The town was established in 1869 as a division point by the Burlington and Missouri River Railway Company, and by the mid-1870s a roundhouse, machine shops, and railyards had been constructed. Eventually the county seat was transferred from Afton to Creston, and in 1890 a French Second Empire/Eastlake courthouse was built. This building was replaced in 1951 by the present bland modernist courthouse. Creston was the site for two of Iowa's exotic exposition palaces, the Bluegrass palaces of 1889 and 1890. 5Both were exotic, fanciful, storybook designs which were sheathed in bluegrass. The second of these palaces at Creston was 285 feet long, 132 feet wide, and its principal tower (covered by an impossible combination of a dome and a spire) was 120 feet high.
Notes
Bruce E. Mahan, “The Blue Grass Palace.”
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