This week in Atkins
- Show Choir: Celebration Co (Celebration)
Wed, Oct 28 · 12:30 PM · Benton Community High School Auditorium - Show Choir: Celebration Co. (Celebration)
Thu, Oct 29 · 7 AM · Benton Community High School Auditorium - Show Choir: Celebration Co. (Celebration)
Fri, Oct 30 · 7 AM · Benton Community High School Auditorium - Choir: WaMaC Choral Concert (High School)
Mon, Nov 9 · 7 PM · West Delaware High School Hanson Auditorium - National Honor Society: NHS (High School (11th and 12th Grade))
Tue, Nov 10 · 6:30 PM · Keystone Turner Hall
About Atkins
Atkins began in 1881 as a railroad stop called Hague, laid out as the Chicago, Milwaukee and St. Paul line pushed west across Benton County, and in February 1882 it took the name of one of the railroad's officials. German settlers who disliked the first name had their own nickname for the place, Poker Flat, after a storekeeper who warmed his winter beer with a red-hot poker, and a neighborhood still carries that name today. The town's big moment came in 1915, when the Milwaukee Road spent $880,000 on a 75-acre terminal on the northeast side, turning a few scattered stores into a busy business and farm center; Railroad Street, the northernmost street in town, remembers it. Atkins incorporated in 1917, switched on electric lights in 1920 and voted in its own water system in 1938, and it kept growing after the trains stopped running around 1980. Today about 2,000 people, many of them young families, live ten miles west of downtown Cedar Rapids, sharing a City Hall and public library at 480 3rd Avenue next to a brand-new fire station, with Atkins Elementary as part of the Benton Community schools.
Along Main Ave
- The TapHaus · 76 Main Ave
- Atkins Library · 84 Main Ave
- United States Postal Service · 87 Main Ave
- Atkins Legion Memorial Hall · 89 Main Ave
- Wild Photography · 93 Main Ave
- Bobby T's · 96 Main Ave
- Atkins Savings Bank & Trust · 97 Main Ave
- Otte's Accounting and Tax · 98 Main Ave
- Pleasant Hill Presbyterian Church · 121 Main Ave
- Atkins Lumber Company Inc. · 81 1st Ave
- Atkins Fire & First Responders · 91 Railroad St
- Autocrafters LLC · 211 Railroad St
- Atkins Auto Repair LLC · 87 Railroad St
- Moritz Service and Repair · 84 Railroad St
- St Stephens Lutheran Church · 303 3rd Ave
- City Park Pavillion · 320 2nd Ave
- Atkins Storage · 72 4th Ave