Ever Hear of Gosport, Iowa?

There are two reasons Megan Salois is my favorite meteorologist. One, because she is the most articulate and straight forward of all the Channel 13 forecasters. Two, she almost always uses pictures sent in by viewers during her weather segments. I've been lucky to have several of my photos shown by her, but I don't care whose shots she shares because I love seeing them all.

Tuesday, the first day of Spring, she had a couple of very pretty pink sunrises. One of them was from someone in Gosport, Iowa. Gosport? I even backed up the telecast and looked at it again. Where the heck is Gosport; never heard of it. I won't claim I am familiar with every town in Iowa, but I've at least heard of most of them and can usually tell you what part of the state they are in.

But not Gosport. It wasn't listed on my official Iowa Transportation Map. Maybe Google knows?  And Google did know. Gosport was once a town in Washington Township, Marion County. It was south of Knoxville, in the vicinity of the intersection of Highway 14 and County road G76. It was surveyed and platted in 1853. It once had a hotel, a post office and two churches, but by 1914, all that remained of Gosport was three houses and the two churches.
Gosport is such an unusual name. Is it pronounced go sport or gos port? And where did founders John Stipp and John Hessenflow come up with the name? Perhaps one or both of them was from South Hampshire, England where there is a town named Gosport on the Western side of Portsmouth Harbor. That particular city name is pronounced Goss-port. So now I know where Gosport, Iowa is/was and how to pronounce it.

I thought it was unusual that the person sending the photo to WHO-TV would identify as being from a town that no longer exists. Why wouldn't they just say Knoxville or Melcher-Dallas or whatever their post office address is? It would be like me saying I lived at Holt when we lived on Tuck Corner because once upon a time many, many years ago, there had been a small town with a post office named Holt across the road from our house. (Most people would not be able to say where Holt had been, though almost everyone knew where Tuck Corner was.) There must be hundreds of such 'locations' around Iowa.

There was something else that caught my eye on that Google map of Gosport, the nearby notation of the '1865 Memorial for 40 Boys'. Curiosity about that sent me on another search.

I did find that it was a small area identified as Elm Tree Memorial Park with a bronze plaque on a rock placed there by the D.A.R in 1938. This photo is credited to the Find A Grave website.
A search for 'Elm Tree Memorial Park, Marion County, Iowa' led me to the 'Iowa Civil War Monuments' web page and this information:
"This monument marks the spot under an elm tree where a number of Iowa boys assembled and marched to Davenport - then joined a variety of regiments."

The most informative piece I found about Gosport and the '40 Boys' memorial wa posted by a blogger from Lucas County. You can read his post and see more photos here.

All this just because I saw Gosport on a sunrise photo on a weather segment on a noon news program on the first day of Spring! My natural inquisitiveness takes me to some pretty interesting places - all without leaving home.