History of Iowa From the Earliest Times to the Beginning of the Twentieth Century/3/Counties/Lyon
LYON COUNTY lies in the extreme northwest corner of the State and when first created in 1851 was named Buncombe. By act of the legislature of September 11, 1862, the name was changed to Lyon in honor of General Nathaniel Lyon who was killed at the Battle of Wilson’s Creek while in command of the Union army in 1861. The county is about thirty-five miles in length east and west and about seventeen miles wide, containing five hundred eighty-seven square miles.
The first white man who built a cabin within its limits was Daniel McLaren a hunter and trapper who lived several years near the Big Sioux River at the mouth of a creek which bears his name. In the summer of 1862 Roy McGregor, George Clark and Thomas Lockhart, three adventurous young men from Massachusetts settled on the Iowa side of the Big Sioux River and built a cabin. McGregor was killed by the Sioux Indians, Clark was drowned in March, 1863, and Lockhart, after many narrow escapes from the hostile Indians, returned to the settlements. In July, 1866, Lewis P. Hyde of Minnesota took a homestead on the Big Sioux River two miles below where Beloit stands. In 1868 Ole Nelson and his brother Halver of Clayton County, with a colony, settled near the Big Sioux River where they built a mill. During the same year Dr. H. D. Rice and wife, Emerick Irwin and H. W. Reeves settled on the Rock River near the present town of Doon. D. C. Whitehead and several others settled at Rock Rapids in 1869 and at the close of that year the population of the county was about one hundred.
The first school was taught at Rock Rapids during the winter of 1870-71 by Mrs. D. C. Whitehead and the first minister in the county was Rev. Ellef Oleson of Beloit. On the 25th of July, 1871, a weekly newspaper was established at Rock Rapids by C. E. Bristol which was named the Rock Rapids Journal. The county was organized in October of the same year by the election of the following officers: Charles E. Goetz, auditor; James H. Wagner, treasurer; D. C. Whitehead, clerk; T. W. Johnson, sheriff, and Thomas Thorson, recorder. Rock Rapids on the Rock River was made the county-seat. The Big Sioux River forms the western boundary of the county and State in this section. The Milwaukee and other railroads furnish transportation facilities.