The ‘Lost’ Streets of Grand Junction

EARLY DAY CITY PLANNERS HAD BIG DREAMS

Most everyone is familiar with the early day history of Grand Junction and how it was formed when a new north-south railroad line was built in 1869 at its intersection with the transcontinental east-west rail line built a few years earlier through the middle of Iowa. Hence, the “grand junction” that gave the town its name.

But what is surprising is that most early published maps of Grand Junction are from just before the turn of the century and they don’t show the town as it was first conceived in 1869. A wonderful map published in 1875 as part of the Andreas Atlas and recently made available online by the David Rumsey Map Collection shows the original “game plan” of Grand Junction. It contained the same borders as we know today, but it had a much greater context of platted sections and street maps.

This map delineates in greater detail the four sections of Grand Junction as they were first designed—Grand Junction, Central Grand Junction, West Grand Junction and South Grand Junction. Central Grand Junction consists of the main parts of town, much as they exist today: Main Street and Hager Street, each stretching from 8th Street to 19th Street, which was then the town’s eastern boundary, and the area north of the C&NW tracks (now Union Pacific) known as “Browntown.” South Grand Junction covers the blocks south of Kelley Street. West Grand Junction begins at 8th Street (today’s Highway 144) and covers the blocks from there to the west on both the north and south sides of the C&NW tracks. Interestingly, in West Grand Junction the numbered north-south streets continue in sequence from Central Grand Junction, going from Eighth Street to First Street but the east-west streets were laid out with alphabetical names: J Street and K Street are north of the tracks and L Street and M Street are south of the tracks. These “alphabet” streets were marked on maps well up until the 1960s, and account for the little jog from where L Street connected to Main Street at the home and offices of Dr. Melvin “Doc” Karber right where Highway 144 curves to the east from Eighth Street into Main Street, with Main Street continuing east into the center of Grand Junction. (Recent maps indicate that changes were made so that Hager and Main now run west all the way to the town’s western border, eliminating in West Grand Junction what had been L and M Streets).

The north part of town is where things gets interesting, as Grand Junction, also marked on maps as Original Town of Grand Junction, covers about two-thirds of the town north of the C&NW tracks with 24 full blocks and six half-blocks abutting the north-south, or the Minneapolis and St. Louis (locally referred to as the “M and St. L”) railroad tracks (also now Union Pacific). But the rest of this part of town is laid out as a continuation of Central Grand Junction from south of the tracks.

It’s hard to think of the area south of the C&NW tracks and the area north of the C&NW tracks as being part of the same section, since the railroad is such a natural dividing line, but it is all Central Grand Junction.

But here is where the plan gets interesting as Central Grand Junction north of the tracks takes an inverse “L” shape, essentially wrapping around Original Grand Junction.

[NOTE: To get a clear view of the “lost streets” of GJ, pull up the map from this site and then follow along below as we compare and contrast that map with today’s GJ: www.davidrumsey.com. Just type in “Grand Junction Iowa” (also note that Grand Junction shares the page with 1875 plat maps of Mitchellville, Indianola and Clarion.) Just use the enlarge and scroll features to get an up-close look at the GJ map].

On the map, the Central Grand Junction blocks between 13th and 14th Streets south of the railroad tracks extend north of the tracks for roughly about 2 ½ blocks, with two east-west streets—Sandoe and Railroad—extending all the way east to 19th Street, much as they do today. The north-south streets on both sides of the tracks start at 14th Street and continue east to 19th. However, the street that serves as main north-south artery on both sides of the tracks today, 13th Street, is not on this particular map north of the C&NW tracks. The back of the blocks along 14th Street north of the tracks form the western boundary of Central Grand Junction and the land west of that is railroad property, as the connecting line from the M&St.L line swings down and out in an arc, connecting to the C&NW east-west tracks right at where 13th Street would have crossed the tracks north (or at least that is how it appears on the map, but most likely it was not that close).

The inverse “L” shape occurs because Central Grand Junction does not continue to the north between 14th and 15th Streets, but it does from 16th Street to 19th Street. So far north in fact, that there are six more streets beyond those found on present-day maps. These streets, which continue north beyond Division and then Percival, are, in a sense, the most notable of the “lost streets.”

So, starting from the railroad tracks going north we have the same streets than as we do today: Sandoe, Railroad, Division and Percival. These blocks are all in the same square dimensions of today’s city blocks in Grand Junction—marked with east-west and north-south alleys bisecting each of them.

Beginning at 16th Street and Division Street the east-west streets north of there are spread across three blocks—16th Street to 19th Street. However, from south to north beginning one block north of Percival Street, these six particular streets are avenues: Hatton Avenue, Scovill Avenue, Hill Avenue, Park Avenue, Grove Avenue and North Avenue. These blocks, too, are the same dimensions as all the other blocks of Central Grand Junction.

But on the other side of 16th Street, the men who laid out Original Grand Junction had a completely different game plan. Starting at the town’s northern-most boundary, which would be a direct line drawn from the three blocks facing North Avenue (on its north side) of Central GJ and continuing west to the M&St.L tracks, and then heading back south, we have a grid system of longer north-south blocks bisected by only north-south alleys. The east-west streets of Original GJ take the names of numbered streets: First, Second, Third, Fourth and Fifth, while the north-south streets take the names of avenues, starting at the railroad tracks with Third Avenue and continuing east with Fourth Avenue, Fifth Avenue and Sixth Avenue.

(If all of these lots on these various blocks in northern Grand Junction had been fully developed and sold, imagine the confusion of standing at the corner of Second and Sixth, as in Second Street and Sixth Avenue in Original GJ, and walking just two blocks east and being at 17th and Park, as in 17th Street and Park Avenue in Central GJ.)

DECIPHERING GJ’S SECTIONS

It’s important we take a moment here to explain who laid out these early streets and avenues of the four sections of Grand Junction and what greater intentions might have been behind their efforts.

As railroads were being built throughout Iowa and other parts of the Midwest in the post-Civil War era, much of the land along the railroads was purchased by real estate developers and businessmen. The Hager family, originally from Hagerstown, Md., represented by Fred Hager, already had a foothold in the Grand Junction area as they had a brick kiln business just a few miles to the west of the eventual town site on the Cedar Rapids & Missouri River Railway, which was completed between Boone and Council Bluffs in 1867. The western U.S. portions of this same extended rail line comprised the point where the nation’s eastern and western railroads met in 1869—forming the first trans-continental railroad in the United States. (In Iowa, the original east to west line was the Cedar Rapids and Missouri River Railway but it changed hands and became the Chicago & Northwestern, or C&NW, shortly after completion.)

When it became apparent that a north-south railroad line would be built in Iowa from Keokuk to Fort Dodge, interest was obviously heightened for land along the route, especially where the proposed railroad would intersect with the Cedar Rapids and Missouri River Railway (C&NW). The railroad was developed as a route to connect Iowa to Minnesota. The first part of the route was built by the Des Moines Valley Railroad, based in Keokuk, and extending from Keokuk up along the valley of the Des Moines River to Des Moines. The railroad reached Des Moines on Aug. 29, 1866. Plans were officially announced in April 1869 to build the next leg from Des Moines to the “Northwestern Railroad” depot and construction got underway in early June of that year.

The route was to be built from Des Moines to Valley Junction and then to Shirley in Dallas County, turning northward from there on to Minburn, Perry, Rippey and Grand Junction, also identified in early news articles as the “Northwestern” depot (and then on to Fort Dodge). Minburn, Shirley and Grand Junction were to be new towns and Rippey was relocated from an existing community west of the proposed line (“Old Rippey” had been situated near the Raccoon River in far western Washington Township), but essentially a new town also, and for many years was officially known as “New Rippey.” The railroad officials in Keokuk did not like the name Shirley, wanting a name with an Indian appellation, so they changed it to Waukee, according to the Iowa Daily State Register. (This information is from the present-day City of Waukee website.)

So with the line coming into Des Moines in 1866 and with three years before it reached [the proposed] Grand Junction, there was considerable time to make plans for this new town at this key railroad intersection. Perhaps that’s why four different groups purchased land at the proposed town site and each drew up separate sections.

According to one of the leading historical sources of early day Greene County, “Past and Present of Greene County, Iowa” by E. B. Stillman in 1907, Central Grand Junction was laid out by “Hager and Sons and Percival & Hatton of Des Moines.” Two railroad officials, “Howe, a division superintendent, and Eastbrook, roadmaster, laid out ‘Grand Junction.’ Herron & Kelley of Pittsburgh, Pa., laid out ‘South Grand Junction,’ and Seward Smith, of Des Moines, followed with ‘West Grand Junction.’”

The town itself covers parts of sections 32 and 33 in Township 84N and sections 4 and 5 in Township 83N. Originally, the township line would have cut right through Grand Junction, so government officials doubled the size of Junction Township, but after complaints from Washington Township, it was agreed to make Junction the size of 1 and 2/3 townships and Washington 1 and 1/3, so both ended up as over-sized townships.

Hager and Sons donated 20 acres to what was by then known as the Des Moines and Fort Dodge Railway Company, according to Stillman. These 20 acres were the land parcels north of the C&NW tracks on both sides of the north-south DM&FD (M&St.L) tracks. This area includes the above described intersecting connector between the M&StL and C&NW tracks, east of the M&St.L and the similar west intersecting connector on the opposite side of the M&St.L. These parcels would have been the lands just to the north of the area bounded by Eighth Street on the West and 13th Street on the east and located to the north of Main Street and the railroad tracks.

It seems clear that Hager and Sons laid out Hager Street and Main Street and then the section north of the tracks that encompasses Sandoe Street and Railroad Street. The other blocks in the “lost streets” area reflect the hand of Percival and Hatton, as they a named a street after each of them. Division Street actually represents the line that divides Section 4 from Section 33. North Avenue is self explanatory but the roots of Grove, Park, Hill and Scovill Avenues are not known. Grove could have corresponded to a nearby grove of trees and Park could have been named for Dr. C.B. Park, a pioneer Grand Junction businessman, or perhaps plans called for a park to be developed in one of the blocks along those streets, just as a full block was laid out for a city park in South Grand Junction.

This north part of Grand Junction is all in Section 33 of what is often referred to as “North Junction Township” while its western boundary with Section 32 on this early day map is Eighth Street, if extended north from Main Street to where it would meet the town’s northern boundary line. Interestingly, Eighth Street is also the dividing line between West Grand Junction and Central Grand Junction.

Closer inspection finds that the C&NW actually passes through Grand Junction at a slight angle from southwest to northeast, and the lots on the north and south sides of the tracks vary in size accordingly. The lots on the far west side of town south of the tracks are less than half a block in size and they increase in size until the lots on the east side of town in the blocks between Main Street and the railroad are almost full size. Actually, even further inspection shows that the blocks are just cut in two by the railroad, so that the tiny sliver of land shaved off by the railroad in Block 53 on Main between 17th and 18th is laid out on the opposite side of the track. (Essentially it all looks to be just part of the railroad right of way when traveling along Sandoe Street in present day Grand Junction). But to cause just a little more confusion, both Seward Smith in West GJ and Hager and Sons in Central GJ gave these “opposite the tracks” blocks their own block numbers.

As the blocks of Original GJ are larger, the streets—both north-south and east-west—are further spaced apart than the other sections of Grand Junction.

In West GJ, L Street is actually laid out parallel to the railroad on the same angle and the lot sizes between the railroad and the street are of the same size, but M street runs parallel and perpendicular to all the other streets, so the lot sizes between M and L gradually get larger from First Street heading east to Eighth Street. The blocks on the south side of M Street resume the normal size of those on the north side of West GJ along J and K Streets while those on the south side of K are the inverse of the opposite side of the tracks, going from larger to smaller.

HERRONS OF SOUTH GJ—1869, 1875 and 1896

Stephen Herron and James D. Kelley were the “Herron and Kelley” who laid out South Grand Junction. Herron was one from one of Pittsburgh’s oldest families. He became one of Grand Junction’s first citizens, and built the lovely 1 and ½ story grey home with white trim and side porches, a large bay window, and a cupola with windows that graced Elizabeth Street for well over a hundred years. The house was actually built in 1869 and was featured prominently in the 1969 centennial history written by Mabel Nair Brown and published by the Globe-Free Press. It was one of the very first homes built in Grand Junction and was the home of Herron’s granddaughter, Miss Violet Humphrey, until she died in the 1980s. The house was then razed.

Herron married Rebecca Kelley, daughter of James D. Kelley. She is the namesake of Rebecca Street and her father is the namesake of Kelley. This author cannot recollect offhand who Bennett and Elizabeth streets were named after but most likely they are other family members of either the Herron or Kelley families or both. This information is most likely covered in Brown’s history of Grand Junction noted above.

But South Grand Junction contains its own surprises and mystery because Elizabeth Street was not intended to be the southern border of Grand Junction. In fact there are two additional streets south of Elizabeth. These streets—High and Kellogg—are, in essence, also the “lost streets” of South GJ.

Interestingly, a map published in 1896 of Grand Junction shows even two more streets in South Grand Junction. This plat map shows Elizabeth, High and Kellogg Streets, and continuing south, Division Street and Howard Street, forming the southern town boundary, or corporation line.

[To view the 1896 map, go to www.historicmapworks.com and search for Greene County, Iowa.]
Both the 1875 and 1896 maps show the north-south streets extending all the way to the southern border on both sides of the railroad tracks and intersecting with the our “lost streets”—High, Kellogg, Division and Howard (the latter two shown in 1896 only).

The 1896 map is significant because if offers much greater detail than its predecessor map from 20 years earlier. The later map marks each house in town, all the businesses along Main Street and their lots, the public school, the Catholic school (St. Mary’s Academy), five churches (Baptist, Catholic, Methodist, Presbyterian and German Evangelical, which was on the north side of the tracks), and all the railroad infrastructure—depots, water tanks, stock yard and the infamous “roundhouse” which was the discussion point of much Grand Junction railroad lore in later years.

It shows that in the “Lost Streets” area south of present-day Elizabeth Street there are just four homes. One is the above-mentioned Herron House on the east side of Block 37 of South Grand Junction. Another home is also located on the south side of Elizabeth Street in Block 12, which would have been located across from the present day house owned and occupied by Jerry and Janice Kennedy. (The author can remember as a youngster in the 1960s when there was a house and small farmstead at that particular location on the south side of the street with its backyard being open country.)

Clearly, these homes were never “lost” as were the streets south of them but there is a house in this “lost area” located two blocks directly south of City Park which would have been at the northeast corner of 13th Street South and High Street. Most likely this house was reached via a long lane from Elizabeth Street and this particular 1896 maps shows homes only—no outbuildings. Most likely this was a farmstead with other buildings, similar to the farmstead that existed well into the 1960s as noted above on the south side of Elizabeth Street between 14th and 15th Streets.

The fourth house in the “lost streets” area is all the way at the very southwestern corner of South Grand Junction—the corner of Eighth Street South and Howard Street, roughly about the area where the old Miller’s Standard Station and Satellite Motel are located. Interestingly, this area of Grand Junction from 8th Street east to the railroad tracks and then back north up to Elizabeth Street actually survived into modern times, but was many years later replatted as Neel’s Addition with a reconfiguration of streets other than the traditional street grid. Sunset Drive snakes through this area in a u-shape with an L-shaped offshoot just about where the bottom of the “u” starts to form. Newer homes were also built along Elizabeth Street on both sides of the M and St. L about the time after World War II and into the 1950s, when the Neels started building new homes on Sunset Drive.

Comparing the 1896 map to present-day maps, the upper part of Sunset is right about where High Street was located and the lower part of Sunset is in accordance with the location of Kellogg. Interestingly, the bottom of the L-shape is right about where Howard Street was planned, so the officials who laid out Neel’s Addition followed to some degree the dimensions of the original blocks of South Grand Junction.

Howard Street extended west beyond the town limits becomes the current-day Old Highway 30. On the 1896 map, the entire NW one-quarter of Section 9 in South Junction Township just south of Howard Street which formed the town’s southern border (160 acres), plus the adjacent 80 acres south into the SW quarter section (forming a 240-acre parcel) are owned by Rebecca K. Herron, as noted earlier, the wife of early GJ founder Stephen Herron. The Herron land also extends to another 80 acres adjacent to the 240 acres to the east—forming a tidy piece of farmland at 320 acres.

A 1916 map of Grand Junction still shows the four lost streets and the blocks platted there. Yet across this area diagonally is written, “Rebecca K. Herron Estate.” (Ah, of course, the “K” is for Kelley, her maiden name), so clearly the Herrons always owned this segment of land which is adjacent to the 240-acre and 80-acre parcels to the south. Herron and Kelley most likely bought up all the land from that 80 acres in the SW corner of Section 9 and then all the way up to where it abuts the land owned by those who laid out Central GJ at Kelley Street.

So that grand house with the cupola had a greater purpose than just aesthetics. No doubt Mr. Herron liked to head up there to gaze out over his empire to see “how the crops are doing!”

REMNANTS OF ORGINAL GJ

Just as parts of the “lost streets” in South GJ live on in Neel’s Addition and through a few homes built further south of Elizabeth Street near the City Park area, so do a few remnants of Original Grand Junction in the north part of town. But most of Original GJ had pretty much disappeared by 1896. The “lost streets” (and avenues) of the northern part of Central GJ had inasmuch vanished by then too.

Most of the Original GJ by 1896 is a large 56-acre parcel of land owned by Jas. McIntyre. His property ran along a line formed by Second Street, which exists on the 1896 map, and from there all the way to the south to where a handful of homes had been built on the very southern row of blocks platted for Original GJ. (It looks as if these homes would have been built along the side streets as the streets all were to “dead end” at the southern edge of Original GJ as they are on the southern side of the blocks, so they don’t appear to have been built on the northern side as to face out into the proposed Fifth Street.)

The western edge of McIntyre’s land was Third Avenue of Original GJ, a street that continues to exist today (but not as Third Avenue; it is now marked as 11th Street North). But First Street does exist—in it its original iteration. On the 1896 map, both First and Second Streets stretch across the original platted area of 1875, with First Street ending at Sixth Avenue, the most easterly of the Original GJ north-south avenues, while Second Street continues east into Central GJ where it meets 18th Street North (which dead ends there) and continues to the town’s eastern border and then out into the country as a county road. On the 1875 map, this eastern portion was Park Avenue of Central GJ.

On the 1896 map where First Street ends at Sixth Avenue, that one block of Sixth Avenue going south to Second Street is marked as a street connecting the two, but it does not extend north or south.

Third Avenue as it runs from the railroad property at the southern edge of Original GJ to the northern edge is not marked with a street name (as all other streets in town) nor is the above noted one-block section of Sixth Avenue—although both are marked out as streets with access to them.

The rectangle created by Sixth Avenue on the west and Third Avenue on the east and 1st and 2nd Streets (as they are written on the 1896 map, not “First” and “Second,” as they are spelled out on the 1875 map) to the north and south, is a 13-acre plot owned by Hiram Allen with two homes at the extreme southwest corner of this parcel at 1st Street and Sixth Avenue. On the north side of 1st Street are three plots of land. The first shows a 5-acre space with two homes owned by M.D. Gulick. To the east is a 9-acre plot with a home owned by Hannah R. Underwood and to the east of that is a plot of 2.29 acres that is unmarked and with no home.

The only remnants of all the city blocks laid out on the 1875 map for Original GJ are along a line between the railroad tracks (by then the Chicago, Rock Island & Pacific Railroad) and the un-named Third Avenue, and part of one block (43) that would have been bounded by Fourth and Fifth Avenues on either side, to the north by Fifth Street and to the south by the southern boundary of Original GJ.

The most intact remnants are two lots of Block 4, where 1st Street and Third Avenue intersect; the complete Block 13—just south of that—between 1st Street and 2nd Street; and continuing south, the complete Block 20 south of the intersection of 2nd Street and Third Avenue. Each of these blocks is just one-half the size of the other blocks in Original GJ as they back up against the railroad.

It’s also interesting to note that these block numbers start at “4” instead of “1.” It looks as if there might have been a plan to extend this part of Grand Junction to the western side of the railroad, as when you look at how the blocks are assigned numbers, starting from the top row of blocks, counting backward (from east to west), they are 8-7-6-5-4. But just below 4 to continue the count back to the east is 13 and then 12-11-10-9.

It appears if perhaps Howe and Eastbrook planned to extend their holdings to the opposite sides of the track and had already pre-mapped (not on paper but in theory) the remaining or missing blocks. If each of these six rows of blocks had were extended west of the tracks by 2 ½ or 3 blocks, it might have looked something like, and starting west of the tracks and continuing east, 1-2-3-RRtracks-4-5-6-7-8. Dropping down to the next row and back west, 9-10-11-12-13-RRtracks—14-15-16, and then picking up in the next row with 17-18-19 and then the tracks and picking up again the blocks on the platted map, 20 through 24. This pattern of missing blocks repeats itself downward for the remaining three blocks of Original GJ.

Another odd feature for these blocks and the line of directly adjacent blocks of the most northern part of Central GJ are that these two completely different configurations actually share a block where they meet up. As noted how when allowing for the missing 1-2-3 blocks, the top row of Original GJ actually begins with a half-block of 4 at the railroad tracks, then the next three blocks (5-6-7) are full, and then Block 8 is full, but Original GJ’s Block 8 is only one-half of that block. The other half is allotted to Block 4 of Central GJ, extending from Block 1 that starts in the far northeast corner along the north side of North Avenue and to Block 2 and then Block 3, from east to west.

As the Original and Central blocks were of different sizes, these streets do not align so that on the south side of North Avenue the blocks pick up at 6 and then head back east to 7 and 8. So in this case the extra-elongated Block 4, which spans all of Block 3 opposite 16th Street and one-half of Block 6, looks to have a little east-west alley dividing the north half from the south half, so perhaps they really meant to make Block 4 two small blocks, 4 and 5, and that is why the numbers continue across 16th Street as 6-7-8. The pattern continues as below Block 8 is Block 9, 10 and 11 as they continue west then jump across 16th Street to Block 12 and then down to 13 and over on blocks 14-15-16 between Park Avenue and Hill Avenue, down one block as 17-18-19 and then over and down a little to Block 20, and then skipping a number and starting over again in the next adjacent row between Scovill Avenue and Hatton Avenue as 22-23-24 and continuing with that pattern so 24 drops down to 25 then 26-27 and over to 28 which continues in succession on the next row with 29 and then back to the three blocks between Percival and Division as 30, 31 and 32 at 19th Street.

The blocks of Central GJ pick up in succession with just a little glitch for Block 33. It would have been a little sliver about a quarter-block size between 19th Street and the city line. But it is not there, the city line is right at 19th Street, but the little quarter-block exists just below that to the south as Block 34—another strange little quirk in GJ’s inaugural layout—and that block numbering continues back along Railroad Street to the west to Block 40 at the 20-acre rail yards property and then jumps over all the rail lines to the opposite side of the M. and St. L tracks to pick up with block 41 and then over one to block 42 and down to the next row which picks up as Block 43 and then jumps back over the rail tracks and railroad property to pick up with Block 44 and continuing east to Block 49 between 18th and 19th Streets and then over to another ¼ size block at the city’s edge, Block 50.

But just as Block 33 is missing, so is Block 51 as Block 52 picks up the continuation of Central GJ block numbering south of the tracks all the way west to Block 62, then down to 63 and back over to Block 73, but there is no Block 74 or a 75 which should be just below that, as the blocks pick back up again with 76 being below 73 and then heading all the way back east to Block 86—the last block of Central GJ. Below Block 86 is Block 64 of South Grand Junction, the last—or highest numbered—block of South GJ.

Closer inspection of the 1875 map show the missing blocks, or quarter-size blocks, of 51, 74 and 75 are present, but when the 1896 map was drawn it most likely reflected changes to the corporation line from when Grand Junction was officially (legally) incorporated in 1873, and the map published in 1875 might have been the first map reflecting how the town was initially laid out in 1869 but some modifications could have already been made four years later.

When reviewing the first map of 1875 it seems there is a strange numbering quirk with the South GJ blocks, which run in succession north/south, unlike the east/west configuration of Original and Central GJ. The blocks start at the northeast corner of Bennett and 15th Streets with Block 1, run down to 6 but then jump over to 11. They head back up to 16, over to 17, and then down to 22, but over one row to 27. What gives?

Apparently, Herron and Kelley planned to add the extra or “lost” streets in there all along, so when the 1896 map appears, the additional two streets—Division and Howard—are in place, creating a row of two more blocks, so that 6 continues down to 7 and then 8, over to 9 and back up to 10 and 11 and so on and so forth as South GJ continues its block numbering system east to west (still running north/south by successive numbers) with Block 57 at the town’s southwestern corner at Howard and Eighth Streets and moving up to Block 64, one block south of Central GJ’s Block 86.

West GJ also takes the north/south configuration (or up over and down) but thankfully there are no quirks or gaps in that system, even though they jump back and forth over the railroad tracks.

EYE ON GJ SAYS: Whew! This is a real lesson in following along and “connecting the dots,” isn’t it? I always knew Grand Junction had its particular quirks and eccentricities, and these maps clearly prove it.

Some interesting points to make:

1. When Howe and Eastbrook laid out Grand Junction which was formed by these two key east-west and north-south rail lines, there was considerable talk underway in railroad circles about creating a railroad line that would connect Grand Junction to Sioux City, and Grand Junction becoming a “Second Chicago.” The D.M. and F.D. was designed to keep going north beyond Fort Dodge to Minnesota, and it did. North of Grand Junction, the towns of Paton, Gowrie, Callender and Moorland were established along the rail line in the following years with Dana established about a dozen years later. North of Moorland the line veered to the east and on to Fort Dodge, connecting to points north, including Eagle Grove, Belmond and Mason City; Albert Lea, Minn.; and ultimately, Minneapolis.

For many years this was the only north-south rail line in the county, as the line that came down from Calhoun County and through Churdan, Farlin, Jefferson, Cooper and on to Panora in Guthrie County was not built until the early 1880s. Today, the north-south UP line that terminates in Grand Junction, designated by the Iowa DOT as the “Grand Junction Gateway,” connects to a line that veers to the northwest and connects with all the major grain cooperatives and elevators in much of Northwest Iowa. The grain is shipped down via UP lines to Grand Junction and then east to the Mississippi where is it downloaded onto barges for shipping down the river and to the Gulf of Mexico and overseas ports.

It might be that Howe and Eastbrook, owing to the fact they are identified as railroad officials (“division superintendent” and “roadmaster”) jumped on board first, or with the “Original” Grand Junction plat, with the idea that this rail line to the northwest would most likely branch off to the north of the existing junction and thus, they laid out their part of GJ with a street grid and lot sizes that perhaps would accommodate business and/or commercial enterprises, with flexibility for more railroad shops and/or residences.

2. Much of early Grand Junction history makes note of getting those railroad shops from the D.M. and F.D., but the dates are never noted. Jack Watts wrote a wonderful historical summation of Grand Junction in 1954 for the Greene County Centennial which was republished in 1985. He makes note that Hager and Sons donated the 20 acres for the “Des Moines, Keokuk and Fort Dodge Railroad Company to locate their shops here, so in 1874 the shops were moved here from Keokuk to Grand Junction.” This must be about the time the Keokuk was dropped and the line became just the D.M. and F.D.

3. A nice plat map of Grand Junction from 1917 has the various parts (Original, South, Central and West) distinguished by various colors so it easy to spot the remaining blocks of Original GJ and those of Central GJ that were platted north of Percival Street in the “lost streets” area. The only blocks that survived there were parts of 25, 26, 27 and 28 all on the north side of Percival and a part of Block 25 that would have been just north of Block 24. There is an un-named very short street than runs between the partial blocks of 24 and 25, which is the shadow of Hatton Avenue.

It’s interesting to note also that in the 1875 maps and 1896 maps, Percival is actually aligned with the streets to the north, because it is marked on both maps as Percival Avenue. It looks as if Division Street was the division between Hager’s version of Central GJ and that of Percival and Hatton. In fact, Division Street is so oddly formed (but accordingly placed when you consider it divides Section 4 from 33) that the block formed between Division and Railroad is ¾ size the other blocks of Central GJ. This street might also have been put in place to help with land ownership in legal descriptions, as a full block there would have spilled partly into Section 32 and partly into 33.

In 1917, the town map shows Percival now named as Percival Street.

4. These areas in the north part of town weren’t filled in, but the town did spread its wings elsewhere. The 1917 map shows that just east beyond the original town limits between Percival and Division was a new subdivision by Percival and Hatton. To the west of the M. and St. L. tracks beyond Original GJ was Joy’s Addition and to the east of the town’s border at 19th Street south of the C & NW tracks were Watts First and Second Additions and Eastland Addition.

The Eye Guy was very pleased to find these maps. He started the “Lost Streets” historical summary and comment when finding the 1875 map of Grand Junction in the summer of 2009. He has been working at compiling “Lost Streets” since then and is happy to share it with readers of Eye on Grand Junction.

Finding the story behind Original Town of Grand Junction is very rewarding because the Eye Guy’s grandparents moved to Block 43 in 1920, and he has always been curious as to the background of these strange parcels with all that open space above them. Considering that the Robinsons have deep ancestry in New England and many of Grand Junctions earliest residents and businessmen were also from New England, he surmised that perhaps this large open space of land on the 1896 and later maps was designed in some sort of large, open space “town green” concept; especially since there were homes at the bottom of this squared-off space, some on the side, and others on the top part.

It was with relief and excitement when he found the 1875 map with the intriguing layout of numbered avenues and streets, and he was even more fascinated when discovering all the “Lost Streets” of Original Grand Junction, southernmost South Grand Junction, and the furthest northern reaches of Central Grand Junction and, in particular, the named avenues that seemed to have vanished from the town’s history.

Alas, the lost streets are found!