Augustus Caesar Dodge was a delegate to Congress from Iowa Territory in 1840. After Iowa became a state in 1846, he became one of its first United States senators.
In 1855, President Franklin Pierce appointed him minister to Spain. He ran for governor when he returned to the country, and later served as mayor of Burlington.
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| (Picture from Des Moines Register. January 17, 1909) |
In January 1909, the Des Moines Register published plans for the Hyperion Club, offering a glimpse of what was shaping up to be one of Des Moines’s more ambitious country clubs.
The Hyperion started out in 1904 as a dancing club, organized by about 19 members. Before long, the group shifted gears, reorganized as a country club, and grew to around 100 members.
By 1909, it was still growing. Membership had reached 225, and the club was clearly thinking bigger. Its grounds, near Waveland Park, covered 225 acres and included an 18-hole golf course laid out at full championship length.
The plan printed in the paper showed a sketch of a new clubhouse with plenty of extras. The building was to include family quarters, bachelor quarters, lockers, a bathhouse, and a billiard parlor. There was also to be a separate building called Bachelor’s Hall.
The club sat along the Perry Interurban Line, about a 35-minute ride from downtown Des Moines. That made it close
enough for city members to get there with little trouble, while still feeling
like a trip out of town.
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| New Waterloo fire truck - an American-La France model |
1919 was a year of big changes for the Waterloo
Fire Department. Longtime chief A. A. Dunham retired in early August, citing
health problems. Assistant Chief Martin Burke filled in as chief for a few months
until Captain Ray Tiller was appointed chief in early October.
Shortly after that, the city council approved the
purchase of a new American-La France fire truck at a cost of nearly $12,000.
The new truck had a complete hose and chemical system and a booster pump. It could
pump 300 gallons per minute.
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| Motorcycle police officers Edwin Blackhan and John Bryant |
Automobiles were multiplying, drivers were
testing the limits of speed, and the old methods—foot patrols and horse
officers—couldn’t always keep up. So the department bought a motorcycle.
The plan was simple. A motorcycle officer
would remain near the station house. When an emergency call came in, he was
dispatched, racing through city streets faster than any patrol wagon could
manage.
The first motorcycle officer was Charles
Boettcher. He set the pace for the new experiment, proving that two wheels and
a powerful engine could change the way a city was policed. When Boettcher moved
up to detective work, Olaf Dahlquist took his place.
By 1914, the motorcycle squad had become
indispensable. The Davenport Democrat and Leader said the
department would be “lost” without its motorcycle officers. Speeding
automobiles—sometimes called “auto speed maniacs”—were becoming a menace. The
department answered with a machine built to match them.
They chose a Flying Merkle, a powerful
motorcycle capable of reaching 55 to 60 miles per hour. That speed made it more
than a novelty. It made it a weapon against reckless driving. As the department
put it, a “motorcycle cop is the only effectual solution of the auto speed
maniac problem.” It took a high-powered car to escape a motorcycle man, and few
drivers owned one.
In the spring of 1914, two officers carried
the city’s motorcycle duties. Edwin Blackhan handled the daytime shift. John
Bryant took the night watch.
What began as a simple experiment quickly
proved its worth. Within a year, Davenport’s motorcycle patrol wasn’t just a
curiosity. It was essential. And plans were in the works to add another cycle.
This advertisement for the Velie Motor Vehicle Co., Moline, Illinois, was published in The Daily Times on February 24, 1912.
If you lived in Davenport in 1905, the Oldsmobile Touring Car might have been the automobile for you. This advertisement for Mason's Carriage Works was published in The Daily Times on April 8, 1905.
This letter from an unnnamed captain of the 4th Iowa Cavalry dated Fort Scott, October 26, 1864, was published in the Burlington Weekly Hawk-Eye on November 12, 1864.
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| Dawn attack at Trading Post on the Marais Des Cygnes River |
Two miles from Mound City and fourteen from Trading Post, Marmaduke’s division made a stand. Phillips’ First Brigade M. S. M. came up on the right and formed first. Then our command came up on the left and formed a column of regiments, the 10th Minnesota in advance, the 4th Iowa next, and the 3rd Iowa in the rear of our 21st Brigade.
This letter from the 6th Iowa Infantry at Oak Ridge, Miss., dated August 24, 1863, was printed in the Burlington Weekly Hawk-Eye on September 12, 1863.
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| 6th Iowa Infantry on a scouting expedition |
And first, allow me to say that the hospitals at Paducah are just what they ought to be. Those who have friends there may rest assured that everything possible is being done to make them comfortable, and if they do not recover, it will not be because they are beyond the reach of medical skill and the equally important attention of the kindest and best nurses.
On May 8, 1863, The Muscatine Journal printed this letter from an unnamed member of the 2nd Iowa Cavalry.
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| 2nd Iowa Cavalry setting off on a scouting expedition |
Cyril Charles Slapnicka was born in Cedar Rapids in 1886.
Farm country. Immigrant parents. Baseball was the quickest way out of town and
the surest way back in.
He pitched forever in the minors. Iowa. Illinois.
Anywhere they’d pay him. In 1911 he won 26 games in Rockford and forced the
Chicago Cubs to notice. September call-up. Big league clubhouse. A few
appearances. Then, back on the train.
He resurfaced with Pittsburgh in 1918. Ten major
league games total. Record: 1–6. He wasn’t a star. Not even close.
A lot of men would’ve faded right there.
Slapnicka didn’t.
In 1921, he signed on with Cleveland as a scout.
That’s where the story actually starts. He had an eye, and knew what a
big-league arm looked like before it knew itself. He drove Iowa’s back roads.
Watched high school kids throw in half-empty parks. Talked to parents. Took
notes. Made bets with other scouts and usually won.
In 1936, he found Bob Feller, an Iowa farm kid
throwing gas past grown men. Slapnicka signed him. That changed Cleveland for a
decade. Later came Bob Lemon and a pipeline of players who filled out rosters
that could actually win.
For a stretch in the mid-1930s, he ran the club.
General manager. Contracts, salaries, egos. No draft system back then. You
wanted a player; you found him first and signed him fast. Slapnicka operated
like a man who understood scarcity. Talent was gold. Hesitation was death.
He stayed with Cleveland over forty years,
scouting into his seventies because he trusted his judgment more than anyone
else’s reports.
He died in 1979 at 93, back in Cedar Rapids.
Here’s the clean version: He had a short,
forgettable pitching career and a long, consequential second act.
He didn’t conquer the mound. He built the roster.
And in baseball, that can matter more.
Des Moines in 1858
On September 30, 1906, the Des Moines Register ran a pictorial on the historic old building of Des Moines. I picked two of them to feature hereL a look at Des Moines in 1858, and the Des Moine Hotel in 1855. Some of the other pictures not shown here included the Old Congregational Church in 1858, the first bridge on Walnut Street in 1866, and the D. F. C. Grunell House, built in 1848.
