laid out in 1855 on the Iowa River five miles above Eldora. The Central Railroad of Iowa runs through the county from north to south. HARRISON COUNTY was created in 1851, lying on the Missouri River in the fourth tier north of the Missouri State line. It contains an area of six hundred ninety-five miles and was name for General William H. Harrison, ninth President of the United States. The valley of the Missouri River on its western border spreads out in level bottom land to the width of from four to ten miles and is of unsurpassed fertility. The Boyer River runs through the county in a southwesterly direction and the Little Sioux crosses its northwest corner. On the 3d of April, 1848, Daniel Brown took a claim on Willow Creek in a grove near where the village of Calhoun stands. He was robbed by the Indians who plundered his cabin and drove away his horses and cattle. Among the earliest settlers were Silas Condit, two brothers named Chase, James Hardy, Charles Lepenta, Dr. Robert McGovern, Andrew Allen and Jacob Pattee. For several years the early settlers were annoyed by wandering bands of Indians who came through that region on hunting expeditions.

The county was organized in 1853 by the election of the following officers: Stephen King, judge; P. G. Cooper, treasurer; Chester Hamilton, sheriff; William Cooper, clerk, and John Thomson, school fund commissioner. In March, 1853, the county-seat was located by commissioners near the geographical center of the county where a town