Ghost Town of the Month

CORLEY, Shelby County, IA

CORLEY, Iowa is now a rural community that is located on the east of US 59 and mostly south of County Road F58, about a quarter mile east of the junction of US 59/CR F58, six miles north of I-90 at EXIT 40, in the southwestern part of the county, just southeast of the Harlan Municipal Airport and west of the West Nishnabotna River. It once had its own Post Office that was in operation February 27, 1880-August 31, 1957. It was one of 17 post offices that have closed in the county. Eleven remain open, which says a lot for the economy of the smaller farm towns here. The handful of remaining residents of Corley now get their mail from nearby Harlan (county seat).

This old town was once a viable little agricultural town with its own collection of businesses, but is now just another faceless, faded farm town; one of the countless thousands scattered across America’s Heartland. We visited this wonderful has-been about ten years ago, and what remained then was a hollow shell of the former town. A few scattered homes, an antique store housed in the old general store and a couple empty buildings, including grain elevators, a leaning corn crib and what appears to be some type of storage shed remain. From the air it’s just another cluster of roofs and trees sitting east of a road intersection and west of the river in the midst of Iowa’s expansive corn fields. About 0.7 miles to the northeast, east of the river and west of Maple Road is the Corley/Fairview Township Cemetery, the final resting place for numerous Corley citizens. Corley is one of those nearly anonymous towns of which little detailed history is readily available. However, with extensive weeding through numerous sources online, bits and pieces of the town’s history and personality have come to light in the vignette below.

Corley began life as a vision in the mind of Thomas McDonald, a settler that arrived in the township in 1873. Only four years before, in 1869, the Chicago, Rock Island and Pacific (CRI&P) Railroad pushed its main line from the east to the west towards Council Bluffs, passing through Avoca, 7.1 miles south of his 600-acre farm in Section 4, which farm was also located 5.6 miles south of the county seat of Harlan. McDonald noted the nearness of both the railroad and the county seat. On June 1878, the Avoca, Harlan & Northern (AH & N) Railroad Company was established as a subsidiary of the CRI&P. McDonald was the president of the AH&N, and the company began construction of a branch line from Harlan Junction, Pottawattamie County to Harlan. One station was established on land owned by McDonald at the midpoint. McDonald named the station Corley, which was his wife Mary’s maiden name, and it opened when the first train arrived in December 1878.

A post office called Corley opened soon thereafter, although GNIS indicates it opened in 1880. In any case, the growth of the community is tied to the completion of the railroad branch. In January 1881, McDonald opened a general store and also served as the budding town’s postmaster until early 1881, but he died December 15, 1881 at the age of 38. Shortly thereafter Willard Nobel was assigned the postmaster duties. According to the July 1881 Official Register of the United States (Post Office Department listing of post masters), Nobel is listed as the Postmaster with an annual compensation of $40.32. The post office was also listed in the January 1882 edition of the United States Official Postal Guide.

Apparently either McDonald’s store sat vacant or someone else ran it for his family, but in April 1882, Claus Albers purchased the stock and store. Albers had lived in Corley since 1878 and after purchasing it, it did very well. The store did an annual business of $15,000 in 1888. At that time he also had one clerk working for him. Albers was then appointed postmaster in 1884.

In June 1883 the town of Corley was platted, continuing the post office and railroad station names. The railroad station was an active grain and livestock shipping center, and the little town of Corley was off and running. It had a population of 35 in 1884 and consisted of at least the railroad station and the store/post office. Unfortunately because it never incorporated, population figures are difficult to obtain. However, in 1885, the population of the township reached 800, but the breakdown for Corley was not listed.

Charles Vogt operated a dry goods/general store in Corley, which he opened in February 1888. This appears to be a new store as a decade later two stores are listed as being in business. Apparently a school had also been established as a “Sabbath (Sunday) School” was organized in May 1891. I have not been able to determine if there were any churches in the town. It must be remembered that even though the town population was not large, the businesses and services rendered reached many of the farmers in the outlying areas. In the 1892 Farmer’s Directory for Iowa, there are 49 names listed for Corley. This list includes all farmers who receive their mail from the Corley Post Office and does not include non-farm residents of the town.

Apparently there was coal discovered nearby as the 1897 edition of Mine, Quarry and Metallurgical Record of the United States, Canada and Mexico, lists three coal mines near Corley. They were owned by: Frederick Carl Co., John Fairly & Co., and the North Star Coal Company mines. Today, that mining area is the Nishna Bend Recreation Area, and is located just southeast of Corley along the West Branch of the Nishnabotna River.

By the late 1890s, Corley is said to have had 150 people along with Rixon’s Hotel, Alber’s Store and McAvoy’s Store (possibly Vogt’s old store?). Somewhere during the 1901-1906 period, a J.W. Fowler of Council Bluffs built and operated a creamery at Corley, running it for one year. He then sold it to some of Corley’s farmers. Fowler lived in Council Bluffs between 1900 and 1906, before moving to Grinnell. The biographical sketch this information came from did not indicate the specific timeframe he operated the creamery.

Beginning in 1909, a barber shop was operated by George M. Stamps at 104, 3^rd Street E. He sold it in 1930 to Ray “The Roundman” McCreedy, who operated it until 1981. In 2008, the shop and all of its inventory was purchased by a collector in Southern California. The barber shop has been recreated in a large barn on their property and I had the privilege to visit it in January 2010. Here on this page, the barber shop is being reunited with the town it originally came from. The photos of the barber shop are posted with the permission of Ben & Darlene Hare, the owners. Some of the items on display include an old shaving cream mug, bottles of hair tonic, razor strops, an old cash register and shelves full of colorful bottles and interesting items.

As noted earlier, specific information on Corely is difficult to find, but in an online obituary for a 20^th century Corley-Harlan area resident born in 1922, it was noted that the subject attended a country school at Corley and worked in a sawmill near Corley all prior to enlisting in the Marines in 1942. Another site lists a privately-owned one-room school museum in Corley on the north side of the road, about ¼ mile east of the junction with US 59. That school operated from 1920 into the 1950s. This and the aforementioned Sunday School indicate that a school operated in Corley from at least 1891 to the 1950s. Whether it was the same building, or if the service was uninterrupted, I have not determined. Another setback to the community was that in 1960, the Harlan Branch Railroad line was abandoned.

This is a fascinating little community and I would love it if some of you could fill in the blanks and help all of us learn a little more about it.

Some overall thoughts indicate that the time frame from 1870-1900ish would have been the boom time for the community. Population figures show the county growing rapidly in population between 1870 (2540) and 1880 (12,696), then increasing moderately until around 1900 when it peaked at 18,784 people. By comparison, the county’s population in 1950 was 15,942 and in 2000 was 13,173. During the 1900-1905 period, the population of the county decreased 4.5% and since then, has continued to decline in population. Corley’s arc probably was similar, showing a slow decline until the onset of the Great Depression/Dust Bowl era of the 1930s, then fading rapidly after WWII, crippled by the advent of mechanized farming, growth of larger towns and improved transportation. By the 1970s, mushrooming mega stores and big box retailers in the larger towns and cities easily reachable by family car doomed most of the mom & pop businesses in thousands of tiny farm towns throughout America’s Heartland. Even though Corley and the county are located reasonably close to the Omaha (NE)/Council Bluffs metro area, the county’s 2000 population is only 70% of what it was a century earlier, and other than in Harlan, the tiny towns I visited in the county were all without any open businesses.

As always, please abide by any sign postings and respect the rights of the building and land owners.

POPULATION:

· 1884 - 35

· 1916 – 75

· 1980 – rural

· 1990 – 50

· 2000 – 30

· 2010 –

A photo of the leaning corn crib is featured on page 122 in my newest book, GHOST TOWNS: Yesterday & Today^TM^.

This was our Ghost Town of the Month for February 2011.

LOCATION:

· SE corner Sec 4, NE corner Sec 9, T78N, R39W, Fairview Township

· Latitude: 41.5786004 / 41° 34’ 43” N

· Longitude: -95.3302767 / 95° 19’ 49” W

· CORLEY/FAIRVIEW TWP CEMETERY

· W-Ctr Sec 3, T78N, R39W, Fairview TWP

· Latitude: 41.5861003 / 41° 35’ 10” N

· Longitude: -95.3208320 / 95° 19’ 15” W

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FIRST POSTED: February 05, 2011

LAST UPDATED: March 01, 2011

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