The Anamosa Hatching House

By Vance Polton

I thought today we would travel back to October 1874 and take a little trip across the Wapsi River to visit the new Hatching House just upriver of Anamosa.   Attached is a poster I made of a 1885 etching of the Anamosa Hatching House grounds with details of the buildings and grounds at that time. The poster size allows you to really zoom in on the etching for the details.  The other document I copied from a newspaper article that originally came out in the October 22, 1874 edition of the Anamosa Eureka newspaper which you can use with your imagination and take a ferry across the Wapsie River with B F Shaw and George Slocum and visit the Hatching House.  

I would have liked to actually attached the scan of the original article as it was seen in the newspaper but a scan of a 150 year newspaper isn't the easiest to read so I retyped it but also took the option to add a few clarifiers ( in red font) to help clarify a few things that the reporter took for granted that the reader would know. The reporter goes into great detail to describe the hatching house and grounds because back then photographs in newspapers were very rare and nearly unheard of. It wasn't until WW I that the use of photographs became common. 

So let's take a little trip back and time and wait for the Ferry to get over to the north bank of the Wapsie River and take us over to the newly built Anamosa Hatching House on the south side of the river.