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Cedar Rapids & Missouri River Railroad Company

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In March, 1860, the state resumed the grant and made it over to the Cedar Rapids and Missouri River Railroad Company, a company organized June 14, 1859, and composed largely of stockholders in the Chicago, Iowa and Nebraska Railroad Company, already in operation from Clinton to Cedar Rapids, Iowa. The Cedar River was bridged at Cedar Rapids and the railroad built west to Otter Creek in 1860 and 1861, to Marshalltown in 1862, to State Center in 1863, to Nevada by July 4, 1864, and the track laid to Boone in December, 1864, but the road was not surfaced up and completed from Nevada to Boone until 1865.

On March 28, 1865, the town plat of the town of Boone was filed for record by John Insley Blair, who had previously purchased a large portion of the land where the city of Boone is now located.

The railroad was built from Marshalltown to the Missouri River, under the management of Blair, and W. W. Walker was his chief engineer.

In July, 1862, the Cedar Rapids and Missouri River Railroad was leased in perpetuity to the Galena and Chicago Union Railroad Company, which company then owned the line from Chicago west to the Mississippi River, opposite Clinton, Iowa, and operated the Chicago, Iowa and Nebraska Railroad under lease. The lease covered not only the portion of the Cedar Rapids and Missouri River Railroad then built, by the entire line to the Missouri River, when the same should be completed to some point on said river.

The city of Ames, Iowa was established in 1864 to serve the Cedar Rapids and Missouri River Railroad. Blair named the town after his friend Oakes Ames, a railroad promoter and congressman from Massachusetts, who never lived in Ames.

We are currently offering the following pieces from the Cedar Rapids & Missouri River Railroad Company:





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