Callender, Iowa. Population: 376

“Between 1866 and 1870 the Des Moines Valley Railroad Company constructed tracks between Des Moines and Fort Dodge. The line went from Keokuk, Iowa—an Iowa town at confluence of Des Moines and Mississippi rivers—through Des Moines, to Fort Dodge. To support the Railroad, several small towns were created by the railroad along the line to support track maintenance and to grow business. At seven to ten mile intervals there were 38 stops between the Keokuk and Fort Dodge. Kesho—town that would become Callender—was stop thirty-six.

There, Gurmond and Thora Bean had established a store in 1867-1868. The store was operational when the Des Moines Valley Railroad made it to Kesho in December 1869; however, a November 24, 1870 newspaper article from the Iowa Northwest Newspaper reads, “The city has disappeared from the face of the earth—not like Pompeii—but it has gone off on wheels. First the horse barn fell down, then the hotel was taken to pieces and moved off, and lately the depot has been hoisted on wheels, moved 9 miles up the road and landed near the Sioux City Junction (Tara). Kesho is now inhabited by muskrats alone.”