History of Iowa From the Earliest Times to the Beginning of the Twentieth Century/3/Counties/Cherokee
CHEROKEE COUNTY is in the second tier east of the west boundary of the State and in the third south of the Minnesota line, is twenty-four miles square and contains five hundred seventy-six square miles. Its territory was at one time divided between Fayette and Dubuque counties but in 1851 it was established with the present boundaries as Cherokee County, being named for a southern tribe of Indians. It was first attached to Wahkaw County in 1853.
In 1856 a colony from Milford, Massachusetts, selected lands near the center of Cherokee County for a settlement. There were about fifty members of the association most of whom were mechanics. The following named members with their families moved onto their lands the same year: Dr. Dwight Russell, Dr. Slocum, G. W. Lebourvean, B. W. Sawtell, Lysander Sawtell, Albert Simon, Daniel Wheeler, Lemuel Parkhurst, Albert Phipps, Carlton Corbett, J. A. Brown, A. J. Slayton, Robert Hammond and Benjamin Holbrook. Each member took about a hundred acres of the lands which had been entered. A large body of timber was taken along the Little Sioux River which was divided among the members of the colony. Dr. Dwight Russell built the first house, a log cabin in which nine families were sheltered until additional houses could be erected.
During the year 1856 twelve families formed another settlement in the southern part of the county near the Little Sioux River, in the vicinity of Pilot Rock. This immense rock was in early days a well-known landmark which could be seen at a great distance over the unsettled prairies. It was a red granite boulder about sixty feet long by forty wide rising above the surface about twenty feet, near the river on the east side of a high point of land. Many mounds are found in this county north of the town of Cherokee which are believed to be the work of the ancient “mound builders.”
The first colony laid out the town of Cherokee on the west side of the Little Sioux River in 1856 and it became the county-seat. In the spring of 1857 Inkpaduta’s band of Sioux Indians on their way to perpetrate the massacre at Okoboji, robbed many of the settlers in Cherokee County and killed many of their cattle. Later in the season a stockade was erected at Cherokee for protection and a company of soldiers stationed to protect the settlements in that part of the State.
The county was organized in August, 1857, and at the election the following persons were chosen for the first county officials: A. P. Thayer, judge; B. W. Sawtell, clerk; G. W. Labourvean, treasurer and recorder; S. W. Hayward, sheriff; and Carlton Corbett, prosecuting attorney. The Iowa Falls and Sioux City Railroad was built through the county in 1870 and in January of that year J. P. Ford issued the first number of the Cherokee Chief. The railroad was located some distance from the old town and gradually a new town grew up near the station. One of the Hospitals for the Insane has been recently located at Cherokee.