Cass County was named in honor of
Lewis Cass, and was organized as a county the first Monday in March, 1853, with
County Judge Benedict and three Commissioners. Francis E. Ball was elected as
Cass County’s first Sheriff at the time of the organization of the county. He
resigned in august of 1853. The first man hanged in the county
was Mike Kelley who killed a man named Tom Curran in a saloon. A mob took Kelley
from the Town Constable and hanged him to a locust tree near Grove City.
Iranistan was the first town in Cass County, two and a half miles west of the
present town of Lewis. Lewis was started in 1853, and made the county seat.
Lewis was the county seat until 1882, when the seat was moved to Atlantic. The
Lewis courthouse is still standing, but in need of repair. The
jail sat to the southeast of the courthouse and housed twenty-two people. The
living quarters for the sheriff was a two-story house attached to the jail.
On March 15, 1932, the fifty-year-old courthouse was destroyed by fire. The
county offices moved to the Atlantic Motors Company building at second and
Poplar. In 1934, the new courthouse was opened. The jail, which
held twenty-one inmates, was on the third floor, along with the living quarters
for the sheriff. In April of 1984, a new 16 bed, ground level
jail was built on the west side of the courthouse with no living quarters for
the sheriff. The old third floor jail was renovated into office spaces.
The largest seizure of cocaine in Iowa was in Cass County on March 28, 1988.
Grizzley, the county drug dog was used for probable cause to obtain a search
warrant on the stopped California car. After the search warrant was executed,
189.2 pounds of cocaine was seized with a street value of $40,000,000.
Grizzley joined the Department in June of 1986. Grizzley was donated by the
Atlantic Elks Lodge #445. On June 30, 1989, this office was
called to the County Home, south of Atlantic to help look for a man that had
wandered off. Such a call was not out of the ordinary, however what happened at
the end of the afternoon will never be forgotten by the law officers in this
area. While a ground search was under way, Trooper Pilot Lance Dietsch and
Trooper Stan Gerling were in the patrol plane looking for the 66 year old walk
away. At 5:41 p.p., Dietsch radioed Sheriff Jones to say he would make one more
sweep before calling it quits. One minute later, Dietsch radioed that he found
the man and would circle the area. The next radio message was that the plane had
crashed. Dietsch was removed and taken to Cass County Memorial Hospital where he
was pronounced dead. Gerling was killed instantly. This was the first plane
crash involving a patrol plane that resulted in a fatality.
Rewritten article from the Atlantic News Telegraph, August 7, 1918:”Those
who leave this county always feel pride that they came from grand old Cass in
preference to the other counties of the state, and are always willing to welcome
anyone from the old home county. In everything that makes a land worth living
in, Cass County leads. Its roads are kept, its schools are as good as the best
of them, and its land is among the most valuable land in America.” That
feeling lives on today. |
