05/31/2026
What would you consider the most significant event in Pella’s history? Take a moment to think about it, then let us know your answer in the comments.
For me, the answer would be the arrival of the railroad.
The first train steamed into Pella on Thursday afternoon, December 15, 1864. Today it is difficult to imagine just how dramatically that single event changed the community. Up to that point, Pella was a small, even sleepy village. The only way to move people, goods, mail, or news in and out of town was by wagon or stagecoach over bridgeless dirt roads.
Transportation had always been a major concern for Pella’s founders. One of the reasons Henry Scholte and the Dutch immigrants came to Iowa in 1847 was the availability of affordable farmland. But Scholte also wanted access to trade routes. For that reason, Pella was founded along what was then known as the State Road—a grand name for a simple dirt route running along the ridge between Keokuk on the Mississippi River and Fort Des Moines. Pella was laid out where the Des Moines and Skunk Rivers were at their closest point.
At the time, many believed rivers would become Iowa’s transportation highways. The state sponsored an ambitious project to build locks and dams along the Des Moines River to make it navigable year-round. The smaller Skunk River provided water power for mills and industry. But the Des Moines River improvement project eventually stalled amid financial difficulties, mismanagement, and corruption.
Without reliable river transportation, moving goods across Iowa remained expensive and difficult. When Pella’s first steam-powered grist mill was erected in 1856, its twenty-foot-long boiler had to be hauled across the state by ox team and wagon over roads that were little more than muddy tracks and lacked bridges entirely. Scholte and other community leaders even advocated for a wooden plank road from Keokuk to Pella. Remarkably, about twenty miles of that road were actually completed.
Then the railroad entered Iowa.
In 1857, funds originally intended for the Des Moines River project were redirected to build a railroad through the Des Moines Valley. Progress was slow, and the outbreak of the Civil War delayed construction even further. But seven years later, the railroad finally reached Pella.
More importantly, it stopped here.
The railroad arrived in mid-December, and construction halted for the winter. For several months, Pella became the western end of the line. A depot and roundhouse were constructed, railroad workers remained in town, and businesses sprang up to serve them. Some of those workers and their families chose to stay, adding to the diversity of what had previously been a predominantly Dutch and Reformed community. Among them were Irish and Catholic families who established lasting roots in Pella.
For the next two years, until the tracks reached Des Moines, Pella served as the western terminus of the railroad. For a brief time, Pella was the gateway to central Iowa. Travelers, merchandise, livestock, grain, mail, newspapers, machinery, and supplies all arrived here before continuing west by wagon. Merchants and passengers from as far away as Winterset, Indianola, and Des Moines traveled to Pella to receive freight and conduct business.
The opportunities were immediately recognized. The same week the railroad arrived, commission merchants David Huber and Charles Snow established Snow & Huber, a business that handled incoming merchandise and outgoing agricultural products. They built grain elevators and stockyards near the tracks. Their surviving record books list everything from hardware and stoves to agricultural implements, clothing, and even liquor.
Within a year, the telegraph arrived as well. For the first time, Pella residents could receive news from distant cities almost instantly rather than waiting days or weeks for information to arrive.
The railroad transformed the community. South Pella grew rapidly. Hotels, lumber yards, warehouses, commission houses, and industries clustered around the depot. The original depot stood just south of today’s South Street between Clark and Prairie Streets—the future site of the canning factory and later Heritage Lace. Nearby stood grain elevators, stockyards, and a roundhouse that remained in operation for nearly thirty years. In 1905, a new, still-surviving, brick depot was constructed a few blocks to the northwest, and the old wood-frame depot was relocated beside it for use as a warehouse.
The railroad continued to serve Pella for more than 140 years. Although the original depot, roundhouse, elevators, and many of the businesses that surrounded them are gone today, their influence remains visible on the community and in the growth patterns of South Pella and the industries that followed.
Preservation is not only about saving buildings. It is also about remembering the events that shaped them. Few—if any—events influenced Pella more than the arrival of the railroad in 1864.
What are your thoughts? Was the railroad the most important development in Pella’s history? Do you have memories of trains in Pella or stories passed down through your family? We would love to hear them.
– Researched and written by Pella Historian Bruce Boertje