Historic Pella

Historic Pella. . In the spring of 1847 four sailing vessels carrying 800 freedom-seeking Hollanders landed at Baltimore. They were met by Dominie Henry Peter Scholte, their faithful leader, who led them across the Alleghenies to Pittsburgh and down the Ohio and up the Mississippi to St. Louis., At St. Louis a committee, headed by Dominie Scholte, set out for Iowa, where they visited the U.S. Land Office at Fairfield. A Baptist missionary guided Scholte to a site in Marion County deemed suitable for a Dutch settlement and 18,000 acres were purchased. Dominie Scholte called the site "Pella," meaning "City of Refuge.", When the Hollanders arrived at Pella in August of 1847 they found the 50 cabins they had contracted for were not built. With characteristic Dutch zeal, they set to work erecting makeshift cabins, sod-houses, and lean-tos with thatched roofs. They planted crops but lost almost all their stock in the hard winter of 1848-1849. New Dutch immigrants arrived in the nick of time with money. Their arrival, coupled with sales to the Forty-Niners, brought prosperity to Pella., The decade of the 1850's was an exciting one for the Dutch. The fame of their butter and cheese insured future prosperity. When Iowa City lost the seat of government, the Hollanders offered to donate a tract of land to have Pella made the capital-- but Des Moines was chosen., The town of New Amsterdam was laid out on the Des Moines River to serve as a port for Pella. The flood of 1851 dashed all hopes for New Amsterdam. The Western Stage Coach served Pella until the arrival of the railroad in 1865., Central University, established by the Baptists in 1853, has been operated by the Dutch Reformed Church since 1916. During the Civil War the entire student body, 122, enlisted in the Union Army., The Pella colony numbered almost 2,000 by 1870 and Dutchmen had spilled over into Mahaska and Jasper counties. Balked by high land prices, Henry Hospers led 65 families to Sioux County in 1870 where they established Orange City., Since its beginnings in 1936, the Pella Tulip Festival has become one of Iowa's outstanding historical attractions.