I’ve been looking for county information for a new project (great, but shouldn’t you be working on your old ones? -Ed.) and found that the Iowa Association of Counties digitized a book with a few paragraphs and important dates in each county’s early history. (The “%20″s in the link are spaces. Bad HTML form.) There is also a PDF version of the whole book, published in 1992.
There are some neat little gems in there. I was amused by this one from Ringgold County: “Then in 1884 a large brick building was completed from bricks made and fired in this county. … Inferior brick and lack of drain tiles caused such large cracks that it was condemned as unsafe in 1921.”
And Wright County: “In an 1890 election the voters approved the building of a new courthouse and jail. When the results were released to the public there was much celebrating done. Some of the residents of Clarion were so excited that they soaked the jail in oil and set it on fire.”