Each edition grades its towns against each other only.
Below: old-book passages.
The Fertile post office opened in 1881, the earliest record of the town by name.
Read from the archive, the National Register and the record. The page puts what stands out first.
The first neighbors to add old photos shape how Fertile’s history is told.
From Wikipedia’s history of Fertile.
A post office called Fertile has been in operation since 1881. The city was named after Fertile, Iowa, the former home of a share of the first settlers.
Text from Wikipedia, licensed CC BY-SA 4.0.
Passages that mention Fertile, cut from the printed page as they were published.
Andrew K. Holen, who lives on a fine farm in Section 22, Liberty township, four and a half miles west of the village of Fertile, came to this county in 1887, when he was twenty-six years of age, with just $100 in money and no other property, and he now owns 400 acres of highly improved and well cultivated land, has stock in the Fertile Co-operative Creamery and the Farmers State Bank of Fertile, and is one of the
Text read by machine from the scan; it may contain errors.
This useful citizen of Polk county and resident of the village of Fertile for years met the requirements of duty as an industrious and successful home-steader and farmer, redeeming a tract of virgin land from the wilderness and making it fruitful with the products of systematic cultivation, and he is now engaged in ministering to the comfort and general welfare of a large number of persons as the United States mail
Text read by machine from the scan; it may contain errors.Scans and text from the Internet Archive. Books published in 1930 or earlier, which are in the public domain.
Woven from the archive, old maps, post office records, the National Register and the people born here.
Writers, athletes, leaders and more, ranked by how widely they’re known.
Fertile’s post office has been open since 1881.
US Post Offices dataset (Blevins & Helbock, CC0). Places and cemeteries from the USGS Geographic Names Information System (2021).
The Fertile post office opened in 1881, the earliest record of the town by name (U.S. post office records).
What the archives can’t tell you, neighbors can.
Founding dates: Wikidata, Wikipedia, the U.S. post office records of Blevins & Helbock (CC0) and the Census. Homes by year built: Census ACS 2020–24. National Register of Historic Places: National Park Service (list of May 22, 2026). Old photos, postcards and papers: Wikimedia Commons, the Library of Congress and other public archives, credited on each item’s page. Maps: U.S. Geological Survey historical topographic maps (via Esri) and Sanborn fire-insurance maps (Library of Congress). History text and census tables: Wikipedia (CC BY-SA 4.0). Places that used to be: USGS Geographic Names Information System (2021). How TownRatings grades history →
From Wikimedia Commons (6), Wikipedia, Wikidata and Wikipedia for famous people, the US Post Offices dataset (Blevins & Helbock), the USGS Geographic Names Information System and old county and town histories (Internet Archive). Archive images are copied here with their credits and licenses, shown on each photo’s page. Refreshed monthly.
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