Snapshot of History by Mike Avitt

This picture postcard was at the Mount Ayr Depot Museum when I joined many years ago. I have never run it before because I don’t know the location. I initially believed it was the bridge just south of the Mount Ayr Water Treatment Plant but the shadows are all wrong for that. The back of…

BY MIKE AVITT This week’s picture should look familiar. It was painted onto the Peggy Whitson rock on the southwest corner of the Mount Ayr square by Bubba Sorensen. Ken Robertson emailed me some time ago asking for a picture of Beaconsfield for Bubba to use on the rock. I sent this photo and forgot…

I got a letter from Illa Heslop of Creston with some interesting newspaper clippings. I will focus on one of those clippings this week. In the 1970s, Harold Roberts, editor of the Creston News Advertiser, penned a column called, “’Round the Community.” Illa sent me one of his columns from 1978 about Pearl Kokesh, a…

BY MIKE AVITT The west side of the Odd Fellows Hall, 102 E. Madison, had many more occupants than the east side. I don’t have a record of all renters and lessees, but I have quite a few so let’s get started. This storefront was a drug store in the late 1880s and early 1890s.…

BY MIKE AVITT The IOOF building was built so long ago I don’t have a record of its construction but I would guess the early 1880s. This week, we’ll look at the occupants of the ground floor, east storeroom, at 106 E. Madison. My plat maps from 1893 and 1898 say this address was occupied…

BY MIKE AVITT This photo was donated to the Mount Ayr Depot Museum by, “Friends of Old Redding,” and shows the Redding newspaper office and the old high school behind it. The school building sat on the lots south of the Methodist Episcopal Church. The old school building was sold at public auction February 4,…

This is a great photo as it was taken before all the frame buildings were replaced with brick. Also, This angle shows us the T. L. Tullis livery barn behind the Huggins & Saville building. I’m guessing this picture was taken by Mount Ayr photographer, M. G. Maxwell, from his upstairs studio at 107 S.…

BY MIKE AVITT This is one of those businesses that I had information on, but no picture. That ended last week when John McGilvrey allowed me to use his photo for this article. Dave Neptune was so popular, he was featured in the June 12, 1896 Twice-A-Week News shortly after coming to Mt. Ayr from…

BY MIKE AVITT Shirley Hickman ran this photo in her “Ayr Views” column of March 29, 1990. The house was identified as being at 202 E. Jefferson in 1917 but no other information was available at that time. Shirley asked her readers for help and she got it in the following weeks. The home was…

BY MIKE AVITT Thanks to Crae Geist for this week’s picture. I’m guessing this photo belonged to his mother, Cleola (Burchett) Geist, as two of her siblings are in the picture. In the front row, left to right, we see: Elizabeth Butler, Agnes Barnhart, Opal Marshall, Betty Burchett, Madge Barnhouse, Bonnie Haley, Inez Marshall, and…