The trains that once carried passengers through Stuart, Iowa, stopped running in the 1960s. On Saturday, October 17, 2026, they come back for an hour at a time.
The White Pole Road Development Corporation is running a historic train ride out of the Stuart Rock Island Depot, sending riders from Stuart to Adair and back on Iowa Interstate Railroad passenger cars. Conductors and other organizers will be dressed for the era the cars represent, part of an effort to make the ride feel less like a modern excursion and more like a step into the past.
It is a fundraiser, and the money has a specific job. Proceeds go to the White Pole Road Scenic Byway, the 26-mile route that links Adair, Casey, Menlo, Stuart, and Dexter. Organizers want to repaint the byway's signature white poles, keep the history alive, and beautify the corridor.
The response has been strong enough that the event's own page now carries a notice: all departure times are sold out, and organizers are waiting on the railroad to confirm whether a later departure can be added. Tickets were sold online by time slot, with some potentially available on-site while supplies last.
The depot itself is part of the story. The Stuart Rock Island Depot was built in 1879, and the railroad moved its shops to Valley Junction in 1897. Passenger trains kept stopping there into the 1960s, and a depot agent worked in the building until 1976. A year later it was slated for demolition, but a group of Stuart residents intervened. Today it serves as a venue and displays historical artifacts, which makes it a fitting departure point for a train that is itself a piece of preserved history.
The road the fundraiser supports is older than the highway system. In the early 1900s, Iowa's roads were in such poor shape that the state was nicknamed "the gumbo state," a reference to the thick dark soil that served agriculture well and road builders badly. Roads turned impassable for weeks at a time in snow and mud.
Governor B.F. Carroll called a Good Roads Convention in Des Moines. Delegates from across Iowa decided a well-maintained River-to-River Road from Davenport to Council Bluffs would repair the state's reputation as automobile ownership took off. But that official route ran farther north. The five towns along what became the White Pole Road had already been promoting a marked road between Atlantic and Des Moines through the White Pole Auto Club, formerly the Southwestern Iowa Auto Club, which met in Menlo. They argued their southern alignment was straighter, more level, and shorter than the official northern route.
The original White Pole Road was designated in 1910 and followed the Chicago, Rock Island and Pacific Railroad from Des Moines to Council Bluffs, putting a town every five or six miles along the way. Because it predated the U.S. highway system, it received no state funding. Communities maintained it themselves, dragging the road with King Drags to keep travelers coming. Poles along the route were painted white so motorists knew they were still on the correct path, an early form of navigation. Travelers were encouraged to take the "Great White Way."
Traffic fell away after the interstate system arrived in the 1950s and 1960s. In 2002, towns along the old route between Adair and Dexter banded together to recreate their section of the White Pole Road, and in 2016 it was designated an Iowa Scenic Byway. More than 500 white-painted poles now line the 26 miles.
The region's history runs deeper than white poles. According to legend, on April 16, 1934, two men bought a Coca-Cola in Stuart and then walked to the First National Bank, where they ordered an assistant cashier and a bookkeeper to the floor and took $1,500, roughly $30,000 today. The unmasked robbers were later identified as Clyde Barrow and Henry Methvin. The woman waiting in a parked Oldsmobile was Bonnie Parker. It was not the Barrow Gang's first visit: in July 1933, on the run after a shootout in Platte City, Missouri, they camped at the old Dexfield Amusement Park north of Dexter for four or five days. The largest shootout in Dallas County history followed on July 24; Barrow's brother Buck was badly wounded and died five days later in Perry.
That is the kind of story the byway's backers are trying to keep attached to the pavement. The train ride is one way to fund the upkeep. For riders who already have seats, the appeal is simple: a short trip on rolling stock older than most of the towns it passes through, with conductors dressed for the era the cars represent, raising money to keep the white poles standing along the road below.