Introduction
Compiled by the Iowa Writers' Program for WPA in Iowa
Osceola County is one of Iowa's youngest.
Its story is largely a story of the struggles of veterans of the
Civil War who first rolled onto Osceola's treeless prairies in
1870. The early Osceola frontiersman were poor men, inured to the
hardships of battlefields, and they found in their new home a new
sort of battle
They found no materials at hand but sod and the long, prairie
grass. There were no trees, there was no stone. There was no
stream large or strong enough to provide power for a mill.
The Indians had shunned this country, except for occasional
hunting. A windblown desert of grass, it offered no protection
for them and the constant threat of destructive and rapidly
moving prairie fires made the land always dangerous. Many people
believed that land which did not support trees would not grow
crops either, but here, in 1870, came Captain E Huff, with some
of the boards he would need for building of a cabin. Others
followed him so quickly that in the fall of 1871 Osceola County
elected its first county officers.
Possessed of an unquenchable faith in their land, the Osceola
County pioneers stuck to it through blizzard, fire and insect
plagues that reduced the entire county to starvation. They stuck
and developed their rich soil and built good homes. They founded
for their children a tradition of "stick and grin" that
is of the very essence of the American way of life.
Transcribed by Kevin Tadd
