1946 Map of Brookfield

About this map

The town of Linneus sits at the heart of this Linn County landscape, serving as a hub for a dense network of rural one-room schoolhouses and country churches in the years following the war. To the south, the industrial and transport center of Brookfield is anchored by the Chicago Burlington and Quincy railroad, which runs through Laclede and across the lowland drainage of Muddy Creek. The rural character of the era is defined by the high density of namesake schools like Prairie Seminary Sch, Linn Center Sch, and Locust Creek Sch, many of which served as the primary social centers for outlying farming families. The western edge of the map features the early development of Pershing State Park along the banks of Locust Creek, where Parsons Ditch indicates early twentieth-century efforts to manage the local watershed for agricultural expansion.