This week in Fort Dodge
About Fort Dodge
Fort Dodge started in 1850 as an Army outpost where Lizard Creek runs into the Des Moines River; when the soldiers marched off in 1853, the post's storekeeper, William Williams, bought the grounds and a town grew up around them. Gypsum is what built it: the first gypsum mill west of the Mississippi opened here in 1872, local mills plastered the dazzling buildings of the 1893 Chicago World's Fair, and a block of Fort Dodge gypsum even became the famous Cardiff Giant hoax. Music runs just as deep, because bandmaster Karl King led the city band for 51 years from 1920, and the WPA-built Oleson Park bandshell now carries his name. Downtown, the green clock tower of the 1902 Webster County Courthouse rises over Central Avenue blocks so grand that people call the town Little Chicago, while up in the Oak Hill neighborhood the Blanden opened in 1932 as Iowa's first public art museum. Today families climb through the Fort Museum's frontier village, explore the new River's Edge Discovery Center by the river, drop kids at the Blanden's free art Saturdays, and fill the seats each spring for a Senior High musical tradition going since 1927.