Historic Sites
Battin Chapel / Hickory Grove School
Enjoy a step back in time when you visit the Battin Chapel, a quaint wooden church built in 1887, and the Hickory Grove School, another example of a rural one-room schoolhouse. Both attractions sit on the old Lincoln Highway, 3 miles east of Ogden, Iowa.
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Bells Mill Park Mill Turbine
A turbine wheel used in the actual mill along the Boone River is on display within an information kiosk building located in the park.
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Blanden Art Museum
Located in the Oak Hills Historic District and built in 1932, the Blanden Art Museum has a permanent collection which includes modern American & European paintings, African sculptures, glassworks and 16th-20th century American, European & Japanese prints. The Blanden also has adult and youth classes, art education classes, meet & greet artist events and family fun activities.
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Boone County Courthouse
The Boone County Courthouse was built in 1917. It was listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1981. This Renaissance Revival building features marble walls, terrazzo floors, coffered ceilings and stained-glass skylights.
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Boone County Historical Museum
The Boone County Historical Society curates the largest collection of artifacts and personal items representing important people, periods and events in our area’s history.
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Briggs Woods Park – Red Barn
The Old Red Barn also known as Shelter #3 is the last remaining building from the Briggs Family farmstead. It is used today as a lodge rental facility.
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Cole Schoolhouse
Cole School is a restored one-room brick schoolhouse that served the rural students of Boone County from 1888 to 1933. The schoolhouse retains many of its original features and is a wonderful step back to an earlier time in education.
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Dolliver State Park
Bluffs, canyons, the Des Moines River, Prairie Creek, and Indian mounds make up Dolliver. Sandstone formations called the “Copperas Beds” provide a view of an ancient river bed over 150 million years old. A narrow ravine running between rock walls was given the name “Boneyard Hollow” by early settlers when large amounts of buffalo bones were found in the canyon.
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Ellsworth Historical Museum
This small museum is located in the back of the Ellsworth Library. Despite its size you will be delighted by the variety of the exhibits about the Ellsworth area. There are extensive area genealogical information to peruse. Contact: janetadix (at) mediacombb.net for more information and an appointment only visit.
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Fort Museum & Frontier Village
The Fort Museum is housed in a stockade fort and pioneer main street. Buildings and corresponding collections include a family cabin, church, one room school house, cabinet shop, land office, general store, drug store, jail, print shop, blacksmith shop, livery stable, pottery building and tinsmith shop.
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Jane Young House
The historic home of Kendall and Jane Young was built in 1873. The Webster City Women’s Club has met in the home since 1923 and, along with the Jane Young House Foundation, has lovingly cared for and maintained the site.
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Jewell History Museum – Jewell, Iowa
The Jewell History Museum in Jewell, Iowa premiers local historical artifacts and history. It was established in 2018 and it is now equipped with universal access. Extensive repairs have been done to its front. Come enjoy their fascinating on-going displays.
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Kate Shelley High Bridge
One of the highest and longest double track railroad trestles in the world, standing 185 ft. high above the Des Moines River, it spans 2,685 ft. in length.
Kendall Young Library Special Collections
Four special collections are open for the public to see. They include the Abastenia St. Leger Eberle Sculpture Collection, The Foster Doll Collection, The Van Ness Native American Collection & the Jane Young Stained Glass Window. The Beaux Arts style library itself is also a destination. It has gold marble columns from Africa, terrazzo & mosaic floors, stained glass windows & a stained glass dome....
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Madrid Historical Museum
The Madrid Historical museum documents the history of southern Boone County, “Swede Points” early history as a mining town, and features examples of a coal shaft and an old time city jail.
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Mamie Doud Eisenhower Birthplace
Birthplace of the wife of the 34th President of the United States, Dwight D. Eisenhower. Mamie Doud was born here in 1896 and returned to Boone often (even as First Lady) to see her relatives, the Carlsons.
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Oleson Park Bandshell
The Oleson Park Bandshell was designed by architect Henry Kamphoefner and built by the Works Progress Administration, a program to help the unemployed during The Great Depression, in 1938. The Oleson Park Bandshell marked a departure from the small gazebo type bandstands constructed after the Civil War. The Karl King Municipal Band performs free concerts at the Bandshell periodically.
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Ringland / Smeltzer House & Oak Hill District
The Ringland/Smeltzer House is also significant as part of the Oak Hill District, a four block district placed on the National Register of Historical Places in 1977. The district consists of 15 homes which together reflect the changing architectural styles of the post Civil War period, 1870-1910, and the prosperity and optimism which dominated in Fort Dodge during its golden era.
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Skillet Creek Indian Mounds
This preserve is the site of a prehistoric Native American ceremonial ground. Five conical burial mounds and one linear ceremonial mound lie on the heavily timbered bluff overlooking the Des Moines and Skillet Creek valleys. The mounds were built 2,000 to 1,500 years ago by an extinct culture called the Woodland Indians. Found in the bottomland of the area is the old mining town of...
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Vegors Cemetery
Vegors Cemetery, established in 1849, overlooks the Des Moines and Boone Rivers east of Lehigh off of D26 on Xavier Ave. A white obelisk marks the grave of Mrs. Henry Lott, the first white women settler in Webster County in 1846. The site contained five mounds made by prehistoric woodlands people, at least one of which was a burial mound. A stone marker shows the...
Wilson Brewer Historical Park
In 1932, the family of Wilson Brewer conveyed a nine-acre tract from the Brewer homestead to the City of Webster City in exchange for the promise to forever preserve the land, its buildings and any subsequent additions in the name of the Wilson Brewer Park. The City accepted the Brewer family proposal and has owned and maintained the Park these past 85 years.
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