We are railroad nerds now, and we are not apologizing for it.
Let's start by looking at how the railroads spread throughout the Midwest. Below, you'll find a few maps that show just how wild the railroad boom was across the Midwest and Iowa and how it changed over time. Which of the bad cartographic drafts of the Iowa Great Lakes is your favorite?
Next, let's take a look at the depot sites. Every town the trains stopped in across Dickinson County, from Milford in the south to Spirit Lake in the north, and from Superior in the east to Lake Park in the west. Some of these photos show the depots themselves. Some show the towns as they looked when the trains were still running. All of them are a little bit stunning.
Let's start at the beginning of the Milwaukee, Chicago, and St. Paul. In the summer of 1882, a team from the Milwaukee Road surveyed and platted a brand new railroad and a brand new Milford, just three-quarters of a mile north of the original town site. "Old Town," as it became known, was left in the dust. Residents picked up their buildings and followed. The first business in the new Milford was the Rasmussen Brothers Lumber Yard, which, of course, had plenty of work to do setting up the new town. How do you see Milford change over these photos?
Wes Arnold waited patiently (and not so patiently) for a railroad. How cool is this first photo of the original Arnold's Park Hotel? Can you imagine the Milwaukee Road families there? We have the railroads to thank for the name of this town, amusement park, and one-time hotel.
The depot dedicated to his park's traffic came in 1901. The Hotel Okoboji, the Central Pavilion, and an ice cream shop followed. Another little economy, built around a train stop.
Less than a mile north of Arnolds Park, the sign over the depot read "Okoboji Lakes." This was one of the busiest stations on the entire Milwaukee line, staffed with a full-time agent to keep up with the demands. In the summer, the platform is filled with passengers arriving for cottages, campsites, and resorts. In the winter, workers loaded ice and fish into refrigerated cars to ship across the Midwest.
The end of the line. The Spirit Lake depot has long outlasted the railroad. In 1952, locals held a mock funeral here for the last passenger train. In 1972, the last freight train made its final run in Dickinson County. A year later, volunteers saved the depot from demolition and turned it into the county museum it is today. These photos show just how much has changed around it and how much has stayed the same.
Let's head back east to take the Burlington, Cedar Rapids, and Northern Railroad, starting with Superior, which was initially resistant to the railroads. When the vote came, they hesitated. But they came around, and it paid off. After the Burlington, Cedar Rapids, and Northern depot opened in 1883, the town moved fast: a general store, a second general store, a grain dealer, a lumber yard, a hotel, a livery barn, a post office, and a bank. All in one year.
Orleans, just north of Spirit Lake, was the Burlington, Cedar Rapids, and Northern Railroad's biggest bet on the lakes region. The company knew that if they were going to sell tickets, they needed a destination worth visiting. So they built one: the magnificent Orleans Hotel, right on the isthmus between East Lake and Spirit Lake, opening on June 16th, 1883.
The hotel closed in 1899. It reopened in different iterations in the following years, but never quite to the same glamour as the original.
Montgomery grew out of the Diamond Lake Township thanks to its railroad stop on the Burlington, Cedar Rapids, and Northern line. It didn't boom the way some of the other towns did, but it had a bank and a depot, and it held its own.
Lake Park was the last Dickinson County stop on the Burlington, Cedar Rapids, and Northern line, and it went by a few names before the railroad arrived: Silver Lake Township, then Austin. But as the tracks extended west in the summer of 1882, a new town was platted almost overnight. A store, a grain business, a hardware shop, a blacksmith, a hotel, and a livery stable. Within a few years, a restaurant, a farm supply dealer, a meat market, and a cobbler.
episode info
This season finale was such a joy to make. It is full of music, summer air, and more than a little mischief. Fun fact: with the exception of the intro, every song you hear in this episode was recorded before July 1926. We wanted the soundtrack to feel as immersive as the story itself.
We begin at the Arnolds Park Depot, the arrival point for visitors from Chicago, Minneapolis, Omaha, and beyond. Whether you were staying for a week or just the day, the depot was where countless lake vacations began and ended.
episode info
