Although you may not know it today, in 1900 Kurtz was a booming little town.
Named after Colonel Harry Kurtz, an attorney for the Evansville & Richmond or E & R Railroad who was instrumental in steering the rail lines through Owen and Salt Creek Townships, the town was created from “Bill Bowers’ smoke house, stable and other outhouses usually bound on well-regulated farms,” according to an 1889 Brownstown Banner article.
When Houston timberman Thomas Brown, county auditor Joel H. Matlock of Brownstown, and W.L. Boyatt — a banker, bookstore owner, mason and pension attorney from Brownstown — learned that the railroad would run through northwestern Jackson County, they formed an investment firm called the Kurtz Town Co.
The very first mention of Kurtz appeared in 1889 when the developers launched a marketing campaign of notices in the Banner promising investors that “you can buy lots at your own prices … lots will double in value at Kurtz in a few months.”
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The company also affixed posters in surrounding communities, promoting the sale of “400 town lots” at a June picnic and auction.
On June 6, 1889, the first Kurtz community news column appeared in the Banner, lending legitimacy as a bonified town.
A week later, citizens brought their picnic baskets to the site as lots were auctioned off. Not everyone was optimistic about the booming city. The Freetown correspondent referred disparagingly to Kurtz as “the new frog pond city, that is to be.”
In July 1889, a Clearspring correspondent known as Dew Drop wrote that Kurtz “is a beautiful little village awaiting the houses and inhabitants.” But the June sale didn’t net the results the developers expected. The Kurtz Town Co. held a second auction in October, this time offering credit terms. By December 1889, Thomas Callahan opened a saloon on Cleveland Street.
A May 1890 Banner article described Kurtz as “a town of some forty buildings and over one hundred inhabitants. Ten months ago, there was nothing but beautiful fields and groves where the town now is.”
The same year, Kurtz received a post office and the following year, a train ticket agency. The town expanded with businesses and jobs linked to the railroad — timber, transportation, blacksmith shop, retail shops, barber shop, butcher shop, general store, hotel and saloon, among others. In 1898, the first two medical doctors arrived: Dr. C. E. Pearson and H.L. Hamilton.
In April 1899, Kurtz’s three hotels were always full, and people have to be offloaded to private houses. Crossties were coming in by the thousands from Jackson and Brown Counties to be shipped away on the railroad. Kurtz exported apples, eggs, timber, cross ties and hogs. Merchants traded in hides and tan bark.
By 1900, Kurtz had 400 inhabitants, graveled sidewalks, sorghum factory, “four general stores, one drug store, three hotels, one barber shop, one harness shop, restaurant, Masonic Order, hoop shop, planning mill [sic], undertaking establishment, feed and livery stable, shoe shop, grist mill, spoke factory, millinery shop, physician, church, a graded school, nice depot with latest improvements, good railway facilities, etc.”
And the town was still growing.
Davis, who was born in Seymour and graduated from Brownstown Central, currently lives in Tegucigalpa, Honduras and works for a U.S. government contractor on school-based violence prevention. He is the author of “The Middle East for Dummies” and a number of non-fiction articles, including a Letter to the Editor published Jan. 22, 2003, in the Tribune titled “The Tale of Two Teachers and a Dropout.” Send comments to [email protected].