Ogden, IA

Ogden is a Boone County city whose street plan still makes sense if you imagine a railroad surveyor choosing a stop on the prairie. The 2020 census counted 2,007 residents. The town was platted in 1866 and named for railroad builder William Butler Ogden; the depot followed in 1868. Main Street later became part of the Lincoln Highway, the early coast-to-coast automobile route, so Ogden has carried both a rail map and a road map for generations.

ATTRGarryGardner / CC BY-SA 3.0

Coal gave the town another working chapter. A mine opened north of Ogden in 1907 and eventually employed about 300 people before the local coal industry closed in 1953. The Ogden Compressor Plant arrived in 1934, while farming and the downtown retail strip kept the city going after the mine era. Battin Heritage Park preserves three Boone County buildings, and the Kate Shelley High Bridge is a short drive away. Ogden is a prairie crossroads with a railroad beginning, a highway middle chapter, and a handful of old industrial stories still folded into its edges.