FORT

DODGE  , a city and the county-seat of Webster county, Iowa, U.S.A., on the Des Moines river, 85 m . (by rail) N. by W. from Des Moines . Pop . (1890) 4871; (1900 12,162; (1905, state census) 14,369, (2269 being foreign-born); (1910) 15,543 . It is served by the Illinois Central, the Chicago Great Western, the Minneapolis & Saint Louis, and the Fort Dodge, Des Moines & Southern railways, the last an electric interurban line . Eureka Springs and Wild Cat Cave are of interest to visitors, and attractive scenery is furnished by the river and its bordering bluffs . The river is here spanned by the Chicago Great Western railway steel bridge, or viaduct, one of the longest in the country . Fort Dodge is the seat of Tobin College (420 students in 1907 1908), a commercial and business school, with preparatory, normal and classical departments, and courses in oratory and music; among its other institutions are St Paul's. school (Evangelical Lutheran), two Roman Catholic schools, Corpus Christi Academy and the Sacred Heart school, Our Lady of Lourdes convent and a Carnegie library . Oleson Park and Reynold's Park are the city's principal parks . Immediately surrounding Fort Dodge is a rich farming country . To the E. of the city lies a gypsum bed, extending over an area of about 5o sq. m., and considered to be the most valuable in the United States; to the S. coal abounds; there are also limestone quarries and deposits of clay in the vicinity -the clay being, for the most part, obtained by mining . FortDodgeis a market forthe products of the surrounding country, and is a shipping centre of considerable importance .

It has various manufactures, including gypsum,

plaster, oatmeal, brick and tile, sewer pipe, pottery, foundry and machine-shop products, and shoes . In 1905 the value of all the factory products was $3,025,659, an increase of 2oo•8% over that for 1900 . Fort Clark was erected on the site in 185o to protect settlers against the Indians; in 1851 the name was changed by order of the secretary of war to Fort Dodge in honour of Colonel Henry Dodge (1782–1867), who was a lieutenant-colonel of Missouri Volunteers in the War of 1812, served with distinction as a colonel of Michigan Mounted Volunteers. in the Black Hawk . War, resigned from the military service in March 1833, was governor of Wisconsin Territory from 1836 to 184r and from 1846 to 1848, and was a delegate from Wisconsin Territory to Congress from 1841 to 1845, and a United States senator from Wisconsin in 1848–1857 . The fort was abandoned in 1853, and in 1854 a town was laid out . It was chartered as a city in 1869 . From the .gypsum beds near Fort Dodge was taken in 1868 the block of gypsum from which was modelled the " Cardiff Giant," a rudely-fashioned human figure, which was buried near Cardiff, Onondaga county, New York, where it was " discovered '•' late in . 1869 . It was then exhibited in various parts of the country as a " petrified man." The hoax was finally exposed by Professor Othniel C . Marsh of Yale; and George Hall of Binghamton, N.Y., confessed to the fraud, his object having been to discredit belief in the " giants " of Genesis vi . 4 . (See " The Cardiff Giant: the True Story of a Remarkable Deception," by Andrew D .