This excerpt of Missouri football’s 1897 schedule from the 2017 football records book shows one of two games played at Amity College. The meeting appears to be part of a barnstorming tour; the Tigers’ game in College Springs comes three days after taking on the Nebraska Bugeaters, and a day after a game in Tarkio, only 26 miles away.
It may be hard to believe, but there was a college in College Springs. Amity College, “founded as a Wesleyan Methodist school and afterward chartered as an undenominational college,” started in the mid-1850s, at the same time Page County was being settled. The town of Amity was renamed College Springs in 1879.
The college closed in 1913, and bricks from the building were used in construction of the consolidated school at College Springs in 1917. As far as I know, it’s the only school building in Iowa with a clock tower.
College Springs was included in the original Iowa highway system in 1920. IA 84 was a spur route running north and east to IA 18 (future US 71). Fifteen years later, as part of the Second Great Commissioning, IA 333 was created in the southwestern corner of Page County, running from US 59 to Northboro. Over the next decade, 333 would be extended eastward to IA 208 (now M48) just north of Blanchard, westward to US 275 in Fremont County, and finally, through College Springs to US 71, superseding IA 84.
And then things start to get weird.
Sources:
- Batesel, Paul. “Lost Colleges: Amity College” [Online], 2013.
- Kershaw, W.L. History of Page County, Iowa. Chicago, IL: The S.J. Clarke Publishing Co., 1909.
- Van Nostrand, John. “100 years and many more memories,” Clarinda Herald-Journal, Feb. 23, 2017.