Our Story
From the beginning
Woodbine, Iowa Harrison County – 1866
The Anna and Lorenzo Butler Family were one of the first settlers to Boyer Township, Harrison County, Iowa in 1849. Butler ran a small store along the banks of the Boyer River. The official Post Office was in the store and Anna was the Postmistress.
Homesick and remembering the flowering vine that clambered around the door and windows of her English home, she chose the name “Woodbine.” By 1862, a sawmill and corn cracker were erected about a half mile east of the present town, and a woolen mill was operating. After the Civil War, a flour mill was built along the Boyer River. Woodbine was platted in 1866, the same year Chicago Northwestern Railroad started regular runs from Cedar Falls to Council Bluffs.
The Historic Lincoln Highway 1921
The original transcontinental Lincoln Highway (now known as US Hwy 30) runs through Woodbine on the way from New York to San Francisco. Woodbine’s brick streets were constructed in the summer of 1921.
Lincolnway’s eleven blocks are a main thoroughfare through Woodbine. . . and the longest remaining original brick portion in Iowa. Woodbine’s Lincolnway resides on the National Register of Historic Places along with the Woodbine Carnegie Library and Woodbine’s downtown, the Brick Street Historic District. Other places of interest include White’s Floral Garden, the Zell Millard Historic Preservation Park includes Merry Brook Rural School Museum, Harrison County Genealogy, the original Depot and a CNW caboose, as well as a renovated 1928 canopy gas station serving as the Main Street office, Welcome Center, and Community Meeting Room. Lincoln Highway enthusiasts and visitors come through each year to discover the beauty and eccentricities of “old road.”
