SIXTEENTH AVENUE BRIDGE, CEDAR RAPIDS
FIRST STREET, CORNER SECOND AVENUE, IN 1869
The city water works are owned by the city of Cedar Rapids, and are managed by three trustees appointed by the council. The plant was purchased from the water company July 1, 1903, at an agreed price of $473,000. Of this amount, $23,000 was paid in cash and the remainder was put in the form of bonds. In the past six years $158,000 of these bonds have been retired, leaving a net indebtedness against the water plant of $315,000. The net earnings of the plant from July 1, 1903, to July 1, 1908, were $79,952.30, and for the year ending July 1, 1909, were almost $25,000. In addition the city gets free hydrant rental and fire protection. A conservative inventory of the water plant will show a valuation of well over $600,000 at the present time. The water is taken from large wells on an island in the Cedar river belonging to the city and located some distance above the C. & N. W. bridge. It is filtered by the Jewell system and is forced through the mains by large pumps. There are three of these pumps in use, one of two million gallons daily capacity, one of three million gallons capacity and one of five million gallons capacity. The necessary power is supplied by two water tube boilers of 350 horsepower each, and three tubular boilers of 70 horsepower each. The filter system has a capacity of three million gallons per day, and an additional reservoir for the filter is now under construction. There are at the present time 390 fire hydrants and an excellent and satisfactory fire pressure is maintained for all fire alarms. A loop of twelve-inch mains encircles the business district and this loop is supplied by a twenty-inch main direct from the pumps, giving the business section a fire protection unexcelled by that of any city in the west.
THE RAILWAYS
Up to 1849 the village of Cedar Rapids had no formal organization. It was simply a township. But the legislature of 1849 granted a town charter and for the next decade the community throve apace. It was during this period of years that Cedar Rapids strove for, and secured, its first line of railway. In the fifties the railway lines to the west left the bank of the Mississippi and pushed their way out into the fertile prairies of Iowa. Among these lines was one known as the Chicago, Iowa and Nebraska, and its purpose was to construct a line of railway from Clinton, across Iowa, to some point on the Missouri river.
Among Cedar Rapids men who were prominently identified with the enterprise and were on the board of directors were John Weare, Jr., William Greene, H. G. Angle and S. C. Bever. The company was organized in 1856, but it was not until June, 1859, that the line was completed from Clinton to Cedar Rapids, a distance of a little over eighty miles, and train service established between the two towns.