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Here’s to anticipating a 1902 Christmas

-Messenger file photo by Hans Madsen
The Webster County Courthouse, right, and The Messenger building, to its left, were both completed in 1902. City leaders were optimistic about the city’s progress, with a number of building projects completed or in progress that year.

Editor’s note: This story also appeared in the December 2018 edition of Today magazine.

Christmas time brings out a variety of things. Bright lights and festive decorations are installed in homes and stores. Retailers have popular sales and offer advice on gift-giving. Churches hold special programs designed to remind people “the reason for the season.”

This has not changed since the early days of Fort Dodge. Here’s a glimpse into Christmas Past, from the pages of The Fort Dodge Messenger on Dec. 13, 1902.

Christmas is on the way

In the Stores and in the Home Fort Dodge People Prepare for the Holiday Time

The spirit of Christmas present is already walking abroad thru out all Fort Dodge. His influence is seen in the impulse which prompts the busy business man to stop on his hurried way to and from the office to peer into store windows at rows of expressionless dolls or bright red sleds, which caused the young man with the slender pocket book to squander all his resources on fat books with morocco covers or select copies of Milton’s Paradise Lost, and which leads to the general air of mystery which pervades every well regulated home as the Christmas season draws on apace.

This illustration from 1902 shows “Miss Fort Dodge” peacefully dreaming of prosperous times. The buildings are labeled Great Western Shops, $100,000 Hotel, and Asphalt Factory. There is a park-like layout with the words “More Parks” inside.

Every one is always glad to welcome Christmas, and this year, in spite of coal strikes, and wet summers, the coming of the perennial Santa Claus will be no less welcome than before. The best holiday of the year will be rightfully observed as the crowning season of a year of unexampled prosperity for Fort Dodge.

Already store windows give indication that Christmas time is at hand. Articles of vertu are everywhere disposed where they may catch the eye of a prospective buyer. The Christmas book is to be seen in bewildering profusion, arrayed in bright colors and with illustrations which cause the hand of the observer to jingle his last dollar recklessly in his pocket.

There never was such a bewildering display of toys as there are this year. The children of Germany must have been working overtime to supply the demand of the Fort Dodge stores. Dolls of every form and fashion of beauty beam from every window. Lead soldiers thrill the martial spirit of the prospective members of Company G, and every weird and fantastic form of jumping jack which the human imagination hath ever devised strives for supremacy in the juvenile heart with rocking horses and steam engines.

For the older folk there is no lack of things both beautiful and useful. The temptation of getting Christmas presents in these days is no longer what to buy, but what not to buy …

The grocerer and the butcher are men of great importance at Christmas time. In every grocery store, fat red apples and big round oranges jostle nuts and raisins for the places of preferment in the store windows, while at the butcher shop, the fat Thanksgiving turkey isn’t in it when it comes to the Christmas goose these days, and the indications are that he will give forth an appetizing odor on many a Fort Dodge table on Christmas day.

Fort Dodge churches are generally preparing to observe the day with Christmas exercises, for the most part to be given by the children of the Sunday school. Many special musical programs are also to be given on the Sunday preceding or following Christmas.

City leaders were optimistic

• During 1902, the Chicago Great Western railroad bridge was under construction. The Messenger stated, “The Fort Dodge bridge is 2,583 feet long and is 138 feet high at the highest point. When completed, it will be a magnificent tribute to engineering skill and ingenuity.”

• The Webster County Courthouse was completed and in use. It was built in the Beaux Arts style. H. C. Koch & Co., Milwaukee, was the architectural firm and J.E. Nason, of the Northern Building Co., was the contractor. Those companies were also chosen to design and build Fort Dodge’s Carnegie Library, which was completed in 1903.

The Messenger’s assessment of the courthouse stated that “The building has now been pronounced complete, and the metamorphosis of the home of the Webster County officials, from a dark, gloomy dungeon to a modern, light and airy building, is finished.”

• Corpus Christi Academy was completed and 113 students were enrolled.

• The Fort Dodge Messenger was in its new building east of the courthouse, with a perfecting press in the basement that allowed the paper to expand from its four-page layout. The Dec. 13, 1902, issue had 24 pages.

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