SRHS
Steamboat Rock Historical Society
THE DREAM OF A TOWN
The Town Name
Many stories are told about the name of the town of Steamboat Rock. The only thing we can be certain of in these stories is that the town has had two names in it‘s history that of “Lithopolis,” and “Steamboat Rock.”
No information has been found that tells us if any name was actually given to the town when it was first platted. Lithopolis was the name of the postal station that was established in 1856. It was a small station on the stage coach postal route from Waterloo to Eldora.
Steamboat Rock
Lithopolis may have been the name given, when the town was platted, or it was taken from the name of the postal station. There is also evidence that there were those who wanted it to remain as the name of the town.
At nearly the same time that the town was platted some of the early citizens organized a Literary Society, which met during the winter of 1856-57 for the purpose of discussing literary topics. This says a great deal about the caliber of the early inhabitants of the community.
These early settlers from the east are thought to have “officially” given the town the name “Lithopolis” (Stone-city) on January 6, 1857, thinking that the Latin name was most appropriate for the intellectual status of the citizenry.
Others have speculated that the name meaning stone city, came because many of the original houses and buildings were built of stone.
On June 6, 1870, the name was changed to Steamboat Rock, and made official five years prior to the town’s incorporation. The name Lithopolis has all but been forgotten.
An article that appeared in the Steamboat Rock Echo, a page designated each week to Steamboat Rock news in the Eldora Reform Herald, on Friday January 7, 1898, quotes A.S. Root, who located in Steamboat in 1857, as saying, “There is south of the main part of town and just, I believe, inside the corporate limits, a point where a creek flows into the river. At this place in the river bank, twenty-five feet high, and there is a sharp turn, making the current of the stream strike the bank almost square. With the creek washing along there, the water had worn that bank so for a distance of 300 feet, that it looked like the side of a steamboat. As a result, Mr. Lesh, so he told me, suggested Steamboat Rock as a name for the town. There was a projection like a wheel house, and a pine tree stood on top. Since then lightning struck, the tree and the Wheel house projection dropped off so that the place does not retain so distinct and appearance like a steamboat.”
Finding no other information indicating someone else named the town, it is safe to assume that Isaac Lesh, one of the founders of Steamboat Rock, also named it.