(31) Decatur County 4.15.2023

April 15, 2023

(31) Decatur County 4.15.2023

We started Decatur County off in Weldon. Weldon has a unique main street with a one-way loop around a grassy boulevard. It’s a mix of buildings, a church, and houses that border the loop. In our county trips, we’ve seen many different kinds of main streets; this is the first one we’ve seen with this kind of one-way loop style. Although Weldon is quite small and doesn’t have many attractions, this little loop was rather neat to see.

We did drive by the “Weldon Country Club”—as posted on the side of the "building"—not sure if this is an actual country club or not, but definitely interesting :D

We also found the old school building with the original bell in-tact on the top, which is rare to see, but we are pretty sure this is privately owned now and maybe someone’s house by the looks of it—kind of cool 😊

There is also a Weldon Depot Museum. We’re not sure if it ever opens or has any kind of hours because we hadn’t found anything about it in our research on Decatur County.

We made our way to LeRoy which is tied for the smallest incorporated town in Iowa. It must be pretty small because we LeRoy City Hall which you can see is quite small, and the sign on the door shows the population is only 34! It might be even smaller at this point because the last posted city council meeting was in 2021.

Right next to the city hall though was this super sweet park with the largest array of teeter totters we have ever seen!

Next up was Garden Grove which is most famous for its Mormon Trail history, but we’ll get to that in just a bit. First, we made sure to stop and see two famous houses in Garden Grove: the C.S. Stearns House built in 1885 in the Queen Anne style and the J.J. McClung House, built in 1909 in the classical colonial style.

There was also this random “Garden Grove Jail” in the middle of a field off of the main street. We’re assuming this was the original Garden Grove Jail but probably wasn’t in this exact location 😊

We then visited the location of an important Mormon Trail settlement. This was a main stopping point for the Mormon trek as they made their way out west to Colorado and Utah. There is a marking for a Mormon Cemetery and plot lines to show how big the cabins were that they built. It must have been dreary as many of the original Garden Grove settlers did not make it past this point.

We made our way to Leon which holds the beautiful courthouse original from 1907. The clock tower is gorgeous and there are murals on the inside, but since this was a Saturday, we weren’t able to get in to see them.

We did find another relic though of by-gone eras in this county as well!

We also made a stop at the public library which is an original Carnegie library. The kids’ area in the library basement was so fun- such a good set for kids- we enjoyed reading some books together!

We went just a little west down the road from Leon to stop in Decatur City to go to the Dinky Diner, because honestly, how could we pass this up?! 😊 You know how they say don’t judge a book by its cover, we could say the same about the Dinky Diner and its food- the food was SO good, we would definitely come back just for this! If you’re still feeling hesitant, there is the Barnyard Restaurant across the road, but honestly, we would definitely recommend the Dinky Diner!

Our last stop in Decatur County was Lamoni. We started Lamoni off by touring Liberty Hall—this was the house of Joseph Smith III, the son of Joseph Smith Junior, the founder of the Ladder Day Saints. This was one of the best tours we have been on in all of our county trips so far. And that’s not saying any of our other tours have been bad because we’ve had some really good ones, but the man who led our tour was so knowledgeable and also did a great job engaging the kids and sharing information that he knew they would enjoy learning and tried to make it as interactive as he could for them. They got to play the pump organ, see how an original wash basin works, and he even pulled out this original bureau bed and folded up the bath tub for us, and let the kids play notes on these original chimes that Joseph Smith III used to wake his children up in the morning.

It was just a really neat tour, and we learned a ton about the life and family of Joseph Smith III which we just didn’t know anything about prior to our tour! There were also just a lot of original pictures and furniture from the house and their family which is always so neat in these old houses as this one was dated to 1881.

The Spurrier School which was originally located about a mile away was relocated to the Liberty Hall land so we also got to view that and learn some of the history of the school house as well!

We then went to the main street area of Lamoni, saw some neat murals and went shopping at 2 local antique stores. There is also an original theatre, the Lamoni Coliseum.

We couldn’t leave Lamoni without doing a little driving tour of Graceland University and stepped inside to see the artwork in the Shaw Gallery.

We also made a stop at the Amish Country Store Iowa Welcome Center and went south of town to the State Line Bakery & Country Store. The Amish Country Store and Iowa Welcome Center had a ton of locally Iowa-made goods but also just some other neat home items. There’s also a Maid Rite Diner attached, but we weren’t quite hungry enough yet to eat there. We did buy a fresh-baked pie and a few other goodies at the State Line Bakery & Country Store to take home though!