It was a government in absentia, but not at all unusual. Several new Iowa counties were run from afar back then, if run has any meaning, if dropping a log or two over a creek is really building a bridge, or if a log cabin is a county courthouse.
Sioux County's first government declared such things to be their work and paid themselves royally for the labor, even if and when there was no labor. Government was a hoax, a racket, a fraud, a scam--but if you were part of it, the works turned over some significant cash.
Four guys, if history tells the story straight, voted themselves in to become our first County Commissioners. What they knew was that, sooner rather than later, hoards of easterners would descend on ground they thought theirs for the taking. Crowds were coming all right, just as they were coming to every other corner of the region.
In 1859, four entrepreneurs around a card table in some Sioux City dive got together and called themselves Sioux County Commissioners. They may have tracked up here along the Big Sioux River once or twice to have a look around; but they didn't really live here. They didn't have to, not to make money. All they had to do was build a sod hut or a lean-to, then claim to live here. Who'd 'a checked?
The key to the enterprise were "warrants." As long as couple of gamblers could smell out a willing a judge--money speaks a universal language--to authorize the graft, our four original commissioners could create some pretty significant income for doing next to nothing.
They'd issue "warrants" and put them up on the market for land speculators and others, monied interests who were out there buying what they could to get rich on the upcoming and ongoing transformation of the whole region--from buffalo to Monsanto. Banks were buying, as were fat cats from all over the east who'd pay good money to turn the wholesome profit speculating on Iowa land could bring.
It may be a little shameful to think of Sioux County government being run out of a Sioux City tavern, but that's what it was, basically: a table of card sharks, a friendly judge, and a printer to turn out some documents that looked official.
Such warrants could be peddled until the population of the county was sufficient to create taxation and thereby finance what all governments needed to do in frontier times--clear roads and build a bridge or two. Those were the jobs those poker buddies amply compensated themselves for doing, whether or not they ever got done. Who'd check anyway? The only human beings anywhere close were trappers and injuns, and most of them were on the run, given the fact that they really didn't care because the neighborhood was going to pot anyway.
One of the men kept a diary, which is somewhat helpful in determining what went on in the earliest days of white Sioux County, but what he wrote can't always be believed any more than phony census rolls filled with names of people who never did live here, relatives known to abide in, say, Connecticut.
What those Sioux City gamblers knew was that good money was going to be made for a year or two or three--but no more, enough anyway, to keep the game going. They knew the enterprise was fly-by-night, but they had wings.
Sioux County's very first chapter ended on a cold winter night when an armed militia in wooden shoes took sleighs over the snow to Calliope, on the county's western edge, and strong-armed a safe full of documents, wrested that beast out of the maw of the crooks to take it home to Jerusalem so that, I'll have you know, today the county courthouse--and it's beautiful--is right here in Orange City. You can read that story elsewhere, but listen to it here.
Why on earth am I retelling this old tale? Because one of the first Sioux County Commissioners took his share of the loot and hiked back east to Des Moines, where he'd been when he'd determined a man could turn over some considerable dough out there on the frontier.
The guy was a shrewd investor, created a huge Des Moines business, Equitable Life Insurance, then got into real money in the biggest boom industry of the time, railroads. Eventually, our governmental ancestor and his family bought and lived in Iowa's only showplace mansion, Terrance Hill, home of the governors. That man's name was Frederick Marion Hubbell.
Mr. Hubbell, who started started gaining his fortune in a sod house just outside of Hawarden (well, from a poker table in Sioux City), came a one heckuva long way from here to become one of Iowa's wealthiest financiers.
And as we speak, another Fred Hubbell, Frederick M's great-great grandson, Fred Hubbell is running for governor of the state of Iowa.
Up here in Sioux County, I don't know that anyone remembers his long-gone ancestor's checkered past. But I do know there's no county in the state more solidly Republican than the one his illustrious great-grandpa once ran.
So I'm thinking that if this Fred loses his shirt in Sioux County, which is likely, no one will blame it on his grandpa.
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