The south side of Main Street in Rockwell, date unknown. Photo courtesy of Historic Iowa Postcard Collection, Special Collections and Archives, Grinnell College Libraries
By Ashley Rullestad
The small northern Iowa town of Rockwell is located in Cerro Gordo County, just 10 miles south of Mason City off Highway 65. According to History of Franklin and Cerro Gordo Counties, Iowa, the town was named by Charles C. Gilman, the first president of the Central Railway of Iowa, in honor of George B. Rockwell, who owned the land on which the town is now located.
Like many small Iowa towns, it got its start when the railroad came through the area. It was laid out by Rockwell and the Iowa Valley Construction Company in 1870. The original plat, however, only included the west half of the present limits. The northeast quarter of the plat, lying east of the Iowa Central track, was laid out several years later. Rockwell served as a station on the rail line.
James Howland built the town’s first house in the fall of 1870. The depot and house for the section hands were built the same fall. The following spring the Putnam House and several dwellings were put up. Albert Bruce opened the town’s first store, and Christian Zeidler, whose name is still known in town, was the town’s first wagon maker. Soon the town also had a blacksmith shop, shoemaker, harness business, drug store and general store.
It is said that “the grain business of Rockwell, for many years after the first location of the town, was an extensive and paying branch of industry, as all the broad prairies are first made to produce wheat and oats, they being the most profitable crop, until after the soil has been better subdued and adapted to corn raising.” In 1883 there were two good-sized elevators and a warehouse in the village.
In 1907, the town saw significant damage when a tornado swept over the southern part of Minnesota, northern Iowa, the southwestern end of Wisconsin and a part of Illinois. The Nashua Reporter stated that three people were killed and four injured with thousands of dollars worth of damage done through that part of Iowa.
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