W. H. Sumner at Lansing and was named the Intelligencer and later becoming the Lansing Mirror. In the fall of 1849 G. C. Shattuck made a claim where Waukon stands. The town was laid out by Mr. Shattuck in December, 1853, and forty acres deeded to the county upon condition that it be made county-seat. The proposition was accepted and Waukon remained the county-seat until 1861 when it was removed to Lansing by a vote of the people, but in 1867, Waukon again became the county-seat and has so remained. It was not until 1872 that a railroad was built into the county, running along the Mississippi River from Dubuque to Lansing.
APPANOOSE COUNTY, originally a part of Demoine, was established in 1843 and temporarily attached to Van Buren. In 1854 it was attached to Davis and fully organized in August, 1846, at an election held on the third of that month. It was named for a noted chief of the Sac and Fox Indians. This county is the fourth west of the Mississippi River in the tier on the Missouri State line. In size it is twenty-four miles east and west and about twenty-one and a half north and south, containing five hundred sixteen square miles. The principal streams are the Chariton River and its two branches running in a southeasterly direction. The supply of timber is abundant, consisting of white, black and burr oak, hickory, black walnut, hard and soft maple, ash, elm and other varieties. A large portion of the county is underlaid with coal and good building stone is found in many localities.
The first known white men within its limits were a company of United States Dragoons sent from Rock Island in the summer of 1832 to make an examination of the region. One night they camped near a large spring in the south part of the county near Cincinnati. In 1833 Joseph Shaddon from Missouri went on an excursion through Appanoose where he found an abundance of deer
