There was also a railroad track running right through the middle of that open space. Were it there today, it would go down the main corridor of the library.

That track was just a few feet away from where Fort Dodge historian Al Nelson spoke during the Friends of the Library Brown Bag Briefing Thursday afternoon to a packed house of more than 70 people.

“The railroads were the lifeblood of a frontier town,” he said. “If the town didn’t get a railroad they were doomed.”

There are several Webster County examples of that.

-Messenger photo by Hans Madsen
With an old photograph of a train on the screen behind him, Fort Dodge Historian Al Nelson talks about the history of railroads in and around Fort Dodge Thursday afternoon during the weekly Brown Bag Briefing hosted by Friends of the Library.

“Homer and Border Plains were the biggest towns in Webster County,” he said. “Then came Fort Dodge. Fort Dodge got a railroad, the others didn’t.”

While Fort Dodge was already a growing community before the railroad, Nelson said the railroad’s arrival boosted it.

“It had a lot to do with Fort Dodge becoming a booming town,” he said.

The railroads arrived in 1869. It was part of a cross state construction effort by the Dubuque and Sioux City Railroad that was completed with a gold spike ceremony on July 8, 1870, at Sag Point, between Fort Dodge and Sioux City.

“It was the first railroad into Fort Dodge,” Nelson said. “As soon as it was completed it was leased to the Illinois Central.”

The Illinois Central was eventually absorbed by the Canadian National Railway which still serves Fort Dodge.

Shipping on the railroads wasn’t cheap.

Nelson shared a rate chart from 1915. A horse was $100, an ox or bull, $50, a cow $30 and a calf or pig, $20.

The town of Tara west of Fort Dodge was once much more than just an old depot falling down.

“It became an important point,” he said. “It had a hotel, a house of ill repute and a tavern. There are still remnants out there. It’s unique, the tracks meet almost perpendicularly.”

Tara was also the site of its own golden spike ceremony for the Fort Dodge and Omaha Railway.

“Mrs. C.K. Dixon drove the spike,” Nelson said. “As far as is known it’s the only golden spike in the U.S. driven by a woman.”

Another line was Fort Dodge and Fort Ridgely Railroad and Telegraph Co. In 1877 it began a line to the Humboldt County line.

That right-of-way can be partially walked today, it’s part of the trail system and goes past Oakland Cemetery.

“In the contract they had to build a platform for funeral processions and had to stop if there was a funeral at Oakland,” he said. “I don’t think it was ever adhered to.”

One of the more colorful railroads in the area was the Crooked Creek Railroad.

“It was 8.5 miles long,” Nelson said. “It ran from the Illinois Central by Judd down to Lehigh. They had to build nine bridges to get down there.”

As it was being built, it also became the scene of a “railroad war” with the Mason City and Fort Dodge Railroad which was also trying to build to Lehigh to tap into the coal being mined there. The story made the New York Times.

According to old accounts, the Crooked Creek crews blocked the other railroad’s progress with several loaded coal cars. The competing crew literally ran a pair of their train cars into them. It cleared the track and destroyed the train cars.

The issue eventually had to be settle by the courts.

During its first few years of operation, the Crooked Creek was a 3 foot narrow gauge line instead of the standard 4 foot 8.5 inches.

That meant transferring loads.

“They built a berm parallel to the Illinois Central,” he said. “All that coal had to be shoveled from one car to the next by hand. They were paid 10 cents a ton.”

That local coal was the first big commodity hauled out of the area. Once mechanical mining in the east made it cheaper to have it shipped in rather than mined locally, the gypsum industry began making up for it.

It wasn’t bad coal.

“It was the best coal available at the time,” Nelson said. “It wasn’t the best, it had a high sulphur content, but it was the best around.”

Fort Dodge also had a street railroad.

It was built to let passengers transfer from the Illinois Central depot in the Flats to the Milwaukee Road depot at Central Avenue and 12th Street.

“It would have been a long walk with luggage,” he said. “That’s how you would get yourself to transfer from an east/west to a north/south railroad.”

Service was discontinued in 1925.

“In the late 1930s the tracks were taken up on Central Avenue,” he said.

The interurban railroad, the Fort Dodge, Des Moines and Southern, was an electric line that connected several local communities and reached as far as Des Moines.

The first run was on Oct. 5, 1917. It also connected Fort Dodge to Harcourt, Burnside and Gowrie among others.

One of Fort Dodge’s most interesting railroads never hauled a single ounce of freight and it never really went anywhere except in circles.

It was the live steam railroad that was once in Oleson Park. The 12-inch gauge locomotive and cars were built by Merle Erickson who completed it in 1952.

Several generations of children that grew up in Fort Dodge have fond memories of riding it.

“It’s still around,” he said. “You can see it every year at the Webster County Fair.”

It’s still operational and rides are given. It no longer runs on steam though. It’s been converted to run on compressed air.