relocate the county-seat. They selected a place twenty miles west of the Mississippi and gave it the name of Vandenburg. A log court-house and hotel were built and the court-house was used for school and church purposes. J. Wood was the first school teacher in the county. The name of the town was soon changed to De Witt and the county-seat remained there about thirty-five years, when it was removed to Clinton.
Clinton was laid out on the old site of New York in 1855 by the Iowa Land Company. The Chicago, Iowa and Nebraska Railroad Company was organized in 1856 to build a railroad from Clinton to the Missouri River. The road was pushed with energy and was the first to cross the State, reaching Council Bluffs in the fall of 1867.
The first newspaper in the county was established at Camanche in 1854 by Bates and Knapp and named the Camanche Chief. In June, 1860, Camanche was destroyed by the great tornado which swept through central Iowa that year. A railroad bridge was built across the Mississippi at Clinton and in the course of years Lyons and Clinton grew together and became one city.
COOK COUNTY was established from territory originally embraced in Demoine County, on the 7th of December, 1836. It included a portion of Scott County and other territory not clearly defined. The county was never organized and the following year the territory was divided among other counties created by act of the Legislature of December 21, 1837. The origin of the name given it is not known.
CRAWFORD COUNTY lies in the second tier east of the Missouri River and in the fifth south of the Minnesota line. It has twenty-four townships containing an area of seven hundred twenty square miles and was named for William H. Crawford who was Secretary of the Treasury from 1817 to 1825 and a candidate for President in 1824.
