Stuart, Iowa: The Captain Who Straddled Two Counties

Stuart, Iowa sits on the boundary line between Adair and Guthrie counties, and that is no accident. Captain Charles Stuart arrived in the area with a plan. He purchased key parcels of land straddling both counties, lobbied aggressively for the Chicago, Rock Island and Pacific Railroad to route its line through the site, The railroad agreed.

Stuart platted the town on September twenty-ninth, eighteen seventy, and construction began on a roundhouse and engine facilities. The town was formally named for the captain who engineered its existence, a man who bet that the right piece of land in the right place at the right moment could conjure a town out of open prairie.