THE DREAM OF A TOWN

The town of Steamboat Rock, now, a small Midwestern town in central Iowa began as many towns small and large in the middle of the 19th century when men and women from all over the face of the earth were seeking opportunity in the new (less than 100 years old) land called the United States of America.

In order to arrive in the area, the pioneers had to follow some kind of a travel route, and almost as soon as he had given thought to shelter, he had to consider how he was going to get about. Of course he could backtrack along the same route, as he often did, for supplies, equipment, or even for his family who had been waiting for him to stake his claim. He also had to find a place to purchase a few necessities, to market any produce he might raise, to communicate with other settlers. He wanted to send and receive mail. The ordinary pioneer was not a hermit.

Central Iowa was not a trackless wilderness by the time the first settlers came. Indian trails had crisscrossed the area for many years, and the frontiersmen usually followed them. An early settler described them as follows: “They were generally located upon the best ground for a road; keeping as near the river as was convenient. An Indian would travel in the timber or along the river considerably farther in preference to venturing out on open ground.

“Indian trails were only about 12 inches wide, worn about an inch below the surface on the surrounding ground, and thickly matted with short, fine, wiry grass not more than three or four inches high. It occurred nowhere else but in the trails. I could follow these trails in places for years after the last Indian had stopped traveling over them.”

In 1851, the first settlers arrived in the area and started small farms. Nicholas Rice, and S.A. Williamson are credited with being the first to settle in Clay township. The following year in 1852, a great number of settlers began arriving, 33 families are listed in the History of Hardin County, as arriving that year. Among those listed there most if not all became instrumental in the establishment of the community of Steamboat Rock in the decade to come.

One name on the list of families that settled in Clay township in 1852, stands out with a bit more significance than the others. That of Isaac N. Lesh, who was the first to settle on and own a portion of what would become the town of Steamboat Rock.

Isaac Lesh was born in Preble county, Ohio, February 26, 1813. He was the son of Henry Lesh, a native of Virginia, and Susannah (Harter) Lesh, a native of Maryland. His parents moved to Wayne county, Indiana, when Isaac was twelve years old. Isaac received a limited common school education, and was raised on a farm. On June 28, 1836, he was married to Mabala Harris, a native of Indiana. They had six children together, and all but one daughter preceded their parents in death. On March 16, 1851, Mrs. Lesh also passed away. That may have been the reason that Isaac chose to pull up stakes and move west.

As was the case with many early pioneers that sought a new home and opportunity, Isaac Lesh first made a scouting trip to find and stake a claim on a place before making his move.

In the spring of 1852, the 39 year old Isaac Lesh, set out and traveled to Iowa, to find a new home. History is vague, yet it indicates that the main reason for a scouting trip may have been because he had chosen a second wife who he planned to marry in the fall of ‘52, and was going to return to Indiana for his bride.

Records do not indicate how long he was away on his scouting trip. It is likely that he was hurried on his homeward trip anxious to tell his bride-to-be of “beautiful land” he had found.

Isaac Lesh had made his claim in what would later be part of Hardin county, and Clay township.

Clay township was heavily timbered, being about half covered with heavy timber. The Iowa River was the principal stream in the township. A land that was lush and green. Woodlands were abundant for building material and fuel. This was uncommon to the prairies. On the river there were tall white pine, cedar and beautiful white birch were abundant. The hills and valleys for two miles on either side of the river were covered with white oak, black walnut, white walnut, hickory, basswood, ash, elm, hard maple, soft maple, cherry and two species of willow grew near the streams.

Among the array of beautiful native shrubs were hazel, sumac, elder and prickly ash.

A grand assortment of wild fruit were abundant and common, including, grapes, raspberries, gooseberries, blackberries, strawberries, plums and crab-apples-red.

Still this “was” the prairie and near the woods fertile rich black earth, blacker than had ever before been seen by the white man produced lush grasses. The prairie was not of the flat and uninteresting nature, but a series of swells and sloughs with meandering creeks winding here and there through the landscape. It was the result of the last ice-age, the last ice sheet, the Altamonte Moraine that had passed but a few miles north and east of the town site.

No one remains today who can tell us of the prairies wondrous sheen in the summer sun or how it seemed as a vast ocean as the breeze seemed to bend its grasses in waves. There were endless successions of summer bloom, of the wild prairie phlox, the buttercup, the wild rose, the vivid orange puccoons, the gentians, the showy prairie moccasin flower, the rushes and cattails, the wild strawberry and the drooping ladies tresses, the wonders of the gum weed and the sweet smell of peppermint in the prairie hay.

Surely these beauties were heavy on Isaac’s mind as he returned to Indiana.

Mr. Lesh was again married on September 19, 1852, to Elizabeth Baldwin, who had been born in North Carolina.

It is difficult to imagine what that winter of 1852-53 must have been like for Isaac and his new bride. They must have found it difficult to endure the long winter nights anticipating spring and the journey to their new home and new opportunities.

Preparations were likely made for the journey to begin in early spring.

Isaac Lesh and his new bride traveled across country before there was any thought of a railroad, stagecoach or even the familiar trail of a wagon train. He found his way to this part of the world in atwo horse wagon on sometimes bad and mostly no roads at all. They came through unfamiliar territory having to ford deep sometimes dangerous streams.

They crossed the Mississippi, most likely on a small ferry and landed in Iowa at Dubuque, about the first of May, 1853. From Dubuque, they proceeded to Cedar Falls where the Cedar River became a new obstacle in their travels. They had counted on the ferry there to carry them across the Cedar, but it had recently sunk leaving them stranded.

Isaac, was anxious now knowing that he was nearing his final destination, and wasn’t willing to remain idle for a week while the ferry boat was being raised.

He immediately set out and searched up and down the river, and after considerable contemplation selected a place that seemed safe to cross.

They started out at the first light of the next morning. Not long after they got underway a mixture of rain and snow began to fall and there was a wind from the west. The inclement weather continued the rest of the day.

Coming from Indiana, it is likely that spring came a bit earlier than it did in Iowa, and Isaac being anxious to get underway may have failed to consider this when setting out, which accounts for some of the weather he now encountered.

He later recalled the last leg of his trip, “We expected every little while to mire down, so wet was the ground; but toward evening we got to where I remembered some places, not many miles east of the Iowa River, when it became dark.”

“Here I got out of the wagon and walked ahead of the team, my wife driving. Fortunately, we did not mire down, as wmight have perished that wet snowy night if we had without fire; but way in the night, when Buckners (a family who had settled there earlier) were all in bed, we got nearly frozen, too tired and cold to think about supper.”

“Next day, we crossed the Iowa River at Xenia (a settlement 6 miles south of Eldora better remembered today as Secor). The river being full, we had to take our goods out of the wagon and ferry them over in canoes, then swim the horses by the side of the canoe, and last of all, ferry the wagon on two canoes. Then we came on up, mooring down every now and then, to old Jacob Smith’s, where Scotty Smith now lives, just north of Eldora.”

The next day Lesh and his wife finally arrived at their destination. Wearied by their travels and perils of their journey. Thankful that they had arrived safely and that the whole ordeal was over. They could now begin to realize their dreams perhaps unaware that their new home would someday become the community of Steamboat Rock.

“We came up to what is now known as the Dickenson farm, a mile or so below Steamboat Rock, where Samuel L. Higginbotham then lived. Here in the bottom, by then the 7th or 8th of May, the grass had started a little. I tied the horses heads down to a foot, and putting a bell on one, turned them loose to browse, and went up to my claim, about where the Iowa Central Railroad depot now stands.”

One can only imagine the thoughts going through Isaac Lesh’s mind as he looked on the claim that he had filed the summer before, and now having safely returned with his new wife to face the challanges ahead.