This river town refuses to let slowdowns become stops. The town of 538 started out as Bluffville, about two miles east of town, before moving west to meet the Burlington Railroad about 1874, lifetime resident Jenny French said.

"Bluffville had a post office, stores and a school," French said. "I think Thomson was named for a man named Thomson." Thomson's economic revolution continued with the coming of the Milwaukee Railroad, and the town became a stopping point for passenger and freight trains. "The passenger trains stopped in the 1950s," French recalled. "Rail was the main business." That business fueled a hotel, post office, rooming house, stores and two livery stables, French said. Agriculture has been another constant in Thomson's history.

"You didn't always see cornfields and grain," French said. "You saw watermelon fields, and they shipped them out by the trainload. They would clean out cattle cars, fill them with straw and stack watermelons from before daybreak until dark." The town's now-famous Melon Days Festival, celebrated around Labor Day, was started in the 1920s, French said. Thomson's agriculture has continued, including potato farming and grains, but watermelons remain a focal point of the town.

From the Sterling Gazette - Contributed by Denise McLoughlin and Jan Roggy