Dunkerton depot takes 'historic' trip
140-year-old train station moved to city history campus.
DUNKERTON — They met at the station — and took the station with them.
A host of preservationists and volunteers moved an 1883 train depot from a site a mile north of the city into town last week, on what is a growing history campus just north of Dunkerton High School and City Hall.
Black Hawk County sheriff’s deputies, Dunkerton police, the Dunkerton Sumner REC and MidAmerican Energy crews made the way safe for Ferneau & Sons House Moving of Marshalltown to haul the historic structure down through town to the campus, next to the Dunkerton Public Library.
It’s the most ambitious move yet for the Dunkerton Historical & Tourism Association, which has been collecting artifacts and building the campus in a little more than two years. Last July, two country schools were moved into town to the campus. A rundown of the group’s activities to date was featured in a previous article that can be found here
The goal now is to get the depot building enclosed before cold weather really sets in, said board member Julie Heiple.
The association’s making the moves with a little help from their friends.
One of those friends is Dunkerton native Wayne Magee, who has a namesake construction company in Cedar Falls. He’s devoted some of his firm’s resources to the endeavor and subcontracted the moving work to Ferneau & Sons.
“We’re donating some labor, materials all these kind of things and the coordination of the project,” including the schoolhouses, Magee said.
”It’s a pretty classy old building,” Magee said of the depot. “Its been a fun project for us. I’m obviously from Dunkerton, so it’s important to me. And I’m glad we could chip in and help them get it done.”
The depot is being donated to the association by farmland owner Joe Knebel, brother of Dan Knebel, association president, association board member Julie Heiple said.
The oldest photos the association have of the depot date back to 1910 or 1911, Heiple said. It originally was located in the community of Lincoln, about 50 miles away in Tama County southwest of Waterloo. A previous property owner, William Bandfield, moved the structure to what is now the Knebel land in the mid-1970s, about three years after the depot closed, for use as a location to sell antiques. Lincoln changed its name from Berlin in 1918 during World War I. Old photos show the depot bearing the town’s previous name.
While not originally in Dunkerton, association members have said the depot is representative of the community’s railroad heritage. In the 1880s, the Chicago Great Western Railway built a rail line extending from a rail yard in Oelwein in Fayette County southwest through Fairbank, Dunkerton, Waterloo, Lincoln and other communities enroute to Kansas City. A Lincoln resident confirmed to Heiple that’s when the depot was built.
The line is still in operation between Oelwein and Waterloo. The Waterloo-headquartered Iowa Northern Railway, with a main line between Manly and Cedar Rapids through Waterloo, now operates grain and other rail freight service between Oelwein and Waterloo through Dunkerton over a short-line subsidiary and trackage rights with the Great Western successor owner Union Pacific Railroad.
Magee’s ready to help association volunteers continue restoration efforts on the depot and schoolhouses, but added, “They’ve got some pretty talented volunteers. I’ve made some suggestions on finishes to keep it appropriate to the period” of historic buildings on site.
“But they’re a pretty sharp bunch out there,” Magee said. “They do their research, and this could be a really nice site.” Folks from Lincoln also stopped by to watch the move and at least one is donating toward the depot restoration.
Ferneau & Sons principal Kevin Ferneau suggested it’s appropriate his firm did the moving since his company is a sixth-generation business, dating practically back to when the area’s rail lines and the depot were built.
He was ably assisted by local farmer Randy Rigdon of Dunkerton, who hooked up his Waterloo-made John Deere 8300 tractor to Ferneau’s truck and pulled that, with depot mounted and in tow, out of Joe Knebel’s field. A video of that move can be seen below.
Heiple said the goal now is to get the now-relocated depot building enclosed and secured for winter so renovation can begin in earnest in the spring.
More information about the Dunkerton History & Tourism Association, its efforts and how to support them can be found at the link here.
Pat Kinney is a freelance writer and former longtime news staffer with the Waterloo-Cedar Falls Courier and, prior to that, several years at the Ames Tribune. He is currently an oral historian with the Grout Museum District in Waterloo. His “View from the Cedar Valley” column is part of “Iowa Writers Collaborative,” a collection of news and opinion writers from around the state who previously and currently work with a host of Iowa newspapers, news organizations and other publications. They are listed below. Clink on the links to check them out, subscribe for free - and, if you believe in the value of quality journalism, support this column and/or any of theirs with a paid subscription .
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