Extension celebrates a century in Calhoun County

A century ago, Calhoun County residents reached a milestone, John Lawrence told a small crowd at the Calhoun County Expo Sunday afternoon.
A few years earlier, state officials had announced that any county that could raise $1,000 would get a matching $1,000 to hire an Iowa State University extension agent. The first Iowa counties hit that mark in 1912. In 1918, Calhoun County and another 49 counties got there, too, Lawrence said.
The extension agents can trace their origins to the 1860s, when the federal government first designated land in states for use by public universities to fund education. In 1903, an Iowa State professor boarded a train and headed to northwest Iowa, making the first visit into community education – in this case, working with farmers to help them select the best seed – that would become the hallmark of extension agents today. By 1905, a larger group of college faculty headed to communities across the state to provide weeklong community development and education courses, as well as to help start boys and girls clubs that were the precursors to today’s 4-H clubs, Lawrence said.
Read more in the July 18 edition.