This is Roald Tweet on Rock Island.
It it's true that Eldridge, Iowa, is like the cat with nine lives, then its citizens can relax until about 2050. It’s only used up four lives since it was founded just west of Davenport in 1871.
The small community was established at the junction of the Milwaukee and St. Paul Railroad and its Maquoketa branch by Davenport land agent Jacob Eldridge. Mr. Eldridge himself never moved there.
Nor did the community need its founder. It had a large railroad repair shop which also built cars and engines. In 1874 the railroad ran into financial trouble and was sold to the Davenport and Northwestern, which in turn was bought in 1879 by the Chicago, Milwaukee, and St. Paul Railroad.
Things seemed better than ever for Eldridge, until late one Saturday night when two hundred men arrived in four trains of fifteen boxcars each. Outplacement is nothing new. By Sunday morning, the repair shop was on its way to a new home in Oxford Junction, leaving Eldridge with foundations and a tall smokestack. There went life number one.
Somehow, Eldridge survived the loss of its only industry and carried on. Until 1882 when a smallpox epidemic swept through, putting the whole town in virtual quarantine. Trains passed by without stopping until the epidemic passed and the town was disinfected. There went life number two.
Eldridge was determined to hang on, and it did so through a fire in 1904 that destroyed a hardware and implement store, a saloon, the town hotel, an elevator, a stock yard, and several residences.
And it hung on through the tornado of May 9, 1918. The funnel touched down three miles west of town and practiced with farmhouses and barns before cutting a 150-yard swath through the north end of the town destroying a number of buildings including the Presbyterian church and injuring twenty-two people. An automobile brigade from Davenport brought relief supplies within an hour.
Again, Eldridge refused to give up. Today, it is a successful small town, different, perhaps, from similar communities only in the amount of time spent watching the road ahead—and waiting.
Rock Island Lines with Roald Tweet is underwritten by Augustana College, Rock Island, Illinois.