Walcott

History

Walcott was incorporated on July 10, 1894. The City of Walcott was originally platted in 1854. The first passenger train route west of the Mississippi River began service in 1855 and helped Walcott grow. William Walcott, who was a director of Chicago and Rock Island Railroad, donated $500 in 1855 for the construction of a school building, with the stipulation that the fledgling town along the railroad tracks near Davenport be named after him. Long before Walcott was even a vision to William Walcott, it was a great expanse of open prairie inhabited by the Kaskaskia people. The Kaskaskias were later driven out of the Quad Cities area by the renegade Meskwaki tribe. This tribe, a splinter of the Canadian Iroquois, was America's largest Indian nation. In 1857, much of the Walcott land was sold for as low as 75 cents an acre, enabling many German and Scotch-Irish immigrants to settle in the area. Many of the Scotch-Irish worked for the railroad builders and settled on the farmland south and west of the town. While they contributed much to the early development of Walcott, circa 1871 they began to move farther west. Most of the German settlers were from Schleswig-Holstein in northern Germany, and some came from eastern and southern Germany. By 1910, nearly 90 percent of the farmland in Scott County was owned by German immigrants or their descendants. A petition for incorporation was signed and presented to Judge C.M. Waterman of the District Court at Davenport on June 5, 1894. At that time, the total population was 354. The election was held on July 7, 1894, and of the 81 votes cast, 54 were in favor of the incorporation. The result of the election was approved and filed by the District Court on July 14, 1894. Long before most small towns thought of supplying their…

Geography

According to the United States Census Bureau, the city has a total area of , of which is land and is water.

Race & ethnicity