After over 102 years of service, the Gruver Post Office was suspended on November 30, 2002. Residents can now get mail curbside or at these cluster boxes, located outside a brick garage across the street from the Gruver City Hall and Fire Department building. The nearest full service post office is in Estherville, located seven miles west of Gruver.
On April 26, 1866, a meeting was held in the now non-existant Wapello County hamlet of Competine to establish a new Baptist Church. The meeting was initiated by twelve former members of Baptist churches in the nearby towns of Martinsburg and Fremont, and charter members totaled 27. After a few meetings in the local school house, a permanent church was constructed in June 1867. After burning to the ground in 1891, a committee was appointed to solicit funds for a new building. The new and larger church building was dedicated December 11, 1893.
By June 1908, church members determined the church would be better suited in the growing (but unincorporated) community of Farson, one mile to the west. full basement and foundation was put into place and in October 1908, the church was moved via horses and rollers to its new location. The first meeting in Farson was January 2, 1909, and the church was rededicated on January 24. The church has seen a few changes over the years, including the removal of the steeple and creation of a ground-level entryway. The original steeple bell is mounted on a brick foundation in front of the church.
After sixty years of operation, the public library in the Kossuth County town of Lakota moved to its current location on May 9, 1981. A ribbon-cutting ceremony and open house were held at the new location, after the Lakota City Council and Library Board agreed to switch locations. The library inherited the former town hall, which was constructed as a project of the Works Progress Administration in the 1930s. Many volunteers contributed time and labor toward the $15,000 interior remodeling project, which included new painting, shelving, and the repurposing of no-longer-needed city jail space.
In 2000, an open house celebrated recent State of Iowa accreditation, along with new carpet, painting, and restroom improvements.
On July 1, 1930, patrons to the bank in the Taylor County community of Gravity were greeted by the following notice posted to the front door:
In view of the continued financial drain due largely to short crops of the last year of this community, the Board of Directors of this bank voted to close the same for the protection of the depositors and all concerned.
The Gravity Independent from July 3 notes no direct statements have been made by bank officials, though a meeting was held between the bank’s Board of Directors and Henry Erwin, a state bank examiner. The paper was “assured that the condition of the bank is better… than it was two years ago, and that the depositors will fare better… than they would have if the institution closed at that time.”
The Taylor County town wasn’t without a bank for long: In 1931, a bank of the then-Sharpsburg-based State Savings Bank opened a branch in the Gravity building. As Gravity’s population declined, bank operating hours were shortened before the Gravity office closed entirely in the 1990s.
The current Worth County Courthouse was completed in 1893, across the street from the modest two-story brick courthouse that was constructed 13 years earlier and still open as a museum today. The courthouse was remodeled and expanded to the east in 1938 with funds as part of the Works Progress Administration, and in 1990, a one-story addition containing a new jail, courtroom and offices was attached to the northwest portion of the facility. The historic courthouse was added to the National Register of Historic Places in 1981.