Quick, Iowa
Taken from The Daily Nonpareil's Profile 94 Edition by Gary Peterson
Although never an officially incorporated city, Quick was the center of activity in its area for many years, and for nearly 14 years it had its own post office.
It is one of many such communities that once were located in Pottawattamie County.
According to the book Postmarked Iowa, 45 locations in the county had post offices that eventually closed.
The post office in Quick, seven miles northwest of Treynor and seven miles south of Underwood, was established March 28, 1884 and closed March 15, 1904.
Today, all that remains at the locale, essentially the intersection of U S Highway 6 and Pottawattamie County L52, is a lodge and the Quick Store, a former grocery store.
The farmstead of founder Elias J. Quick lies just to the west of the Quick Store. His house burned some years ago, and a mobile home was moved onto the site.
"A good many people lived there" long before the post office was established," said Maxine Tiarks, or rural Council Bluffs.
Tiarks' mother and her mother's parents and grandparents settled in the area encompassed by Quick.
At its height, Quick ha a blacksmith shop, a high school and a dance hall, along with the post office. There was also a telephone switching office and a meeting lodge.
Too young to remember much about Quick, Tiarks, 84, easily recalls accounts relayed by her mother and grandparents.
"My mom used to ride horseback to get the mail," Tiarks said.
When it was flourishing, Quick probably had about 29 residents within its limits, Tiarks said, with family farms dotting the surrounding landscape.
She said many farmers would travel to Council Bluffs for retail shopping, but would always stop at the Quick grocery store to purchase food.
Warren Chambers, who lives near the Quick intersection, has similar recollections.
"Everything I can remember from a kid on up was that all our groceries came from that store,' Chambers, 72 said.
His parents each attended high school at Quick.
There is some question how long the school existed, but Chambers and Tiarks have been told classes were held there for two to three years.
A new Order of the Eastern Star lodge was built near the site of the former lodge in 1983, and still is in use.
The former lodge was built onto the post office and telephone office. Later, a second floor was added to the structure.
Too young to know Quick as a thriving community, Chambers acquired his knowledge of the place through conversations with others, or as Tiarks put it, "They all knew each other, and everybody knew Quick."
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