HAWKS OPEN AGAINST SWG IN QUARTERFINALS
So far, the ride has been pretty sweet for the East Greene Hawk cagers. Fresh off a runner-up finish in its inaugural year in the Rolling Hills Conference, EG heads into post-season tournament action on Thursday with a 17-4 record.
The Hawks earned the No. 3 seed among nine teams assigned to District 12 and will get the home court advantage in a quarterfinal round tilt against Southeast Webster-Grand, a team EG beat 78-23 in the second game of the season back in early December.
District 12 action got underway Monday night with Madrid (5-17) beating Paton-Churdan, 52-22, in the opening round, or “play-in” game matching up the No. 8 and No. 9 seeds in District 12. Madrid now moves on to face top-seeded Colo-Nesco (18-2) on Thursday in Colo. Other quarterfinal matchups in District 12 are Van Meter at Ankeny Christian Academy, the No. 2 seed, and Coon Rapids-Bayard at Glidden-Ralston.
Thursday’s quarterfinal round winners face off in the semifinals next Tuesday, Feb. 22 at sites yet to be determined.
East Greene heads into district action with its offense working in high gear. The Hawks bounced back nicely from a disappointing loss to Exira/Elk Horn-Kimballton, 57-46, in Elk Horn on Feb. 4 with big wins in Rippey over Iowa Christian Academy, 70-51, on Tuesday, Feb. 8, and non-conference foe Madrid, 73-60, on Friday, Feb. 11. The Hawks have scored 70 or more points in three of their last four games.
Nic Nicolaisen, 6-5 senior center, has been on fire lately, averaging 19.8 points and 10 rebounds in the last four games. EG has a solid arsenal of quality guards who are good shooters, ball handlers and defenders. The Hawks have a deep roster and regularly play as many as 8 players throughout a game.
The runner-up league finish and 17 total wins is the best showing for East Greene in boys basketball since the early 1980s when the Hawks were a state power—winning the Central Valley Conference three years in a row and advancing to the state tournament in 1982. The following year, EG was ranked as high as No. 2 in the state and was beaten by Glidden-Ralston, also highly ranked and a Central Valley rival, in the sectional finals. GR was beaten in districts that year, but came back in 1984 and advanced to state.
EYE ON GJ SAYS: East Greene will certainly be force to be reckoned with in District 12, but the competition is fierce. EG is a heavy favorite against Southeast Webster-Grand (3-19), a team that finished last in the Twin Lakes Conference at 0-10. But it should be noted that SWG’s 5 league opponents are all 2A teams: Prairie Valley (Gowrie), South Central Calhoun (Rockwell City), East Sac (Lake View) and Manson-Northwest Webster. However, two of SWG’s wins game against Twin River Valley (Bode), a team that went 1-22. And the team that TRV beat, North Sentral Kossuth (Swea City), got the measure of them in a rematch on Monday in an 8-9 seed district matchup in northern Iowa, and that was just North Kossuth’s second win of the year.
However, just past the SWG game looms a major challenge: Colo-Nesco, the co-champion of the highly competitive Iowa Star-South conference and the No. 9-ranked team in the state. Colo-Nesco tied with North Tama (Traer) for the league crown and North Tama is also ranked this week in 1A by Associated Press, getting the No. 10 spot. The Iowa Star has 12 teams—all in 1A—divided into two divisions—north and south. Northeast Hamilton (Blairsburg) won the IS-North crown with a 14-2 mark, the same league mark for both CN and North Tama, which finished just ahead of Don Bosco (Gilbertville) at 12-3. Throughout the season, each of these four teams—NEH, CN, North Tama and Don Bosco—have been ranked in the Associated Press at one time or another this season.
The opposite side of the bracket in District 12 is wide open. Quarterfinal games on Thursday have Van Meter at Ankeny Christian Academy and Coon Rapids-Bayard at Glidden-Ralston. Interestingly, Ankeny Christian and CRB were two of the eight teams that made up the 1A state tourney field last year. Teams are grouped geographically—and then seeded by their records in the fifth through 15th games (11 total)—so it was by fate and geography these two ended up on the same side of the same district when last year they were in completely different substates.
Ankeny Christian, last year’s Rolling Hills champion, finished fourth in the league this year behind EEHK, EG and Orient-Macksburg with a 12-6 mark. The Eagles (14-8) face a team in Van Meter (4-17) that finished in a tie for seventh (3-13) with Madrid in the West Central Conference. ACA is coming off a near upset of West Central champion Des Moines Christian—an 88-85 win for the Lions in Ankeny in Friday night, so look for ACA to get by Van Meter and move on to the semifinal round.
The GR-CRB matchup looks to be one of the more interesting games. GR got the No. 4 seed—and home court advantage—for an early season match up of these longtime rivals and neighboring school districts. CRB (13-6) won a close game over the Wildcats (10-10) in the season opener, 52-48, in Coon Rapids. CRB is on a five-game winning streak, including two big wins over Woodward-Granger, a non-conference victory against Boyer Valley, and a big triumph against Guthrie Center, 51-45, that vaulted the Crusaders into a third place in the tough 1A-2A West Central Conference. CRB is tournament tested team with appearances at state in 2010, but GR will be about to avenge the four-point loss from December and to move on to possibly face a team (Ankeny Christian) that it thumped 70-41 in the regular season.
Since it has the highest seed of the four teams in the lower half of the bracket, Ankeny Christian is guaranteed the home court advantage against either CRB or GR. The most likely scenario is ACA hosting CRB in the semis on Monday, Feb. 22, with CRB moving on to the championship game against EG or CN. The final is slated for Friday, Feb. 25, at the Roland-Story gym in Story City which is midway between Colo and the teams on the other side of the bracket. Should EG prevail look for that venue to be changed to a spot midway between Grand Junction and Ankeny (Ogden, Boone or Perry) or between GJ and Carroll County (Jefferson if GR advances to the final; Guthrie Center if CRB makes the title game). Both Ogden and Jefferson-Scranton boys and girls teams have been eliminated so both gyms (and school officials) will be available to host a tournament final.
UPDATE ON GIRLS TOURNEY: Exira/Elk Horn-Kimballton is the only Rolling Hills girls team still on the tourney trail after the first two rounds. EHKE beat league foe CAM (Anita) last night in Anita, 44-42, to advance to the semifinal round against Sidney at Red Oak.
Coon Rapids-Bayard, the team that sidelined East Greene in first-round game last Thursday, upset No. 15 Adair-Casey in Adair on Saturday night, 43-32, to advance to the quarterfinals against Guthrie Center in Adair last night. CRB prevailed again, 45-39, having beaten Guthrie twice during the regular season. The Crusaders (14-9) move on to face top-ranked Martensdale-St. Mary’s in a semifinal game on Friday at the new West Central Valley High School gym in Stuart. Game time is 7 p.m.
Martensdale-St. Mary’s (21-2) advanced with a 79-28 drubbing of Ankeny Christian, the only other Rolling Hills team to make it to the quarterfinal round. Ankeny Christian bows out with its best record in its short school history, 14-10.
The winners from the semifinal games at Red Oak and Stuart meeting in the regional final at Atlantic on Monday.
Here is a look at how the Rolling Hills played out at the end of the season:
ROLLING HILLS CONFERENCE 2011 FINAL STANDINGS
Boys Basketball
Elk Horn-Kimballton/Exira 17-1
East Greene 15-3
Orient-Macksburg 14-4
Ankeny Christian 12-6
Glidden-Ralston 10-8
CAM 8-10
Iowa Christian 5-13
Walnut 4-14
Adair-Casey 4-14
Paton-Churdan 1-17
Girls Basketball
Adair-Casey 16-2
CAM 15-3
Elk Horn-Kimballton/Exira 15-3
Iowa Christian 13-5
Ankeny Christian 10-8
Orient-Macksburg 8-10
East Greene 5-13
Glidden-Ralston 4-14
Walnut 4-14
Paton-Churdan 0-18
Wednesday, February 16, 2011
Friday, February 11, 2011
Hawkettes Fall to CRB, 48-23
END SEASON IN FIRST ROUND REGIONAL ACTION
A solid first quarter last night gave fans hope that the Hawkettes might be able to pick up their seventh win of the season and advance in the regional tournament, but CRB put the clamps on EG the rest of the game on its way to a 48-23 triumph.
EG came out strong behind seniors Tia Lowe and Katlynn Gannon in the first quarter—going head to head with the Crusaders and ending the first period with a two point lead, 9-7. Lowe hit a three-pointer right off the bat to open EG scoring and she racked up six points in the first quarter with Gannon adding three.
But things soon took a turn for the worse. EG was still up by two, 11-9, early in the second quarter but CRB tied it all up with a basket by junior post Katie Dentlinger, a three-year starter in the post for the Crusaders. That ignited the home team as they went on a 13-0 run, taking a 24-11 advantage into the break.
It was more of the same in the second half as turnovers, foul trouble and a lack of offensive rebounding did in the Hawkettes, who ended their season at 6-16. CRB advances to a Saturday night second round game against Adair-Casey, ranked No. 15 in the state, at Adair.
Lowe led the Hawkette scoring with 8 points and Gannon had 6. Rounding out the scoring were Jasmine Kinney, 3; Molly Neese and Chelsi Wilkens, 2 each; and Liz Gunn, 1.
Four seniors—Lowe, Gannon, Neese and Kinney—closed out their EG basketball careers.
EYE ON GJ SAYS: These four seniors have given a lot of themselves to the EG cause, as they have excelled in volleyball, basketball, track, softball and cheerleading the last four years. Highlights were upper division finishes in the tough 2A dominated West Central Conference in volleyball in 2008 and 2009 and basketball in 2008 and 2010 and advancing to the regional basketball semifinals last year where they were just 4 points short of advancing to the regional championship game and a possible berth in the state tournament. Good job seniors, and thank you for representing your school with honor and distinction!
EG will be a young team next year with leadership coming from two juniors (Liz Gunn and Brittany Gunn) and four sophomores (Wilkins, Brooke Popp, Shelby Cooklin and Emily Jacobson). They will be joined by several talented freshmen who did well as 8th graders this past season. Wilkens, who had a stellar season as freshman center, is the only returning starter and will be the anchor for the team as she has faced all the top inside players from teams like AC, CAM and EEHK in the Rolling Hills this season. Wilkens averaged 4.7 rebounds and 3.7 points per game over the 21-game season.
Elswhere in Region 8 action last night, Ankeny Christian got by Earlham in overtime, 48-46, to advance to the quarterfinal round against No. 1 ranked Martensdale-St. Mary's. Iowa Christian lost to Guthrie Center, who will play the winner of Saturday's CRB-AC game at Adair on Tuesday. CAM and Exira/Elk Horn-Kimballton advanced with easy wins and will face each other for the third time this season in Anita on Tuesday with the winner moving on to the semifinal round at Red Oak.
In Region 7, Orient-Macksburg was eliminated by Corning, 49-23. In Region 2, Glidden-Ralston was drubbed by No. 2 Ar-We-Va (Westside), 85-19, to end its season at 4-17, and Paton-Churdan lost to Southeast Webster-Grand, 65-23, closing out the year winless in 21 games. Ar-We-Va (19-2) and Southeast Webster-Grand (9-13) meet Tuesday in Westside in the quarterfinal round with the winner advancing on to the semifinal round in Denison on Friday.
A solid first quarter last night gave fans hope that the Hawkettes might be able to pick up their seventh win of the season and advance in the regional tournament, but CRB put the clamps on EG the rest of the game on its way to a 48-23 triumph.
EG came out strong behind seniors Tia Lowe and Katlynn Gannon in the first quarter—going head to head with the Crusaders and ending the first period with a two point lead, 9-7. Lowe hit a three-pointer right off the bat to open EG scoring and she racked up six points in the first quarter with Gannon adding three.
But things soon took a turn for the worse. EG was still up by two, 11-9, early in the second quarter but CRB tied it all up with a basket by junior post Katie Dentlinger, a three-year starter in the post for the Crusaders. That ignited the home team as they went on a 13-0 run, taking a 24-11 advantage into the break.
It was more of the same in the second half as turnovers, foul trouble and a lack of offensive rebounding did in the Hawkettes, who ended their season at 6-16. CRB advances to a Saturday night second round game against Adair-Casey, ranked No. 15 in the state, at Adair.
Lowe led the Hawkette scoring with 8 points and Gannon had 6. Rounding out the scoring were Jasmine Kinney, 3; Molly Neese and Chelsi Wilkens, 2 each; and Liz Gunn, 1.
Four seniors—Lowe, Gannon, Neese and Kinney—closed out their EG basketball careers.
EYE ON GJ SAYS: These four seniors have given a lot of themselves to the EG cause, as they have excelled in volleyball, basketball, track, softball and cheerleading the last four years. Highlights were upper division finishes in the tough 2A dominated West Central Conference in volleyball in 2008 and 2009 and basketball in 2008 and 2010 and advancing to the regional basketball semifinals last year where they were just 4 points short of advancing to the regional championship game and a possible berth in the state tournament. Good job seniors, and thank you for representing your school with honor and distinction!
EG will be a young team next year with leadership coming from two juniors (Liz Gunn and Brittany Gunn) and four sophomores (Wilkins, Brooke Popp, Shelby Cooklin and Emily Jacobson). They will be joined by several talented freshmen who did well as 8th graders this past season. Wilkens, who had a stellar season as freshman center, is the only returning starter and will be the anchor for the team as she has faced all the top inside players from teams like AC, CAM and EEHK in the Rolling Hills this season. Wilkens averaged 4.7 rebounds and 3.7 points per game over the 21-game season.
Elswhere in Region 8 action last night, Ankeny Christian got by Earlham in overtime, 48-46, to advance to the quarterfinal round against No. 1 ranked Martensdale-St. Mary's. Iowa Christian lost to Guthrie Center, who will play the winner of Saturday's CRB-AC game at Adair on Tuesday. CAM and Exira/Elk Horn-Kimballton advanced with easy wins and will face each other for the third time this season in Anita on Tuesday with the winner moving on to the semifinal round at Red Oak.
In Region 7, Orient-Macksburg was eliminated by Corning, 49-23. In Region 2, Glidden-Ralston was drubbed by No. 2 Ar-We-Va (Westside), 85-19, to end its season at 4-17, and Paton-Churdan lost to Southeast Webster-Grand, 65-23, closing out the year winless in 21 games. Ar-We-Va (19-2) and Southeast Webster-Grand (9-13) meet Tuesday in Westside in the quarterfinal round with the winner advancing on to the semifinal round in Denison on Friday.
Thursday, February 10, 2011
Hawkettes End Regular Season 6-15
OPEN REGIONAL ACTION TONIGHT AGAINST CRB
East Greene ended the girls basketball regular season on a sour note, falling to Iowa Christian Academy, 52-20, on Tuesday night in Rippey. The loss dropped the Hawkettes to 6-15 for the season and to 5-13 in the Rolling Hills Conference, where they finished seventh in the 10-team league. Iowa Christian finished in fourth place with a 13-5 mark.
It marked the final home appearance for four EG seniors: Katlynn Gannon, Tia Lowe, Molly Neese and Jasmine Kinney. Lowe and Gannon were the only two Hawkettes to get on the board with 11 and 9 points respectively. Karlie Schut had a big night for the Blazers with 19 points and 16 rebounds. She was 9-of-10 scoring from the field. ICA held the Hawkettes to just 1 point in the second quarter, allowing them to take a 30-7 lead and halftime and then coast to the win.
Both teams head into regional action tonight. EG travels to Coon Rapids to face Coon Rapids-Bayard, a team that tied with Guthrie Center and Woodward-Granger for fourth in the West Central Conference with a 9-7 mark. CRB is 11-9 overall, with a season-opening win over IKM-Manning (15-4), the No. 11 team in Class 2A to its credit, along with a 30-28 victory over Exira/Elk Horn-Kimballton, which tied for second this year in the Rolling Hills.
Iowa Christian (14-6) heads to Guthrie Center (11-10) to take on the Tigerettes in a first-round regional game. The winner of that game will advance to the quarterfinal round in Adair next Tuesday to take on the winner of second round game scheduled for Saturday night in Adair that will match up Adair-Casey (18-3) with the winner of tonight’s EG-CRB clash. Adair-Casey locked down the Rolling Hills title on Tuesday with a 16-2 league mark, and made its first appearance in the Class 1A rankings yesterday, coming in at the No. 15 spot.
The winner of next Tuesday’s Region 8 quarterfinal game in Adair will advance to the semifinal game to be played in the new West Central Valley gym in Stuart. The four teams vying to reach the semifinal round in the lower bracket of the region are Ankeny Christian, Earlham, Grandview Park Baptist and Martensdale-St. Mary’s.
Ankeny Christian (13-9), which finished strong with a fifth-place finish in the Rolling Hills at 10-8, will head to Earlham. The Cardinals were 7-13 overall and 3-12 in the West Central, tying them with Van Meter for seventh place. The winner tonight in Earlham will take on the winner of tonight’s battle between Martensdale-St. Mary’s and Grandview Park Baptist in a quarterfinal round game on Tuesday night in Martensdale. MStM will be heavy favorite, as they are the No. 1-ranked team in Class 1A with a 19-2 record. MStM’s only losses were to OA-BCIG, the top-ranked 2A team in the state, and Southeast Polk, a 4A team. The Blue Devils, who won the Pride of Iowa Conference with a perfect 16-0 mark, have posted big wins over West Central champion Panorama, a 2A school, and Mt. Ayr, also a 2A school and a Pride of Iowa league rival. Mt. Ayr (18-2) heads into 2A tourney action ranked fourth in the state. The Blue Devils’ drubbing of Panorama, 61-26, came in the first game of the season. Both MStM and Mt. Ayr were in the field of last year’s 1A state tournament with Mt. Ayr advancing to the championship game, losing to Exira, last year’s Rolling Hills Conference champion.
Exira/Elk Horn-Kimballton posted a strong team again this year, finishing second in the Rolling Hills tied with CAM (Anita). Both posted 15-3 marks, just a game behind Adair-Casey. Each has been ranked among the Top 15 in Class 1A this season.
CAM takes on league foe Walnut in Anita tonight while EEHK hosts AHST (Avoca) in the upper half of the Region 8 bracket. Both will be heavy favorites to advance to the quarterfinal round on Tuesday in Anita. The quarterfinal round winner will move on to the semifinal round game scheduled for next Friday, Feb. 18, in Red Oak against one of the other four teams in the upper bracket of the region: Fremont-Mills, Riverside, East Mills and Sidney.
The Red Oak semifinal game winner will take on the team to advance from the Stuart semifinal tilt in the Region 8 final on Monday, Feb. 21, Atlantic.
Seven of the 10 teams in the Rolling Hills are in Region 8—which pulls together teams from central, west central, western and southwest Iowa—while Glidden-Ralston and Paton-Churdan are in Region 2 (western and northwest Iowa) and Orient-Macksburg is in Region 7 (far southwest and deep southern Iowa).
Orient-Macksburg hosts Corning tonight while Paton-Churdan takes on Southeast Webster-Grand at Burnside and Glidden-Ralston has the unenviable task of taking on Ar-We-Va, the second-ranked 1A team in the state, on the Rockettes’ home court in Westside. If OM wins, it will travel to Villisca to take on the Lenox-Villisca winner. Winners of the games at SWG and Ar-We-Va will face each other Tuesday in Westside with the winner advancing to the semifinal game in Denison. Semifinal winners from Denison and Orange City will meet in the Region 2 final on Feb. 21 in Mapleton.
EYE ON GJ SAYS: The Hawkettes showed real promise early this season, getting out of the gate with a 5-3 record through the Christmas break. EG was only able to post one additional victory since then, however, downing winless Paton-Churdan in Rippey. EG fell to teams it had beaten earlier in the season—Walnut, Glidden-Ralston and Ankeny Christian—yet the Hawkettes were competitive in all of those games and in two close losses to Orient-Macksburg (each by three points).
It will be interesting to see how the Rolling Hills stacks up to the competition in the regionals, especially in Region 8, which features the top 5 teams in the league: Adair-Casey, CAM, EEHK and the two Christian academies from Des Moines.
The opening round has some interesting matchups, especially Iowa Christian at Guthrie Center, and Ankeny Christian taking on Earlham. Guthrie has a deep girls basketball tradition and the West Central is a solid conference while Iowa Christian was a real threat in the Rolling Hills this year, downing CAM by 10 points and losing to EEHK by only 3. Guthrie played four games in a six-day period that ended Tuesday night, marked by two big wins over West Central Valley; a near upset of Des Moines Christian, falling 47-44; and a loss to CRB, 33-25.
Other than Exira’s run to the championship in 2010 and a state tournament trip in 2008, the only other area 1A or 2A teams to advance to state in recent years have been tradition-rich Guthrie and CRB of the West Central, and Southeast Webster-Grand, a longtime area rival of EG. Guthrie Center most recently qualified for state in 2007 and 2002, and is widely known as a “girls basketball town” as the Tigerettes have qualified for state an amazing 21 times, topped only by Ankeny (23) trips and equaled by Mediapolis. Coon Rapids-Bayard made it to state in 2009, giving the school 9 total trips—7 by Coon Rapids and 2 by CRB. SWG qualified in 2006 and 2008. Coupled with appearances at state by Grand in 1960, Dayton in 1974, and Central Webster in 1983, SWG has 5 total appearances to its name.
If CRB gets by the Hawkettes tonight, they will face Adair-Casey on the Bombers’ home floor for the right to move on to the quarterfinal round, yet another matchup between Rolling Hills and West Central teams. CRB has big wins over EEHK, 38-30, in December and its win on Tuesday over Guthrie, a team it lost to earlier in the season 34-31. AC split with both CAM and EEHK on its way to the Rolling Hills title and interestingly, its only other loss on the year was to Guthrie Center. A rematch of those two teams is a possibility in the quarterfinal round also.
Panorama won the West Central title this year 15-1, just ahead of another 2A school, Des Moines Christian. 13-2. CRB, Guthrie, West Central Valley and Woodward-Granger were all bunched together in the middle of the league with WCV going 9-6 with one game cancelled due to snow and the other three teams right behind at 9-7.
In the bottom of the Region 8 bracket, Ankeny Christian has come on strong at the end of the season, posting a big win over CAM on Monday, knocking the Cougars out of the league lead. ACA has gone 3-1 in non-conference play beating Grandview Park Baptist, Madrid and Twin Cedars (Bussey) and losing to Clarke (Osceola), a 2A school. This the best the small Christian academies have done in the Rolling Hills since they joined the league a few years ago after first fielding varsity high school athletics. Last year, ICA and ACA finished fifth and seventh in the league and this year they improved to fourth and fifth—even more impressive when considering the competition included another larger school that moved in from the West Central (EG) and a team formed by two individual competitors from last year (Exira and EHK), which made for a combined enrollment of 119, considerably more than ICA, 56, and ACA, 38.
For comparison purposes, enrollment for the other league teams breaks down like this: CAM 103, GR 102, AC 83, EG 81, OM 57, Walnut 43, and PC 35.
All in all, Martensdale-St.Mary’s looks to be the solid favorite to come out of EG’s half of the bracket with what should be an easy first-round win over Grandview Park Baptist (4-17) and then a solid tussle with Ankeny Christian in the quarterfinal round. It should be interesting in the semifinal round because ICA, GC, CRB and AC would each give them a real challenge—especially with the basketball heritage of CRB and GC—but MStM is also a tournament-tested team as the Blue Devils advanced to state last year as did league foe Mt. Ayr, which attest to the strength of the Pride of Iowa.
Either CAM or EEHK should make it to the semifinal round to most likely face Sidney (15-6), the only other team with a winning record on the Red Oak side of the region.
East Greene ended the girls basketball regular season on a sour note, falling to Iowa Christian Academy, 52-20, on Tuesday night in Rippey. The loss dropped the Hawkettes to 6-15 for the season and to 5-13 in the Rolling Hills Conference, where they finished seventh in the 10-team league. Iowa Christian finished in fourth place with a 13-5 mark.
It marked the final home appearance for four EG seniors: Katlynn Gannon, Tia Lowe, Molly Neese and Jasmine Kinney. Lowe and Gannon were the only two Hawkettes to get on the board with 11 and 9 points respectively. Karlie Schut had a big night for the Blazers with 19 points and 16 rebounds. She was 9-of-10 scoring from the field. ICA held the Hawkettes to just 1 point in the second quarter, allowing them to take a 30-7 lead and halftime and then coast to the win.
Both teams head into regional action tonight. EG travels to Coon Rapids to face Coon Rapids-Bayard, a team that tied with Guthrie Center and Woodward-Granger for fourth in the West Central Conference with a 9-7 mark. CRB is 11-9 overall, with a season-opening win over IKM-Manning (15-4), the No. 11 team in Class 2A to its credit, along with a 30-28 victory over Exira/Elk Horn-Kimballton, which tied for second this year in the Rolling Hills.
Iowa Christian (14-6) heads to Guthrie Center (11-10) to take on the Tigerettes in a first-round regional game. The winner of that game will advance to the quarterfinal round in Adair next Tuesday to take on the winner of second round game scheduled for Saturday night in Adair that will match up Adair-Casey (18-3) with the winner of tonight’s EG-CRB clash. Adair-Casey locked down the Rolling Hills title on Tuesday with a 16-2 league mark, and made its first appearance in the Class 1A rankings yesterday, coming in at the No. 15 spot.
The winner of next Tuesday’s Region 8 quarterfinal game in Adair will advance to the semifinal game to be played in the new West Central Valley gym in Stuart. The four teams vying to reach the semifinal round in the lower bracket of the region are Ankeny Christian, Earlham, Grandview Park Baptist and Martensdale-St. Mary’s.
Ankeny Christian (13-9), which finished strong with a fifth-place finish in the Rolling Hills at 10-8, will head to Earlham. The Cardinals were 7-13 overall and 3-12 in the West Central, tying them with Van Meter for seventh place. The winner tonight in Earlham will take on the winner of tonight’s battle between Martensdale-St. Mary’s and Grandview Park Baptist in a quarterfinal round game on Tuesday night in Martensdale. MStM will be heavy favorite, as they are the No. 1-ranked team in Class 1A with a 19-2 record. MStM’s only losses were to OA-BCIG, the top-ranked 2A team in the state, and Southeast Polk, a 4A team. The Blue Devils, who won the Pride of Iowa Conference with a perfect 16-0 mark, have posted big wins over West Central champion Panorama, a 2A school, and Mt. Ayr, also a 2A school and a Pride of Iowa league rival. Mt. Ayr (18-2) heads into 2A tourney action ranked fourth in the state. The Blue Devils’ drubbing of Panorama, 61-26, came in the first game of the season. Both MStM and Mt. Ayr were in the field of last year’s 1A state tournament with Mt. Ayr advancing to the championship game, losing to Exira, last year’s Rolling Hills Conference champion.
Exira/Elk Horn-Kimballton posted a strong team again this year, finishing second in the Rolling Hills tied with CAM (Anita). Both posted 15-3 marks, just a game behind Adair-Casey. Each has been ranked among the Top 15 in Class 1A this season.
CAM takes on league foe Walnut in Anita tonight while EEHK hosts AHST (Avoca) in the upper half of the Region 8 bracket. Both will be heavy favorites to advance to the quarterfinal round on Tuesday in Anita. The quarterfinal round winner will move on to the semifinal round game scheduled for next Friday, Feb. 18, in Red Oak against one of the other four teams in the upper bracket of the region: Fremont-Mills, Riverside, East Mills and Sidney.
The Red Oak semifinal game winner will take on the team to advance from the Stuart semifinal tilt in the Region 8 final on Monday, Feb. 21, Atlantic.
Seven of the 10 teams in the Rolling Hills are in Region 8—which pulls together teams from central, west central, western and southwest Iowa—while Glidden-Ralston and Paton-Churdan are in Region 2 (western and northwest Iowa) and Orient-Macksburg is in Region 7 (far southwest and deep southern Iowa).
Orient-Macksburg hosts Corning tonight while Paton-Churdan takes on Southeast Webster-Grand at Burnside and Glidden-Ralston has the unenviable task of taking on Ar-We-Va, the second-ranked 1A team in the state, on the Rockettes’ home court in Westside. If OM wins, it will travel to Villisca to take on the Lenox-Villisca winner. Winners of the games at SWG and Ar-We-Va will face each other Tuesday in Westside with the winner advancing to the semifinal game in Denison. Semifinal winners from Denison and Orange City will meet in the Region 2 final on Feb. 21 in Mapleton.
EYE ON GJ SAYS: The Hawkettes showed real promise early this season, getting out of the gate with a 5-3 record through the Christmas break. EG was only able to post one additional victory since then, however, downing winless Paton-Churdan in Rippey. EG fell to teams it had beaten earlier in the season—Walnut, Glidden-Ralston and Ankeny Christian—yet the Hawkettes were competitive in all of those games and in two close losses to Orient-Macksburg (each by three points).
It will be interesting to see how the Rolling Hills stacks up to the competition in the regionals, especially in Region 8, which features the top 5 teams in the league: Adair-Casey, CAM, EEHK and the two Christian academies from Des Moines.
The opening round has some interesting matchups, especially Iowa Christian at Guthrie Center, and Ankeny Christian taking on Earlham. Guthrie has a deep girls basketball tradition and the West Central is a solid conference while Iowa Christian was a real threat in the Rolling Hills this year, downing CAM by 10 points and losing to EEHK by only 3. Guthrie played four games in a six-day period that ended Tuesday night, marked by two big wins over West Central Valley; a near upset of Des Moines Christian, falling 47-44; and a loss to CRB, 33-25.
Other than Exira’s run to the championship in 2010 and a state tournament trip in 2008, the only other area 1A or 2A teams to advance to state in recent years have been tradition-rich Guthrie and CRB of the West Central, and Southeast Webster-Grand, a longtime area rival of EG. Guthrie Center most recently qualified for state in 2007 and 2002, and is widely known as a “girls basketball town” as the Tigerettes have qualified for state an amazing 21 times, topped only by Ankeny (23) trips and equaled by Mediapolis. Coon Rapids-Bayard made it to state in 2009, giving the school 9 total trips—7 by Coon Rapids and 2 by CRB. SWG qualified in 2006 and 2008. Coupled with appearances at state by Grand in 1960, Dayton in 1974, and Central Webster in 1983, SWG has 5 total appearances to its name.
If CRB gets by the Hawkettes tonight, they will face Adair-Casey on the Bombers’ home floor for the right to move on to the quarterfinal round, yet another matchup between Rolling Hills and West Central teams. CRB has big wins over EEHK, 38-30, in December and its win on Tuesday over Guthrie, a team it lost to earlier in the season 34-31. AC split with both CAM and EEHK on its way to the Rolling Hills title and interestingly, its only other loss on the year was to Guthrie Center. A rematch of those two teams is a possibility in the quarterfinal round also.
Panorama won the West Central title this year 15-1, just ahead of another 2A school, Des Moines Christian. 13-2. CRB, Guthrie, West Central Valley and Woodward-Granger were all bunched together in the middle of the league with WCV going 9-6 with one game cancelled due to snow and the other three teams right behind at 9-7.
In the bottom of the Region 8 bracket, Ankeny Christian has come on strong at the end of the season, posting a big win over CAM on Monday, knocking the Cougars out of the league lead. ACA has gone 3-1 in non-conference play beating Grandview Park Baptist, Madrid and Twin Cedars (Bussey) and losing to Clarke (Osceola), a 2A school. This the best the small Christian academies have done in the Rolling Hills since they joined the league a few years ago after first fielding varsity high school athletics. Last year, ICA and ACA finished fifth and seventh in the league and this year they improved to fourth and fifth—even more impressive when considering the competition included another larger school that moved in from the West Central (EG) and a team formed by two individual competitors from last year (Exira and EHK), which made for a combined enrollment of 119, considerably more than ICA, 56, and ACA, 38.
For comparison purposes, enrollment for the other league teams breaks down like this: CAM 103, GR 102, AC 83, EG 81, OM 57, Walnut 43, and PC 35.
All in all, Martensdale-St.Mary’s looks to be the solid favorite to come out of EG’s half of the bracket with what should be an easy first-round win over Grandview Park Baptist (4-17) and then a solid tussle with Ankeny Christian in the quarterfinal round. It should be interesting in the semifinal round because ICA, GC, CRB and AC would each give them a real challenge—especially with the basketball heritage of CRB and GC—but MStM is also a tournament-tested team as the Blue Devils advanced to state last year as did league foe Mt. Ayr, which attest to the strength of the Pride of Iowa.
Either CAM or EEHK should make it to the semifinal round to most likely face Sidney (15-6), the only other team with a winning record on the Red Oak side of the region.
Friday, February 4, 2011
Hawks Face Key League Test Tonight
CAN TIE FOR LEAGUE LEAD WITH WIN AT ELK HORN
East Greene is coming down the home stretch of one the most successful boys basketball seasons in school history. The Hawks head to Elk Horn tonight for a key battle with Elk Horn-Kimballton/Exira, leader of the Rolling Hills Conference with a 15-1 record. EG is right behind the Spartans at 14-2.
The two teams met on Jan. 4 in Rippey with EHKE getting the upper hand in a tough defensive tussle, 40-37. EG has seen what the Spartans have put on the floor in the earlier matchup and can hopefully rectify that. On paper, it would seem that EHKE has the advantage as they are playing on their home floor in Elk Horn, but EG is actually undefeated in road contests, whereas all three defeats this season have come on the home court in Rippey. Another wrinkle in the mix is that EHKE actually has two home courts—the first half of the season was played in Exira and now the latter half of the schedule shifts to Elk Horn, as they are in the early stages of sports and whole-grade sharing arrangement between the two--now still separate--school districts.
Both teams sailed through their matchups last night, with EG taking care of Adair-Casey at home, 74-38, and EHKE picking up a road win at Walnut, 76-31. The fact that the second place team beat the ninth-place team in the league by 36 points and the first-place team beat the eighth-team by 35 points—each a team seven slots lower on the RH pecking order—shows that these teams are very evenly matched.
The 74 points scored was the second highest total for the Hawks all season and the most points scored in any of their 14 conference wins. It was the same for EHKE, and the first time the Spartans have topped the 70-point threshold all season. EG has the higher offensive average for the year, 58.2, the 26th best among all 1A schools (137 total) with EHKE at 53.4 points per game. EHKE gives up just 36.6 points a game, second best in all of Class 1A, while EG is hold teams to 42.9.
In other make-up games in the league last night, Glidden-Ralston beat Paton-Churdan 46-29 to stay in the hunt for an upper division finish in the conference. GR moved is conference record to 11-5, right behind Orient-Macksburg and Ankeny Christian, both at 11-4.
Paton-Churdan is winless in the RH and is 1-16 overall, with is lone victory coming against Southeast Webster-Grand. EG opens district action in a quarterfinal round game at home against SWG on Jan. 17. EG thumped the Eagles 78-23 in the second game of the season back in December, which was the highest point total and widest margin of victory all year for the Hawks, who are now 15-3 overall, the same mark as EHKE.
In girls action, Adair-Casey beat the Hawkettes, 67-39, to stay in contention for the Rolling Hills crown. AC is now 14-2, just behind CAM (Anita) which is 14-1.
After tonight’s game at Elk Horn, both EG squads end conference play against Iowa Christian at home on Tuesday. The boys host Madrid in a non-conference game at home on Friday, while the girls head to Coon Rapids-Bayard the night in a first-round regional match up the night before.
BOYS ROLLING HILLS STANDINGS
Elk Horn-Kimballton/Exira 15-1
East Greene 14-2
Ankeny Christian 11-4
Orient-Macksburg 11-4
Glidden-Ralston 10-5
CAM 6-9
Iowa Christian 5-10
Walnut 3-13
Adair-Casey 2-14
Paton-Churdan 0-15
GIRLS ROLLING HILLS STANDINGS
CAM 14-1
Adair-Casey 14-2
Elk Horn-Kimballton/Exira 13-3
Iowa Christian 10-5
Orient-Macksburg 7-8
Ankeny Christian 7-8
East Greene 5-11
Walnut 4-12
Glidden-Ralston 2-12
Paton-Churdan 0-14
East Greene is coming down the home stretch of one the most successful boys basketball seasons in school history. The Hawks head to Elk Horn tonight for a key battle with Elk Horn-Kimballton/Exira, leader of the Rolling Hills Conference with a 15-1 record. EG is right behind the Spartans at 14-2.
The two teams met on Jan. 4 in Rippey with EHKE getting the upper hand in a tough defensive tussle, 40-37. EG has seen what the Spartans have put on the floor in the earlier matchup and can hopefully rectify that. On paper, it would seem that EHKE has the advantage as they are playing on their home floor in Elk Horn, but EG is actually undefeated in road contests, whereas all three defeats this season have come on the home court in Rippey. Another wrinkle in the mix is that EHKE actually has two home courts—the first half of the season was played in Exira and now the latter half of the schedule shifts to Elk Horn, as they are in the early stages of sports and whole-grade sharing arrangement between the two--now still separate--school districts.
Both teams sailed through their matchups last night, with EG taking care of Adair-Casey at home, 74-38, and EHKE picking up a road win at Walnut, 76-31. The fact that the second place team beat the ninth-place team in the league by 36 points and the first-place team beat the eighth-team by 35 points—each a team seven slots lower on the RH pecking order—shows that these teams are very evenly matched.
The 74 points scored was the second highest total for the Hawks all season and the most points scored in any of their 14 conference wins. It was the same for EHKE, and the first time the Spartans have topped the 70-point threshold all season. EG has the higher offensive average for the year, 58.2, the 26th best among all 1A schools (137 total) with EHKE at 53.4 points per game. EHKE gives up just 36.6 points a game, second best in all of Class 1A, while EG is hold teams to 42.9.
In other make-up games in the league last night, Glidden-Ralston beat Paton-Churdan 46-29 to stay in the hunt for an upper division finish in the conference. GR moved is conference record to 11-5, right behind Orient-Macksburg and Ankeny Christian, both at 11-4.
Paton-Churdan is winless in the RH and is 1-16 overall, with is lone victory coming against Southeast Webster-Grand. EG opens district action in a quarterfinal round game at home against SWG on Jan. 17. EG thumped the Eagles 78-23 in the second game of the season back in December, which was the highest point total and widest margin of victory all year for the Hawks, who are now 15-3 overall, the same mark as EHKE.
In girls action, Adair-Casey beat the Hawkettes, 67-39, to stay in contention for the Rolling Hills crown. AC is now 14-2, just behind CAM (Anita) which is 14-1.
After tonight’s game at Elk Horn, both EG squads end conference play against Iowa Christian at home on Tuesday. The boys host Madrid in a non-conference game at home on Friday, while the girls head to Coon Rapids-Bayard the night in a first-round regional match up the night before.
BOYS ROLLING HILLS STANDINGS
Elk Horn-Kimballton/Exira 15-1
East Greene 14-2
Ankeny Christian 11-4
Orient-Macksburg 11-4
Glidden-Ralston 10-5
CAM 6-9
Iowa Christian 5-10
Walnut 3-13
Adair-Casey 2-14
Paton-Churdan 0-15
GIRLS ROLLING HILLS STANDINGS
CAM 14-1
Adair-Casey 14-2
Elk Horn-Kimballton/Exira 13-3
Iowa Christian 10-5
Orient-Macksburg 7-8
Ankeny Christian 7-8
East Greene 5-11
Walnut 4-12
Glidden-Ralston 2-12
Paton-Churdan 0-14
Friday, January 28, 2011
Hawks Vie for Rolling Hills Title
BIG ROAD WIN TUESDAY OVER O-MACK, 48-38
East Greene picked up a big win at Orient-Macksburg on Tuesday to keep its Rolling Hills Conference boys basketball title hopes alive. EG downed the Bulldogs 48-38, keeping the Hawks just one game behind league-leader Elk Horn-Kimballton/Exira.
Orient-Macksburg had just handed EHKE its first league loss last Friday in Orient, upping its own record in the conference to 10-3, and moving OM to third place, just behind E/EHK (11-1) and EG (11-2), and a game ahead of Ankeny Christian Academy, 9-3.
EHKE won a big matchup Monday night at Ankeny Christian 54-48. The Spartans then beat Iowa Christian 68-50 the following night to move to 13-1 in the conference while EG upped its mark to 12-2 with the big win at Orient. Each team has just four conference games remaining including a key matchup next Friday night, Feb. 4, at Elk Horn.
EG faces a tough Glidden-Ralston squad tonight in Rippey. The Wildcats have won 5 of their last 7 games including a 70-41 drubbing of Ankeny Christian on Jan. 18 in Glidden. GR is just behind OM and ACA (both 10-4) in the league with a 9-4 mark. (GR and PC have each played one less game than the other 8 RH teams, but will make up their snowed out game from Jan. 11 on Monday, Jan. 31, in Glidden).
EYE ON GJ SAYS: The Hawks are playing solid ball and they showed real fortitude by making a very good showing in Orient on Tuesday night after losing by just one point to Class 2A Woodward-Granger Saturday in Rippey. The Hawks got a sweep of county rival and RH foe Paton-Churdan with a big 68-34 win on the home court on Friday night. The Hawks are now 13-3.
EG girls also picked up a conference win and a sweep of PC as they downed the Rockettes in Rippey, 36-27. The Hawkettes fell to Woodward-Granger the following night, 67-44. The win over PC moved the Hawkettes' conference record to 5-9. Overall, the Hawkettes are 6-11. Besides the GR game tonight and the Feb. 4 matchup with EHKE, the other two conference games left for the EG squads are Adair-Casey next Tuesday, Feb. 1, and Iowa Christian on Tuesday, Feb. 8. Both games are in Rippey. The girls enter district action on Thursday, Feb. 10, against Coon Rapids-Bayard at Coon Rapids while the boys close out the regular season with a home game against Madrid on Friday, Feb. 11.
ROLLING HILLS
Boys Conference Standings
(through Tuesday, Jan. 25, 2011)
Elk Horn-Kimballton/Exira 13-1
East Greene 12-2
Ankeny Christian 10-4
Orient-Macksburg 10-4
Glidden-Ralston 9-4
CAM 6-8
Iowa Christian 5-9
Walnut 2-12
Adair-Casey 2-12
Paton-Churdan 0-13
ROLLING HILLS
Girls Conference Standings
(through Tuesday, Jan. 25, 2011)
CAM 13-1
Adair-Casey 12-2
Elk Horn-Kimballton/Exira 12-2
Iowa Christian 9-5
Orient-Macksburg 7-7
Ankeny Christian 7-7
East Greene 5-9
Walnut 3-11
Glidden-Ralston 1-12
Paton-Churdan 0-13
East Greene picked up a big win at Orient-Macksburg on Tuesday to keep its Rolling Hills Conference boys basketball title hopes alive. EG downed the Bulldogs 48-38, keeping the Hawks just one game behind league-leader Elk Horn-Kimballton/Exira.
Orient-Macksburg had just handed EHKE its first league loss last Friday in Orient, upping its own record in the conference to 10-3, and moving OM to third place, just behind E/EHK (11-1) and EG (11-2), and a game ahead of Ankeny Christian Academy, 9-3.
EHKE won a big matchup Monday night at Ankeny Christian 54-48. The Spartans then beat Iowa Christian 68-50 the following night to move to 13-1 in the conference while EG upped its mark to 12-2 with the big win at Orient. Each team has just four conference games remaining including a key matchup next Friday night, Feb. 4, at Elk Horn.
EG faces a tough Glidden-Ralston squad tonight in Rippey. The Wildcats have won 5 of their last 7 games including a 70-41 drubbing of Ankeny Christian on Jan. 18 in Glidden. GR is just behind OM and ACA (both 10-4) in the league with a 9-4 mark. (GR and PC have each played one less game than the other 8 RH teams, but will make up their snowed out game from Jan. 11 on Monday, Jan. 31, in Glidden).
EYE ON GJ SAYS: The Hawks are playing solid ball and they showed real fortitude by making a very good showing in Orient on Tuesday night after losing by just one point to Class 2A Woodward-Granger Saturday in Rippey. The Hawks got a sweep of county rival and RH foe Paton-Churdan with a big 68-34 win on the home court on Friday night. The Hawks are now 13-3.
EG girls also picked up a conference win and a sweep of PC as they downed the Rockettes in Rippey, 36-27. The Hawkettes fell to Woodward-Granger the following night, 67-44. The win over PC moved the Hawkettes' conference record to 5-9. Overall, the Hawkettes are 6-11. Besides the GR game tonight and the Feb. 4 matchup with EHKE, the other two conference games left for the EG squads are Adair-Casey next Tuesday, Feb. 1, and Iowa Christian on Tuesday, Feb. 8. Both games are in Rippey. The girls enter district action on Thursday, Feb. 10, against Coon Rapids-Bayard at Coon Rapids while the boys close out the regular season with a home game against Madrid on Friday, Feb. 11.
ROLLING HILLS
Boys Conference Standings
(through Tuesday, Jan. 25, 2011)
Elk Horn-Kimballton/Exira 13-1
East Greene 12-2
Ankeny Christian 10-4
Orient-Macksburg 10-4
Glidden-Ralston 9-4
CAM 6-8
Iowa Christian 5-9
Walnut 2-12
Adair-Casey 2-12
Paton-Churdan 0-13
ROLLING HILLS
Girls Conference Standings
(through Tuesday, Jan. 25, 2011)
CAM 13-1
Adair-Casey 12-2
Elk Horn-Kimballton/Exira 12-2
Iowa Christian 9-5
Orient-Macksburg 7-7
Ankeny Christian 7-7
East Greene 5-9
Walnut 3-11
Glidden-Ralston 1-12
Paton-Churdan 0-13
Hoopsters Continue EG’s Winning Ways
HAWKS’ SUCCESS ON FIELD EXTENDS TO BB COURT
The big news this fall and winter in Grand Junction has been the success of the boys’ high school athletic teams. The football squad qualified for the 8-man playoffs this year for the first time in school history. It was also EG’s first post-season appearance since qualifying three years in a row in the late 1980s in Class A.
This year’s EG grid squad finished third in District 7 with a 5-2 mark and advanced to Stanton where they took on the Stanton Vikings, a veteran playoff team. The final score of 44-6 is a bit misleading, as the Hawks were behind by just 14-0 at halftime and 20-6 well into the fourth quarter.
Fumbles and miscues had plagued the Hawks all night and things went from bad to worse and then some as the Viking’s responded quickly after EG’s fourth-quarter score with a 38-yard run for a TD and a 28-6 advantage. The Stanton defense then turned a fumble on the next Hawk series into another 38-yard touchdown and after the kickoff following that score, the Vikings picked of QB Tory Beger and ran the ball back for a 35-yard TD. Just like that—three quick TDs—saw Stanton with 44 points on the board while the Hawks were stymied. The Vikings moved on to the second round to face EG’s longtime rival and district foe Glidden-Ralston in Glidden while the Hawks ended the season at 7-3.
A good contingent of fans made the long trip to Stanton for the game in late October thanks to a chartered bus sponsored by Peoples Trust and Savings Bank. The team was honored at a big community pep rally held in the high school gym at Grand Junction the night before the game.
East Greene gets another banner and trophy to accompany the hardware earned from its participation in the state baseball tournament in 2009. (Last summer, the Hawks were just a run shy from making it back to Principal Park for a repeat state baseball performance, falling to Ar-We-Va 3-2 in the sub-state after winning the district crown with big upsets over highly favored Coon Rapids-Bayard in the semifinal round and undefeated Elk Horn-Kimballton/Exira in the championship game.)
Interestingly, teams from EHKE and CRB are integral to the Hawk’s continued current hoop success.
The EHKE Spartans are atop the Rolling Hills Conference in basketball with the Hawks right behind them (see related story on basketball). This season marks the first year that longtime neighboring schools and rivals Exira and Elk Horn-Kimballton are competing together in basketball (boys and girls) after initially competing last year as EHKE in football, wrestling, boys and girls track, baseball and softball. They competed separately in basketball and golf. This year, they are EHKE across the board in all sports (or, as some would have it, E/EHK). Exira will close its elementary school building on Main Street (built in 1913) next year with its area K-3 students and all middle school students from the two districts housed in the Exira Jr.-Sr. High Building on the south side of town. All high school students from the two districts will attend classes at the current K-12 school building in Elk Horn, as will the existing K-3 students in the EHK district.
EHKE beat the Hawks in their first matchup on Jan. 4 in Rippey in a defensive tussle, 40-37. The Hawks’ conference title hoops then took a big hit the following week when Ankeny Christian beat them Jan. 14 on the Eagle’s home floor in Ankeny, 54-48. This was a big turnaround from the first game between EG and ACA in Rippey, where the Hawks posted a big 60-48 win and marked them as a “team to beat” in the league as ACA is the defending league champion and qualified for the state tourney last year. Further, the Eagles returned high-scoring Tim Olejniczak, who was a Class 1A first-team all-state pick last year as a junior.
But EG got a big boost from Orient-Macksburg last Friday night when the Bulldogs upended EHKE in another low-scoring battle, 35-30.
Coon Rapids-Bayard also qualified for state last year, and as luck would have it, both CRB and Ankeny Christian have been assigned to the same 9-team district as East Greene for post-season play which gets underway on Thursday, Feb. 14. Also in the field is Colo-Nesco, a perennial power in central Iowa and former Heart of Iowa Conference-Small member that shifted to the Iowa Star Conference this year. As many as four Iowa Star teams—including Colo-Nesco—have been ranked among the top 10 teams in Class 1A this season.
OTHER NEWS IN GJ: New Cemetery Entrance for Mt. Calvary--Thanks to donations from the Rowles and Lynch families, a new entrance was constructed to Mt. Calvary Cemetery on Fifteenth Street, across from the home of Jerry and Janice Kennedy. Since it was established in the 1890s by St. Brigid’s Parish, Mt. Calvary’s entrance has always been on the gravel road that runs north along the cemetery—the extension east of Elizabeth Street. But for many years, most people—and most notably funeral hearses and the processions—entered the cemetery from an access road just off Fifteenth Street where it intersects with Herron Street. That road continues east a bit and then curves straight south to the cemetery. For many years, the road itself was the cemetery’s western border and the space between the road and Fifteenth Street (about a half-block wide and a block long) was an open field, but about 10 years ago the cemetery was extended to that piece of property and there have since been many burials in this newest section. So now the new entrance nicely integrates the new space into the overall cemetery. Some of the oldest (and largest) gravestones in Greene County are found in the oldest part of Mt. Calvary and many of the original Catholic families of Greene County are buried here as St. Brigid’s was the first parish in the area—at one time serving Catholic churches in Jefferson, Paton, Churdan, Scranton, Ogden, Cooper and the Lohrville area. GJ Native Returns; Moves to Family Farm—Alexis Clause-Hooper, daughter of Reg Clause (EG ’67) and Mary Holz-Clause (EG ‘73) of Jefferson, who were both raised on large farm operations east of Grand Junction, has relocated with her family from Jefferson to the Clause farm home occupied for many years by her great-uncle and aunt, Bob and Dena Clause. Bob and his brothers and sisters were raised on the farm, established by his grandfather in the early 1900s, as were Bob’s three kids (Joy, Jill and Rob). The family of his brother Roger and his wife Dorothy (Reg, Linda, Mary Ann, Connie and Cindy) lived just a mile to the west. Bob Clause, who spent his entire life on the Clause Farm in Section 34 of Junction Township except for his time at in the U.S. Navy and as a student at Iowa State, died Oct. 1. His funeral was Oct. 4 at the Methodist church in GJ and he was buried in Beaver Cemetery, which is just a mile east of the Clause home place and the resting place of several generations of Clauses. Alexis and her husband, Jason, and their four young children, moved onto the farm in late fall. Reg Clause tells Eye on GJ that the farm home the Hooper family moved into was built new for the Farm Progress Show hosted in the fall of 1968 by the Bob and Roger (who farmed together for years as Clause Brothers). Reg has continued with the Clause Brothers operation since his father and uncle retired, and last year Alexis extended the farming operation on the property by establishing a certified farming operation, Hooper’s Funny Farm, on a piece of this historic multi-generation, family-owned farm.
The big news this fall and winter in Grand Junction has been the success of the boys’ high school athletic teams. The football squad qualified for the 8-man playoffs this year for the first time in school history. It was also EG’s first post-season appearance since qualifying three years in a row in the late 1980s in Class A.
This year’s EG grid squad finished third in District 7 with a 5-2 mark and advanced to Stanton where they took on the Stanton Vikings, a veteran playoff team. The final score of 44-6 is a bit misleading, as the Hawks were behind by just 14-0 at halftime and 20-6 well into the fourth quarter.
Fumbles and miscues had plagued the Hawks all night and things went from bad to worse and then some as the Viking’s responded quickly after EG’s fourth-quarter score with a 38-yard run for a TD and a 28-6 advantage. The Stanton defense then turned a fumble on the next Hawk series into another 38-yard touchdown and after the kickoff following that score, the Vikings picked of QB Tory Beger and ran the ball back for a 35-yard TD. Just like that—three quick TDs—saw Stanton with 44 points on the board while the Hawks were stymied. The Vikings moved on to the second round to face EG’s longtime rival and district foe Glidden-Ralston in Glidden while the Hawks ended the season at 7-3.
A good contingent of fans made the long trip to Stanton for the game in late October thanks to a chartered bus sponsored by Peoples Trust and Savings Bank. The team was honored at a big community pep rally held in the high school gym at Grand Junction the night before the game.
East Greene gets another banner and trophy to accompany the hardware earned from its participation in the state baseball tournament in 2009. (Last summer, the Hawks were just a run shy from making it back to Principal Park for a repeat state baseball performance, falling to Ar-We-Va 3-2 in the sub-state after winning the district crown with big upsets over highly favored Coon Rapids-Bayard in the semifinal round and undefeated Elk Horn-Kimballton/Exira in the championship game.)
Interestingly, teams from EHKE and CRB are integral to the Hawk’s continued current hoop success.
The EHKE Spartans are atop the Rolling Hills Conference in basketball with the Hawks right behind them (see related story on basketball). This season marks the first year that longtime neighboring schools and rivals Exira and Elk Horn-Kimballton are competing together in basketball (boys and girls) after initially competing last year as EHKE in football, wrestling, boys and girls track, baseball and softball. They competed separately in basketball and golf. This year, they are EHKE across the board in all sports (or, as some would have it, E/EHK). Exira will close its elementary school building on Main Street (built in 1913) next year with its area K-3 students and all middle school students from the two districts housed in the Exira Jr.-Sr. High Building on the south side of town. All high school students from the two districts will attend classes at the current K-12 school building in Elk Horn, as will the existing K-3 students in the EHK district.
EHKE beat the Hawks in their first matchup on Jan. 4 in Rippey in a defensive tussle, 40-37. The Hawks’ conference title hoops then took a big hit the following week when Ankeny Christian beat them Jan. 14 on the Eagle’s home floor in Ankeny, 54-48. This was a big turnaround from the first game between EG and ACA in Rippey, where the Hawks posted a big 60-48 win and marked them as a “team to beat” in the league as ACA is the defending league champion and qualified for the state tourney last year. Further, the Eagles returned high-scoring Tim Olejniczak, who was a Class 1A first-team all-state pick last year as a junior.
But EG got a big boost from Orient-Macksburg last Friday night when the Bulldogs upended EHKE in another low-scoring battle, 35-30.
Coon Rapids-Bayard also qualified for state last year, and as luck would have it, both CRB and Ankeny Christian have been assigned to the same 9-team district as East Greene for post-season play which gets underway on Thursday, Feb. 14. Also in the field is Colo-Nesco, a perennial power in central Iowa and former Heart of Iowa Conference-Small member that shifted to the Iowa Star Conference this year. As many as four Iowa Star teams—including Colo-Nesco—have been ranked among the top 10 teams in Class 1A this season.
OTHER NEWS IN GJ: New Cemetery Entrance for Mt. Calvary--Thanks to donations from the Rowles and Lynch families, a new entrance was constructed to Mt. Calvary Cemetery on Fifteenth Street, across from the home of Jerry and Janice Kennedy. Since it was established in the 1890s by St. Brigid’s Parish, Mt. Calvary’s entrance has always been on the gravel road that runs north along the cemetery—the extension east of Elizabeth Street. But for many years, most people—and most notably funeral hearses and the processions—entered the cemetery from an access road just off Fifteenth Street where it intersects with Herron Street. That road continues east a bit and then curves straight south to the cemetery. For many years, the road itself was the cemetery’s western border and the space between the road and Fifteenth Street (about a half-block wide and a block long) was an open field, but about 10 years ago the cemetery was extended to that piece of property and there have since been many burials in this newest section. So now the new entrance nicely integrates the new space into the overall cemetery. Some of the oldest (and largest) gravestones in Greene County are found in the oldest part of Mt. Calvary and many of the original Catholic families of Greene County are buried here as St. Brigid’s was the first parish in the area—at one time serving Catholic churches in Jefferson, Paton, Churdan, Scranton, Ogden, Cooper and the Lohrville area. GJ Native Returns; Moves to Family Farm—Alexis Clause-Hooper, daughter of Reg Clause (EG ’67) and Mary Holz-Clause (EG ‘73) of Jefferson, who were both raised on large farm operations east of Grand Junction, has relocated with her family from Jefferson to the Clause farm home occupied for many years by her great-uncle and aunt, Bob and Dena Clause. Bob and his brothers and sisters were raised on the farm, established by his grandfather in the early 1900s, as were Bob’s three kids (Joy, Jill and Rob). The family of his brother Roger and his wife Dorothy (Reg, Linda, Mary Ann, Connie and Cindy) lived just a mile to the west. Bob Clause, who spent his entire life on the Clause Farm in Section 34 of Junction Township except for his time at in the U.S. Navy and as a student at Iowa State, died Oct. 1. His funeral was Oct. 4 at the Methodist church in GJ and he was buried in Beaver Cemetery, which is just a mile east of the Clause home place and the resting place of several generations of Clauses. Alexis and her husband, Jason, and their four young children, moved onto the farm in late fall. Reg Clause tells Eye on GJ that the farm home the Hooper family moved into was built new for the Farm Progress Show hosted in the fall of 1968 by the Bob and Roger (who farmed together for years as Clause Brothers). Reg has continued with the Clause Brothers operation since his father and uncle retired, and last year Alexis extended the farming operation on the property by establishing a certified farming operation, Hooper’s Funny Farm, on a piece of this historic multi-generation, family-owned farm.
Monday, January 24, 2011
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!
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!
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