BY CHANNING RUCKS Herald Staff Writer
Due to celebrate its 180th anniversary this summer , the City of Oskaloosa is a thriving Iowa community boasting small town charm , a robust arts scene and a boom in new facilities , both industrial and entertainment-focused – but none of it ever would have happened if not for the decision of a committee nearly two centuries ago , when the seat of Mahaska County was selected .
The year was 1844 , and what is now known as Mahaska County was still a wide-open prairie on the verge of being born . Settlers were flooding Iowa – then the New Purchase – in droves , hungry for cheap land and fertile soil . In southeast Iowa , it was time to officially form a new county , named after the famous Iowa Tribe Chief , Mahaska .
There was just one detail yet to be decided – where the county seat should be .
The story of the selection process is one of many anecdotes featured in “ The History of Mahaska County , Iowa , 1984 .” As the story goes , the legislation that organized Mahaska County appointed a threeperson impartial court to determine where the county seat should be . The appointees included Jesse Willias of Johnson County , Ebenezer Perkins of Washington
County and Thomas Henderson of nearby Keokuk County . Paid a wage of $ 2 per day , these men made a ten-day tour of the land designated for Mahaska County in May of 1844 to decide where the site of its new hub should be .
Out of the various options available to them , they settled on the site where Oskaloosa is now located , due to its advantageous location on the watershed between the South Skunk River and the Des Moines River .
“ The place known as ‘ The Narrows ’ was the final choice of the commissioners ,” the book says . “ This was a point on the water shed between the South Skunk River and the Des Moines , where the timber land from either stream approached almost to joining . Before the country was settled , this point could be seen for twenty miles as the pioneer approached it from the southeast , looked like one long vista , with a gateway of green at the limit of vision . This water shed was the great highway of travel between different points on the Mississippi and Missouri , or far west . These induced the decision of the commissioners in favor of ‘ The Narrows .’”
After some back-and-forth with the community over whether the new county seat should be called Oskaloosa or Mahaska , the same as the county , the name Oskaloosa was settled on – after a famous Creek princess – and a new county seat was born .
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