White settlers began moving into western Page County in 1846, and by 1869 the area had five settlements Binn’s Grove (1855), Tarkio City (1859), Franklin Grove (1860), Union Grove (1861) and Wellsburg (1869). Settlements were sparse, so when J.E. Noble settled just southwest of modern Shenandoah in 1870, he had to travel to Tarkio to pick up his mail and to Clarinda to trade.

The coming of the railroads was the largest single event that affected the development of western Page County. The 1870s was opened and closed by the construction of two railroad lines in August 1870 the Burlington & Missouri River Railroad Company (B&M) began operation, and in October 1879 the Council Bluffs & St. Louis Railway (CB&StL) opened for traffic.

The railroads enabled large numbers of settlers to pour into the area. Pioneers from the eastern U.S. and Swedish immigrants quickly boosted western Page County’s population. Swedish settlement here was largely due to Rev. Bengt Magnus Halland, a Swedish Lutheran minister who worked as a land agent for the B&M in the 1870s. At the end of 1870s, the CB&StL railroad between Blanchard and Imogene brought a number of Irish immigrant railroad laborers to the new town of Bingham, established in 1879. Our country’s eight western townships grew from a population of 1477 in 1869 to 9141 in 1880.

The railroads developed 5 new towns during the 1870’s. The first residents of the new towns were railroad workers, and the railroad companies drafted the first town plats. The towns of Shenandoah and Essex followed this pattern. The first resident of Essex, Robert Bruce Wood, came with his wife in spring 1870 to serve as the first station agent for the B&M. Wood built the town’s first house, and he opened the first post office (which consisted of a cigar box in his home) in July 1870. In 1879 the new towns of Bingham, Coin, and Blanchard were established by the CB&StL railroad along their line.

The railroads made the shipping all sorts of supplies easier, too. By 1872 Essex had become a major livestock and grain shipping point on the B&M, and in 1879 Essex’s L.R. Hastings & Sons imported the first West Scotch Highland cattle to America via the railroad. The birth of the nursery industry can be found in this decade and is partly due to the ease of shipping by train. In 1870 D.S. Lake set out the first fruit trees at his Shenandoah Nursery. By 1875 N.B. Easton was operating a nursery east of Snow Hill. Mount Arbor Nurseries was established in 1875 near Shenandoah, and in 1877 a young boy named Henry Field sold his first seed packets from his home south of that town.

During this decade 3 new towns grew up in western Page County away from the rail lines. Founded in 1869, Nyman grew out of the earlier Binn’s Grove settlement and was populated by Swedish immigrants from Illinois. Snow Hill formed in 1872 around a flourmill, and Walkerville was founded in 1874 as a trade center for farmers.

Unfortunately the coming of the railroads led to the death of several towns in our area during the 1870’s. Binn Grove had been a stagecoach station, and it disappeared from the map as soon as trains replaced stages. When CB&StL established Coin a mile south of Snow Hill and platted Blanchard two miles southeast of Wellsburg, the post offices, businesses and people in the original settlements moved to the new railroad town.