Marshall County's Small Towns: Still on Septic

Nearly every small incorporated town in Marshall County outside Marshalltown itself traces back to the same narrow window of railroad expansion: Gilman started in 1870 after the Central Railroad of Iowa came through, Liscomb was platted in 1869 and named for an Iowa Central Railroad official, Haverhill was formally platted in 1882 by the Chicago, Milwaukee and St. Paul Railway, and Rhodes was renamed in 1883 after the family that donated land for that same railroad's depot. These towns were built to serve a rail line, not sized around a future municipal sewer system, and most never grew past a few hundred residents, which means none of them ever built the tax base to justify one. That's the direct reason why, more than a century later, essentially every property in Gilman, Haverhill, Laurel, Liscomb, Rhodes, St. Anthony, Clemons, and Ferguson still runs on a private septic system rather than city sewer, and why we route regular service through all of them on the same schedule as Marshalltown itself.