Lost Butler County

by Linda Betsinger McCann

These lost towns may no longer be on any Iowa map, but they remain forever etched in the memory of the community.

Eleanor, Clutterville and Bear Grove are names that younger Iowans might only know from conversations with elders who still remember the pull of those spots on the surrounding far communities.

Wind back the clock in the Cedar Valley to a time when Butler Center was the center of Butler County and Fort Eads and Pilot Rock were useful directions instead of faded memories.

Astonished nostalgia awaits the reader in the panorama spread out in this chronicle. More than forty towns, stretching from Shell Rock to Cedar Falls, vanished when the railroad passed them by, and local historian Linda McCann reveals the various causes that contributed to the disappearance of these formerly thriving settlements.

Linda Betsinger McCann is a native Iowan who continues to live in Iowa by choice. Her ancestors settled in Iowa by the 1850s. Linda has been doing genealogy for about thirty years and recently traced a line to George Soule, who arrived on the Mayflower.

She dedicates all her books to her granddaughters because without them she probably would not have started writing. Linda hopes that her granddaughters will read the books and be proud to be Iowans, just as Linda is. This is her 10th book. Published by History Press.