Latimer, Iowa

Latimer is a Franklin County town that came to life in eighteen eighty-two with the arrival of the Iowa Central Railroad. J. F.

Latimer laid out and platted a townsite along its tracks in November of that year, and the new settlement took his name. That pattern, a railroad arrives, a plat gets filed, and the town takes the name of whoever handled the transaction, was repeated across northern Iowa dozens of times in the eighteen eighties. Latimer today is a quiet agricultural community of about five hundred people, in the heart of some of Iowa's most productive farmland.