October 12, 2021: Two intersections in Walker, in northern Linn County.
Ely has streets named Dows, Rowley, Traer, and Walker. Walker has streets named Dows, Ely, Greene, Rowley, and Traer. Mount Auburn has a Traer Street. Rowley has a (very short) Ely Street. Greene has sequential streets named Ely, Dow (no S), Traer, and Rowley. Only Dows and Traer do not have streets named for these other towns. (Traer has a Green, but not a Greene.)
What these towns all have in common is being stations on the Burlington, Cedar Rapids & Minnesota Railroad, which lasted less than 20 years before being folded into the Burlington, Cedar Rapids & Northern. In 1903 the BCR&N became part of the Chicago, Rock Island & Pacific.
Here’s an excerpt from the Traer Clipper (Volume 1, No. 25) on June 19, 1874:
George Greene, the namesake of Greene, is a notable figure in Iowa history* before his time with the railroad: He was a territorial legislator, one of Iowa’s first state supreme court justices, and a founder and surveyor of Cedar Rapids. (That means he’s also to blame for the street grid. Nobody’s perfect.)
Ely’s sesquicentennial celebration is this weekend; Traer’s is one year from now.