The history of Iowa, and of any city in Iowa, is inextricably linked with the history of its land.

Around a million to a million and a half years ago, the mean temperature of the earth dropped only a few degrees, but the drop allowed great sheets of ice, glaciers, to begin forming in Canada. Through the century after century that followed, the ice sheets grew in size and began moving slowly southward. During the climatic shift, glaciers covered all or parts of Iowa time and time again. They advanced and receded, reshaping the land beneath them and creating the landforms we know in Iowa today.

The glaciers, huge rivers of ice, weighed down on the Iowa landscape, flattening some areas, striating and carving out others, changing the beds and locations of streams, diverting channels and changing drainage patterns. Where the glaciers came to rest and then began to melt back, great areas of rocks and boulders were piled up.

The new river beds, shallow at first, created great floods during the torrential summer rains. Miles of land were flooded, and as evaporation and absorption relieved the land areas of the water, a silty mud was left behind. The silt dried in the hot summer winds. It became like a fine dust, and this dust was deposited around the state, carried downwind in the summer breeze. The deposits were known as loess, and it is the parent matter of the fertile Iowa soils, some of the richest growing land on Earth.

As the glaciers receded even more, back into Canada, prairie life as it was known in the early 19th century, began to appear. The Iowa topography, gentle, rolling plains, spawned a natural prairie, and the delicate grassland alive with flora of all kinds became home to many small mammals. Along the waterways, narrow bands of forest developed, giving shelter and life to different types of flora and fauna. The peculiar, rich Iowa soil also harbored bogs and swamps, with still another society of plant and animal life.

The prairie also hosted another type of life - weather. The Iowa weather was and still is typical of the changeable, precocious meteorological conditions over this broad, flat stretch of plain.

The winters - cruel, cold, blizzard-ridden with temperatures often dipping far below zero for weeks at a time. The springs were hash and frequently unlovely; wet, cold with drenching rains. It was often difficult to tell where winter ended and spring began. Just as true was the difference between spring and summer. April could be as hot as July or as cold as February.

The summers brought storms of incredible wrath to the prairies. Violent thunderstorms and dreaded tornadoes prowled the summer evenings. Hail, violent winds and suddenly dipping temperatures after days and days of hot, windless weather are the way of summer on the prairie.

Late summer - August and September - perhaps there would be no rain for weeks. The tall grasses that bloomed magnificently green and lush in June would wither and dry. Thistles would spring to life, and a casual thundershower could bring disaster - prairie fire, fed by the dry grasses and spread by the hot southwesterly winds.

Perhaps autumn, especially October, offered the finest weather conditions on the prairie. It brought the cool tang of winter as a promise, but for a few weeks, the weather would relax and prairie life could bask in the glorious sunshine and enjoy brisk evenings.

Settlers in this land, this "sea of grass" as it was so often called, found the land rich, And despite the weather, it would grow almost anything that was planted in it.

The Indians passed through the prairie lands frequently, but most of the large settlements, for reasons of availability of game, protection from the elements and suitable village sites, were confined to the lakes and larger rivers in Iowa. It would take, then, the hardy pioneer to face the hardships and deprivation of prairie life. They trekked westward across the Mississippi and built houses to keep out the bitter cold and provide respite from the intense heat. And, they tilled the land, providing the beginnings of community life, spurred on by an irresistible urge to conquer the land and fulfill their destiny as farmers and feeders of this great nation.
   

Story County, Iowa

The Indians hunted the lands of Story County in the late 18th century, and according to historical reports, were not enthused over the Louisiana Purchase, so much so that they temporarily, at least, joined the British in the War of 1812. Even so, by the 1830's, Black Hawk, the great Sac leader, had seen the lands beginning to be absorbed by the white intruder. The immigration of the white settler and the dissatisfaction of the Indians precipitated the Black Hawk War.

But even after the war, it was several years before the white settler truly became interested in Story County. It was 1846 when the white man became a true resident, and not until 1855 did H.B. Dinwiddie arrive and settle near the area of Story County that would eventually become the City of Gilbert. He was followed closely that same year by Lyman Wisner and Joshua Saylor.

The 1859 census showed Story County as having a population of. 3826, of which 1948 were males (eligible to vote) and 1878 females, who were not eligible to vote anywhere in the states at that time. Of the males, only 821 were of age. War was rising in the public issue by 1860, and Story County case 418 votes for Abraham Lincoln and 332 for Douglass. Perhaps the Story County voters were less than well-informed, however, for the main newspaper in the County at that time was the New York Tribune, and it reached the residents on a weekly or bi-weekly basis. The County was still discussing whether or not it opposed slavery when the news arrived (two days late) that Fort Sumter had been fired upon and war between the North and South had broken out. Story County sent many to fight on the Union side, and once again, war delayed for a time the continued growth of the County.
   

It spewed black smoke, and it's name was the railroad

The profound effect of the coming of the railroad on rural American and rural communities like Gilbert is without equal in history. Even the gold rush, with its boom and bust psychology could not compare with the consequences of having or not having a railroad line through a certain area.

The railroad meant birth or death, prosperity or poverty for a community. In many cases it determined whether the community would ever exist, for like the City of Gilbert, many cities probably would never have existed if it were not for the railroads having built a track in a certain direction at a certain time.

Spewing black smoke and pouring soot and ash over the countryside the railway chugged its way across the land and in its wake left a myriad of small crossings that were later to develop into full-fledged communities.

The advent of the rail service meant that communities no longer were last on the mail routes, that people and commodities could travel easily from one end of the country to the other, and that through the railroad the community could be in touch with the rest of the nation.

Before the railway, goods had to be delivered by wagon or stageline. Both were not immune to the hazards of prairie travel, and the long delays because of inclement weather or natural or unnatural causes made service, to say the least, undependable. A broken wheel could mean days of waiting on the other end for some package from Iowa City or Keokuk on the Mississippi River. The delivery of mail, increasingly important in the growing country, was sporadic at best, perhaps a week, perhaps two weeks before news from the outside arrived.

The railroad came to Story County around 1864, and quickly increased the population along its tracks. The line ran east to west through Colo, Ames and Ontario, and the citizens of Story County soon saw what various benefits a rail line held for them.

The push for a cross line came soon afterward, and various areas of the county held elections to acquire land for the building of the rails. The north line was originally built on a small, narrow gauge, but was acquired by the Chicago and North Western Railroad in 1877 and quickly broadened. That spurred development of several new towns - Story City, Kelley and Slater......... and Gilbert.

Hezekiah Gilbert, one of the town's leading settlers, was an earnest advocate of railway development. Gilbert and his associates, Charles Mathews and J.T. Shepard, donated the first parcels of land for a town plot, and in 1878 began a full-scale development of the community of Gilbert, Iowa.

An examination of the railway schedule of the time shows the vast importance of that mode of transportation. No fewer than 20 trains a day left the City of Ames to the south of Gilbert, and passengers, freight and mail were of equal importance.

The railway service also meant a post office for Gilbert. Hezekiah Gilbert was the town's first postmaster, and his station meant that the town officially "was." The coming of the post office was equally dependent upon rail service. The post office was the "seed" from which a rural collection of houses would grow into a full settlement and town.

Note might be taken at this time to compare those towns who successfully wooed the railroad and those who did not. The towns that developed on the track, Ames, Nevada, Kelley, Story City, Gilbert, and others like them, enjoyed relative prosperity. Those who tried to make it without benefit of rail service - Iowa Center, Zenorville, Defiance - went on to become names of places in a dim past. There was just nothing like a good dose of railroad to make a town grow.

Gilbert or Gilbert Station as it was alternately known in the late 19th Century. Note the number of businesses that thrived on the Main Street. A church spire can be seen to the south and the Union Story Bank Building is shown at the end of the first block of buildings. This building was recently restored to illustrate the decor of that period in the late 19th century when it was originally erected.

Gilbert had some 27 businesses on its Main Street at the height of its commercial development. The town also shows progress in this picture illustrated by the walkways in front of the stores and the relative good surface on the Main Street. Horses and buggies illustrate the mode of travel of the times.
   

Building a city

From the date of the first platting of the town in 1878 a special group of names became primary in the development of Gilbert. Hezekiah Gilbert, Charles Mathews and J.T. Shepard laid out and donated the land for the first town site. Businesses were attracted one by one until the town had quite an assortment of commerce-minded enterprises.

A note in Allen's "History of Story County, Iowa" states that in 1887 the Gilbert Brothers had a good brick building for their business house. They also had a fine looking elevator according to that historian.

The Gilbert Brothers, in fact, opened the first store on Main Street. Their cheese factory handled 5500 pounds of milk a day, and the population of Gilbert was around 125 souls. A livestock shipping association moved into Gilbert together with the railroad depot, and these were rather quickly followed by a hardware store, a lumberyard, a barbershop and an ice cream parlor, a piano store, a harness and furniture store and a hotel and livery stable.
    

Business in Gilbert evidently continued to grow and prosper with a poultry-buying station, millinery shop, jewelry store and another grocery being added to the list of businesses available for the residents. Gilbert also acquired a doctor - Christ - and a telephone office, and eventually, to serve the newest mode of transportation that was soon to make the railroad diminish in importance - an automobile garage.

By 1904 the little settlement on the railroad had grown in population and in intent. Now a community unto itself with commerce all about it, thoughts of the town fathers turned to the last legality that would assure Gilbert a place on the state map of Iowa - incorporation.
   

Incorporation

Later that summer George Brown was appointed Town Treasurer. Jake Gunder was appointed street and sidewalk commissioner, and Roscoe B. Nelson was Gilbert's first Town Marshall. Clerk Totten was instructed by the Council on July 11 to purchase a star for the Town Marshall.

The minutes indicate that the official city name was either Gilbert or Gilbert Station, apparently dependent upon the whim of the moment and upon who was writing up the minutes.

On January 9, 1905, the Council approved building of a city jail. The cost of materials was $68.63 for lumber and supplies from Oliver's Lumberyard.

And so, with official incorporation, Gilbert entered a different phase of its development. Now, it was no longer just a settlement, but a dynamic town, legally incorporated, with powers to tax and legislate and enforce.

The records are not complete as to why the city fathers chose to incorporate. Many small towns like Gilbert would forego the prestige of cityhood and remain unincorporated villages. Many still exist today in Iowa, and there are arguments both for and against incorporation. But it must be assumed that the need for legal controls upon the citizenry was one of the prime factors in the decision to incorporate.

In drawing up the first set of ordinances, the Council and their legal counsel took great care in addressing problems that were quickly arising in the growing community - problems of street and sidewalk improvement, health regulations concerning the sale of food and milk, licensing regulations for businesses, and, of course, laws concerning conduct, especially the conduct of vehicular traffic vs. pedestrians.

Some of the first laws were amusing to those who now live with a 55 mph speed limit .... one was not allowed to drive a buggy recklessly down the avenues of Town.-and the regulations called for drivers to be cautious less they run down a poor hapless pedestrian. It was illegal to scare a pedestrian....and it was also illegal to play baseball on Sundays.

The first Council made and completed a monumental effort toward community development, and set the town well on its way toward future growth and settlement trends.

Between the years 1904 and 1915 they met regularly, carrying on the City business in a proper manner. A look at some of the government records of the period are worth the time it takes to capture the spirit and economy of the first years of incorporation.
   

The new council made few changes in the fiscal structure, but they did get tough with people who were delinquent in paying their water bills. Presumably, finances were getting rough in these first days of the Depression.

The election of 1934 didn't draw much of a crowd as the record shows only 19 votes for Mayor ..... and F. N. Anderson was re--elected to the position.

And prices continued to rise.....water meters were now $10.00 each. The cost of printing the budget in 1934 was $6.90 compared to $6.10 in 1933. And .....

The City was forced to adopt a Pool Hall Ordinance. The document contained rules prohibiting minors in pool halls and regulating their closing hours to 11:00 PM. Pool halls could not open on Sunday.

A 1935 audit of the city books showed a balance on hand of $1984.50. But the Council was very busy regulating bicycles. They had tobe off the road by six o'clock in the evening unless lighted.

The Gilbert Electric Service had been taken over by Iowa Electric Light and Power and a franchise election would make good the service for the next 25 years.

A 1938 request to erect a slaughter house in Gilbert was patently denied. But Mr. Ed Kauwell was permitted to hold weekly athletics shows in his place of business.
   

Growing up a city, the mid years

The mid-century years were not especially kind to Gilbert. A combination of events slowed its growth to a standstill, and indeed, decreased the population at times. It led to stagnation in the Town's development.

The railroad in the mid-20th century, plagued by economic troubles and in competition for transportation dollars with the automobile, an increasingly popular and more mobile method of travel especially for people, had seen its boom years at approximately the time the City of Gilbert was formed in the late 1800's.

And, somehow, the highway had passed Gilbert by. The road leading from Highway 69, a major transAmerica artery, into the town was left unpaved, although other similar spurs into small communities along the route were nicely surfaced to invite traffic. The economics of mid-century America were in themselves distressing, especially during the 1930's, and although the records indicate Gilbert was not among the greatest sufferers during the Great Depression, neither was it totally isolated from the world economic picture.

The primarily agricultural make-up of the area tended to leave the town in a status-quo situation. We see annual City budgets changing little between the early twenties and late forties. And the problems of the City of Gilbert were so routine .... an ordinance regulating the use of radio waves... an electric franchise election.... the installation of storm sewers....that the picture is one of a sleepy little town with residents going about their daily lives in a very routine and fixed manner.

The 1950's did, however, bring some changes to the City. The town purchased a fire truck for $1650. The Council accepted its purchase with a two-year, full-money-back guarantee.The seller also had to furnish an extra tire rim in the deal. But the acquisition wasn't easy, and it only passed on a three to two margin. Soon after, the city established a $50.00 charge for use of the truck outside the city limits, and the volunteers (eight of them) were paid $2.50 a call.

The late fifties saw a little new building going on in town, and with rural growth as well, the expansion of the school. Throughout the next decade the City was to get the biggest building boost since its inception in 1979. The reason.... the discovery of Gilbert by the Subdivider.
  

Growing pains

The building boom of the 1960's and 1970's was to more than double the size of Gilbert through those years. In 1960 its population was 325 ... by 1970 that had risen to 535 ... and to 800 by the mid-seventies.

The reason for the boom was the Subdivider. Always on the lookout for cheap land and low taxation levies, the builders began arriving in Gilbert in the early sixties as one tiny subdivision after another began to spring up here and there.

The subdivisions, usually ten to fifteen lots, became sites for the modern ranch, now the predominant housing structure in Gilbert. Those who bought houses in the town usually worked in the City of Ames, but for economic or personal preference reasons, desired to live outside Ames. It is just a short drive, perhaps 10 minutes, to the downtown section of Ames from Gilbert.

As the land crunch of the late sixties became a reality, the economics of land acquisition and home building made Gilbert an even more attractive site. In the early 70's a 200-acre subdivision plan was laid out, and it is still being developed. Taken together, all these developments made Gilbert Iowa's 22nd fastest growing city in 1976.

But the growth brought its problems, together with its blessings. In the late sixties the City was forced to install the first sewage disposal plant, a costly project, and the Town was not unanimously in favor of the facility. The problem, of course, arose from concern for the individual septic tank system of disposal that was in common use in the town, and there was actually no recourse for the City other than to build the plant.

The increasing population load tried the ancient water system as well. At one point the water pressure became so low, due to the inadequacy of the system, that the fear of uncontrolled fire, especially in the dry months of August, September and October, was very real. Residents of the Town were warned to be careful about using water unnecessarily, and the strained plant could produce barely a trickle from the hydrants.

Another problem ... building a new water system ... and the costs that were to be part of that problem, arose. The residents had lived with cheap water most of their lives. The new sewer system had just cost most of them a good sum of money, and there was, at least, a moral resistance to spending more. But persistence by the City Council, and a loan from the Farmer's Home Administration, made it possible to put in a new system in the early 1970's.

Commerce, and the commercial district all but disappeared from Gilbert from the 1930's to the 1960's. Only the steadfast grain elevator seemed to be able to make the transition of years with grace together with a few local businesses that were firmly established in the town.

Since most of Gilbert's population worked in Ames, businessmen were reluctant to locate in Gilbert, feeling that they could not draw the necessary market for their services. And so, one might say the City wound down, the building boom of the early seventies leveled out into a basic five or six homes per year, and the City seemed to reach a status quo state.

The City became more sophisticated in its 1970 years, it began to plan ahead for future development, new parks, expanding population, it sponsored a summer recreation program for the city youngsters, held clean-up days in the spring, and during the Centennial Year established a tradition with Gilbert Days. Though Gilbert Days originated as a Bicentennial Salute to the Nation on its birthday, the Bicentennial Committee kept the spirit of '76 moving right on through the next two years to the Centennial Celebration for the town in 1979.

   
The centennial story

In 1976, the year of the nation's Bicentennial, a group of Gilbert residents conceived the idea of having a Bicentennial Celebration. As the Bicentennial event was being discussed, it came to everyone's mind that the Centennial was not far off. After much work, it evolved that an annual celebration took place each year from 1976 to 1979, called Gilbert Days. It was the Gilbert Days concept that became the Centennial Celebration on the event of the town's 100th birthday.

Members of the Centennial Committee were - Frank Ross, Chairman, Members - Kaye Risden, Peg Allison, Vicky Thorp, Jim Gaunt, Sue Petty, Jean Hrabak, and Rick Hackett.

After hundreds of hours of meetings and work, the Committee put together a Centennial Celebration that will long be remembered.

The Celebration included a pancake breakfast put together by the Local Lions Club, and the breakfast started off the Saturday filled with events. There was a talent search with acts from the local area and from some distance away held at the Gilbert School. There were softball tournaments for both men and women.

The rodeo was a big event for the Centennial, with over 300 contestants, most of whom camped out in a farm field north of town for the two-day event. There were four-wheel drive pulls, pitting machine against a huge sled of weights, and there were contests as well for small, model tractors, designed to work just like the big ones.

There were bands, three of them, rock, square dance and one that played music for everyone.... the dances were held in the city park and on Main Street. There was a flea market and rides for the kids, cotton candy and soda, hot dogs and beer, and a great deal of meeting old friends and making new ones.

The Centennial Committee and various local organizations sold coins, wooden nickels, coin holders, hats, bells, plates and Centennial garters in black and red.

Serena Holmes and Kenneth Mindemann were selected to reign as the Centennial King and Queen, and the beard contest was won by H.P. Jensen, whose hirsute display, cultivated from the previous February was the most spectacular of those many bearded gentlemen who stood to be judged under a burning July sun.