OSKALOOSA  , a

city and the county-seat of Mahaska county, Iowa, U.S.A., about 62 m . S.E. of Des Moines . Pop . (1900) 9212, of whom 649 were foreign-born and 344 were negroes; 1(19ro U.S. census) g466 . It is served by the Chicago, Burling-ton & Quincy, the Chicago, Rock Island & Pacific, and the Iowa Central railways, and. by interurban electric lines . The city is built on a fertile prairie in one of the principal coal-producing regions of the state . At Oskaloosa is held the Iowa yearly meeting of the Society of Friends; and the city is the seat of Penn College (opened 1873), a Friends' institution, and of the Iowa Christian College (incorporated as Oskaloosa College in 1856 and reincorporated under its present name in 1902) . At the village of University Park (incorporated in 1909), a suburb adjoining the city on the E., is the Central Holiness University (1906; coeducational), where the annual camp meeting of the National and Iowa Holiness Associations is held . Coal-mining is the most important industry in the surrounding region . There are deposits of clay and limestone in the vicinity, and among the city's manufactures are drain and sewer tile, paving and building bricks, cement blocks, and warm-air furnaces; in 1905 the factory products were valued at $779,894: Oskaloosa was first settled in 1843; it was selected in 1844 by the county commissioners as a site for the county-seat, and was chartered as a city in 1853 . It is said to have been named in honour of the wife of the Indian chief Mahaska (of the Iowa tribe), in whose honour the county was named; a bronze statue of Mahaska (by Sherry E . Fry, an Iowa sculptor) was erected here in 1909 .

See W . A .

Hunter, " History of Mahaska County," in Annals of Iowa, vols. vi.-vii . (Davenport, Iowa, 1868–1869), published by the Iowa State Historical Society .