Page:History of Iowa From the Earliest Times to the Beginning of the Twentieth Century Volume 3.djvu/548

 was established. A college was founded in 1865 at Decorah by the Norwegian Lutheran Synod. A branch of the Milwaukee Railroad was built to the town in 1869. WOODBURY COUNTY is one of the largest in the State, embracing an area of eight hundred seventy-three square miles. It was first named Wahkaw but changed to Woodbury, January 22, 1851, in honor of Judge Levi Woodbury of the United States Supreme Court. The county lies on the Missouri River in the fourth tier south of Minnesota. Along the river in this vicinity is a broad expanse of level bottom land of great fertility, varying in width from five to ten miles. The bluffs beyond are high, steep and in places broken into deep ravines and lofty ridges, gradually spreading out into gently rolling prairie. The principal interior streams are the Floyd River, branches of the Little Sioux and Maple rivers and Perry Creek. The Big Sioux forms a part of the western boundary.

The Indian title to this part of Iowa was extinguished in 1847. Early in 1848, forty-four years after this region was visited by the Lewis and Clark exploring expedition, a single adventurous pioneer, William Thompson, made his way up the Missouri valley and settled at Floyd’s Bluff, within the limits of what is now Woodbury County. Here he built a log cabin, opened trade with the Indians and laid out a town which he named Thompsonville. After Wahkaw County was created this became the county-seat, but having no steamboat landing, made but little progress and in a few years was abandoned. In May, 1849, Theophile Brugnier a Frenchman who had married an Indian wife, built a cabin on the bluff near the mouth of the Big Sioux about two miles above where Sioux City stands. In the fall of the same year Robert Perry, an eccentric but well educated man from Washington D. C., settled near a creek where Sioux City stands; he lived there several years and his name was given to the creek. In 1850