This week in Boone
About Boone
Boone grew out of coal: blacksmiths were already digging it from the banks of Honey Creek in 1849, and when John Insley Blair laid out a railroad town here in 1865 it was called Montana before taking the Boone name in 1871, after Nathan Boone, Daniel Boone's son. The Chicago and North Western made it a division and crew-change point, and the coal mines, the rail yard and the interurban line through town kept Boone busy for generations. The town also gave Iowa two household names, the Fareway grocery chain and the very first Casey's General Store, which opened here in 1968. Neighbors still gather at the 1901 Ericson Public Library, the columned 1917 county courthouse and the 1907 Masonic temple that now holds the county's history center, and they climb aboard the Boone and Scenic Valley Railroad, a volunteer-built line whose trains cross a bridge 156 feet above Bass Point Creek. Today Boone is a town of about 12,500 with Ledges State Park four miles south, a bronze Theodore Roosevelt statue in McHose Park, and Pufferbilly Days filling the streets every September to celebrate its railroad roots.