Buxton: A Black Utopia in the Heartland, An Expanded Edition

1. Muchakinock: Buxton’s Historical Antecedent

1 MUCHAKINOCK: BUXTON'S HISTORICAL ANTECEDENT N the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, thousands of people arrived in Iowa, seeking work in one of the state's nearly four hundred coal mines. Many newcomers, foreign-born and native-born alike, would find employment in small coal camps like Smoky Hollow , Foster, and Enterprise, while perhaps an, equal number would settle in larger, incorporated communities such as Seymour, Madrid, and Des Moines. Some newcomers would head for Muchakinock, an unincorporated coal town in southern Mahaska County. Founded in the late 1860s, Muchakinock was originally little more than a trading center, but in 1881 the camp and the surrounding coal mines came under new management. In that year, the Chicago and North Western Railroad purchased the property, known as the Consolidation Coal Company, and, because oflabor difficulties, began to import southern blacks as strikebreakers. Muchakinock, or Muchy as the camp was commonly known, would soon become the state's largest unincorporated coal mining community and a major settlement area for blacks. While Muchakinock was significant in its own right, it was also closely tied to the development of an even larger community. In 1900, most residents of Muchy would move to Buxton, a new camp located to the southwest in Monroe County. Because of the carryover of population and the continued presence of the Consolidation Coal Company , Muchakinock provides the historical antecedent for Buxton. The roots of the latter community go back in almost every detail to the Muchy camp. There blacks and whites lived and worked side by side, most of whom would later work in Buxton. Blacks established churches, lodges, and businesses that they later relocated in Buxton, and other ethnic groups, particularly Swedes, also settled in Muchy and later moved on to the new camp. In Muchakinock, moreover, the Consolidation Coal Company firmly established itself as the largest 13 14 BUXTON and most influential coal company in the state. So, because of the close social and economic ties between the two communities, the story of Buxton properly begins in Muchakinock. While the takeover by Consolidation in 1881 marked the most significant point in Muchakinock's history, the community had begun to attract coal miners almost a decade earlier.1 In 1873 two brothers, H. W. and W. A. McNeill, moved from Coalfield, where they had mining interests, to the Muchakinock valley. They immediately organized the Iowa Central Coal Company and in the process absorbed three local firms, the Hardin, the Mahaska, and the Southern coal companies. They also bought out the Black Diamond Mine in Monroe County in 1875 and then reorganized all their holdings into the Consolidation Coal Company. Company officials listed their capital at $500,000. Two years later they purchased the Mahaska County Coal Company, making their firm the largest coal mining operation in Mahaska County. In 1878, Muchakinock contained several hundred inhabitants. Community businesses included a general store and a drugstore. The Welch Congregational Church, organized before 1870, was the only church. A local observer noted: "The miners are generally quiet and industrious, and there is not much drinking, although the town has a saloon." Muchakinock's first railroad began operation in 1873, when the Iowa Central Railroad ran a spur line from Givin, a nearby coal camp, to Muchakinock. Consolidation sold most of its coal to railroads in northern Iowa and Minnesota.2 The expansion of Muchakinock in the 1870s was the natural outgrowth of larger, more diversified economic changes within the state of Iowa. In the decade following the Civil War, Iowa experienced extraordinary economic growth. Officially opened for white settlement in 1833, Iowa's population had soared to 1,624,615 by 1880.3 The state's rich, black soil attracted thousands of settlers from the Northeast, particularly Pennsylvania, Ohio, and Indiana, and immigrants from northern and western Europe also settled in Iowa in everincreasing numbers. In the 1850s, Iowans became caught up with railroad fever as eastern Iowa promoters worked to organize railroad companies. The Civil War temporarily disrupted railroad building, but by 1870 four railroad lines crossed the state. A few years later, as settlement pushed into northwest Iowa, most of the state lay blanketed with farms and small towns.4 Muchakinock: Buxton's Historical Antecedent 15 As a result of its rapid economic expansion, the Hawkeye State had reached an important milestone by the 1870s. Within only three decades, Iowa had passed from the first primitive...