Ely Train Depot

Below are photos of the Ely train depot that once existed off Dows Street.

Also below are some memories of the train depot by Ely resident John Prastka. Prastka was born in 1885 in Oxford Junction but grew up in Ely.  Before the Ely Centennial in 1972 he hand-wrote his memories of early Ely.  He gave his writing to the Ely Legion, and they are now part of  the Ely Community History Society collections. Prastka died June 1, 1975 at the age of 89.

Click each photo to enlarge it.

John Prastka writes ...
There was the depot.  The agent lived on the second story with his family, and it was of a color like clay and into the paint fine sand was blown so the sparks from the engines would not set it afire.  It had a big pot bellied cast iron soft coal stove in the comfy waiting room from which you could purchase your ticket through a window waist high. 

In the telegraph room was a smaller cast iron stove, and the doors had to be kept open to help knock down the draft and I had seen them red hot in winter at times.  The room often was full of acrid gassy smoke that could make you cough gasping for fresh air.  There were built in benches to the south and west.  The entrance door faced the tracks to the east.  On the ends of this depot were white letters “ELY”.  A long ladder stood next to the north end and held in place by tilting the ladder and pushing it up straight.  The entrance to the second floor was by the outside steps.  The freight room with a pair of scales was to the north and a door at both south and east.  We kids often weighed ourselves there on the scales and looking somewhat wishfully at the candy buckets and boxes, also the sacks of peanuts.  The smell was quite pleasant there.

About 1911, looking west.

The plank platform was on blocks of timber to make it easier for people to board the passenger cars and this platform was all around the depot and extended 40 or 50 feet each way from the front part of the depot where the windows were built out so the telegrapher could see both down the tracks and also up.

A double latrine of same color was set up a little to the west of the depot, men to the west and ladies to the east with the lettering over the doors.

At this time no homes were as yet built east of the tracks, which consisted of the main line. A two switch tracks, and there was also a switch track to the west of the depot.  Just a few rods north from the depot was a wooden water tank where the engines refilled the water tanks of the engine.  The coal was in the center easy to get at by the fireman with his big scoop.

Looking toward Dows Street.

I forgot to write that down near the creamery [Note: where the fire station is now located] was the section house where the hand car and the dumpy [?] were housed and under lock and key, and a short way across the tracks was a tall windmill that pumped the water for the water tank.  The land sloped towards Willow Creek and they need not go so deep to strike water there as it was maybe 8 feet lower than the tracks.  Many were the times us kids climbed to this platform to take a look around and our folks would have worried about us for fear we’d fall, and it is really dangerous to get up on these small platforms as gusts of winds could topple you off.  We were sure-footed however.

For us kids the depot was a sort of hangout, just to see the trains and passenger ones also, come and go.  We noted the styles of cars, caboose and engine types, some had only 4 drive wheels and later came these with 6 and on and on to bigger models, as time passed.

At this time I must write that those engineers who laid out the roadway Ely to Cedar Rapids had committed a grave error and had chosen a bad route north of Ely and had a big incline and a S curve also and many a freight got stuck there.  We kids often would jump off easy there, and of course had to walk back and if barefooted we had to use the dusty road. 

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I ran across this account of a train wreck in Ely that happened in December 1887.

 WRECKED IN A SNOW DRIFT.
https://www.gendisasters.com/iowa/3704/ely%2C-ia-train-wreck%2C-dec-1887

A Collision Which Barely Comes Off Without Loss of Life.

MINNEAPOLIS, Minn., Dec. 30.----The cannonball express on the Albert Lea route, leaving Chicago at 12:05 p.m., was wrecked at Ely, Ia., twelve miles from Cedar Rapids, at 2:30 a.m. yesterday. A heavy drift of snow stopped the train at Ely, and while the track was being cleared, a heavy freight engine with a caboose attached, ran into the rear of the buffet coach, telescoping it and sending the second or rear sleeper into the first as far as the toilet room and turning over the stove.

By prompt action of the passengers and conductor the fire was put out before doing any damage. The other coaches were jammed together, and the second engine converted into a wreck. The freight engine and buffet car were demolished. Every coach was full of passengers and all were jarred and bruised, three seriously, but none fatally. A driving snow storm was in progress, and the passengers thrown out of the sleepers in their night clothing suffered from severe cold. The train left Ely fifteen hours late. The names of the injured are not known here.

The Ohio Democrat, New Philadelphia, OH 5 Jan 1888

 

 

CSPS Hall

 

Click the photo to enlarge it.

Above is a photo of the C.S.P.S. Lodge Hall that used to stand on the east side of Walker Street between Dows Street and Traer Street in Ely.  Č.S.P.S. stands for "Česko-Slovenský Podporující Spolek" (Czech-Slovak Protective Society).  Many dances & events were held in this hall in the past.

Below are memories of the CSPS Hall written by John Prastka.  Prastka (also Praska) was born in 1885 in Oxford Junction but grew up in Ely.  Preceding the Ely Centennial in 1972 he hand-wrote his memories of early Ely, which is now part of the collections at the Ely Community History Society archive.  

JOHN PRASTKA WRITES ...

The CSPS Hall had a wooded lot nearby with benches under the trees and that was quite close to the center of town.  Diagonally to the northwest was just about as much open space under trees that would have been nice for a band stand but Ely as yet had no band.  

At the CSPS Hall the main picnic was July 4th and usually the New Year’s Eve dance, which lasted all night, where as July 4th it started at noon and dancing kept up till daylight the 5th.  Close to the hall some booths were set up like a roulette wheel with numbers on it and after so many paddles were sold each having 3 numbers on the paddle, then this wheel was given a spin and with a strip of leather passing over wood pegs it stopped at a certain number and if you held that number, after holding your breath, you got a choice of some gadget from the stand.  Of course, like all wheels of chance, they were rigged to enrich the operators.

There was usually on the grounds some man from Cedar Rapids who had a cane rack, and sold you so many rings for lets say a dime or 15 cents and you could try your luck to throw the ring to lasso a cane.  Colored rubber balloons were sold at the same stand.  Someone sold hot peanuts and popcorn. 

At the hall at about midnight the kitchen had kettles like a wash boiler into which were placed bologna and wieners, and there was rye bread cut up to go with it, and that was the real stuff, none made so good today.  The stand in the hall sold lemonade with cut up lemons floating in tubs and sugared up, and one could buy it if he preferred it instead of beer.  The girls usually asked for it and you could buy oranges, also paper sacks of hard sugar candy.  But beer was sold mostly, and the floor had to be swept by a broad push brush occasionally as it got dusty from the mud on the men's shoes. 

Every so often glasses of beer were carried across the whole length of the dance floor to water up the thirsty band musicians, who got dry quite often.  Heavy candles were set in holders so each musician could read the sheet music, and when these candles burned low to short stubs, it was a sign that it was close to daylight, especially July 4th.  Not so on New Year’s Eve. 

Not all the farmer boys danced even though they brought their guests or maybe even sweethearts but they stood 1/3 way from the bar just looking at the dancers.  Often when their sweethearts were nestling too close on some gay town blade, they got jealous and could start a fight.  Hardly a dance took place without some fights. 

Only a few of us are alive who could describe these dances, plays of home talent, medicine shows that were held there at times, and maybe it is just as well that I took over this job.

Besides the dances that were held at this old dance and lodge meeting place. there were the home talent plays given say 3 or 4 during the cold quiet winter season.  Small groups of Bohemian players were invited by the lodge members who loaned them the hall and these came to replay what was shown in the large CSPS Hall on 3rd Street SE in Cedar Rapids.  These were the days before radios, television sets in color, the phonograph and you had only traveling minstrels, Chautauqua plays, church plays and programs and revival church meetings that stirred the people up when they got in some rut and did not attend church steady enough and would fall back. 

The Ely people were hungry for some sort of recreation and so the CSPS Hall was used to give plays with a very small charge for admittance to pay for light, heat and the books that had to be bought or rented from which plays were written first in long hand for each player to memorize for the final night and there was usually only one rehearsal, which was not hardly enough as many actors didn’t know their parts making it hard for those who did.  Some were clever enough to supply their own words and one never did know his right words.  There was old Frank Sladek (the tiling man) and he loved to ad lib.  Each play had a concealed person who spoke the words softly so they could get their bearings from chapter to chapter.  There usually was a leading man, also a leading woman who had the heavier parts in a drama being a comic one or a serious one.  My sister had some leading parts and got used to the stage and did not panic or get stage-fright.  She usually had the tedious job of writing parts for the other actors and actresses, and many were the long nights by a poor kerosene lamp was this job done.

Cedar Rapids had some quite talented Bohemian players and many from Ely went to the Cedar Rapids CSPS Hall to see plays, often in the dead of winter in dark evenings.  Mr. Joe Denk would take out the gasoline powered section car and hitch – it is the dumpy over which planks were laid to seat a half dozen women and men and a 9 mile trip to Cedar Rapids was undertaken with chances of getting hit by some train, but worse for they sat in a heated room (for the play) and then got numb and cold going home so it was dangerous to hold on.  They were that hung up for to see a play.

Looking down Walker Street toward Dows Street, C.S.P.S. building on the left.

The Ely Fire Department burned the CSPS Hall,
which was in great disrepair, as a practice fire in 1996.

 
Also see a newer post showing a line-drawing of the CSPS Hall in Ely.

Joseph Woitishek & Jan Hanus, Ely merchants

John Prastka was born in 1885 in Oxford Junction but grew up in Ely.  Preceding the Ely Centennial in 1972 he hand-wrote his memories of early Ely.  He gave his writing to the Ely Legion, and they are now part of our collections.  He knew Joseph. Woitishek because his brother clerked for him in his store, which is now the building that houses the Post Office in Ely.

Following are a couple descriptions of early people in Ely.

JOSEPH WOITISHEK (Vojtisek in Czech)  

Caption: Joseph Woitishek was born in Moravia in 1837.
In 1853 he and his family arrived in Galveston, Texas and made their
way up the Mississippi, coming to Hoosier Grove (now Ely) in 1854, where
he bought land and farmed. Later he operated a general store
and was involved in the grain trade.

Mr. Prastka writes:
“Mr. Joseph Woitisek, Ely’s foremost financial success and richest person and merchant, had a lingo so much different than most people.  He wore a full beard about like Santa Claus is pictured, only his hair and beard were black or dark brown.  His talk was fanciful and he used so many phrases which differed from what an ordinary person ever uses.  He was not direct and to the point.  He beat about the bush.  .....such as “Yes, Mr. so and so, it could be just like this and how could it be otherwise?”  “For instance” was used a lot, also “that is”.  There were many fanciful words mixed and interwoven between his talk.  He also used them in his Bohemian languge.   “Ku prikadu totish” – “That is of course” was used the most.  He was nick-named by the Bohemians “Old Totish”.  ................The story goes on to tell about how Woitishek played checkers and who he played them with ...   "Woitishek lived in the house behind the store and “raised many different colored chickens and delighted in feeding them.  He would call out names he had for each one and throw the hen a few kernels of corn off the palm of his hand, and the chickens gathered all around him.

See a newer blog post about Joseph - a translation of a history about him from a publication in the Czech language.

  JAN HANUS

An early ad for Jan Hanus Undertaking, Ely, Iowa.

Mr. Prastka writes:  “Mr. Hanus was an undertaker who wore chin whiskers, a small man in stature and he loved his daily nip of brandy at the saloons – a very restless type to the point of being nervous.  He had long waits between funerals and so had to raise a hog or two and kept many chickens in his barn yard.  He was good at carving walnut and finishing it, making nice bureaus and trunks, etc.  I think when Ely was new he made caskets with nice handles on and lined the inside.  (John Prastka used to hang around with a Hanus son, and tells of helping to clean the hearse before funerals.)  He also says, “When I was reported at Ely as dead at the time I got fever in the Navy, Mr. Hanus made a few trips to the train depot to see if I’d arrived there as a corpse!”  However, John was very much alive.

A copy of a translation of the Hanus ad from
 the Solon Economy newspaper, about 1895