You've now made it to the town of Oskaloosa, Iowa! Oskaloosa is the county seat of Mahaska County, and houses the county courthouse, shown on the left (image courtesy of en:User:Cburnett / CC BY-SA ).

The name for this town is derived from Ouscaloosa, a Creek princess who married the Seminole Chief Osceola. Tradionally, locals interpret her name as "last of the beautiful," but the name in fact more closely means "black rain."

The first European-American settlers to arrive here came in 1835, led by Nathan Boone, the youngest son of famed frontiersman Daniel Boone. He selected this as the first site for Fort Des Moines, on a high ridge between the Des Moines and Skunk rivers.

Fast forward, and shortly after 1853, the first coal mine in Oskaloosa was opened. At first, the coal mined here was exclusively for local use, but it began to get shipped all around once railroads became more common, connecting more and more of the country. In the 1880's the county as a whole had 38 mines which generated a total of over a million tons of coal, and 11 of those mines were located in or close to Oskaloosa. By 1911, coal mining had become the primary industry in the entire region.

However, this area was not immune to the dangers of coal mining, though the issue was far from rampant. On January 24, 1902, there was a mine explosion in the Lost Creek No. 2 mine, one of only two mining disasters in between 1888 and 1913. A miner was setting shots to blast coal from the coal-face and reused a hole left from a failed shot, resulting in a coal dust explosion which detonated barrels of gunpowder which had been stored in the mine. This killed 20 and injured 14, sparking a statewide miners' strike, forcing the state legislature to enact a law regulating blasting in coal mines.

Additionally, Oskaloosa has had some notable inhabitants, including Medal of Honor recipient Frank Friday Fletcher, jazz bassist Max Bennett, MLB player Cliff Knox, US Army General of World War II Roscoe B. Woodruff, NBA player Patrick O'Bryant, and John H. Stek, translator of the New International Version of the Bible just to name a few. The town has also been home to politicians, comedians, photographers, and more (all information courtesy of Wikipedia.com).