History of Kenyon In 1855, the first settlers arrived in the area. L.N. Bye settled in the north corner of sections 7 and 8. Christian and Sever Halvorson settled in section 18 just west of the Old Stone Church, whose construction didn’t start until 1871. L.A. Felt built the first building in town on the north side of the Zumbro in 1856. These four men were the first to open up the Kenyon area. The following year in May 1856, James A. Day and James M. LaDuc came and made claims to where the village is now situated. LaDuc named it Kenyon after his alma mater, Kenyon College in Gambier, Ohio. The year
1857 was busy. A steam saw mill was built. It stood where the swimming pool is now. In March, Stephen Bullis established Kenyon’s first hotel, “The Pioneer,” on the corner just west of Roseview apartments. The village boomed with the arrival of the Chicago Great Western Railroad in 1885. A store was opened by P.L. Berg in the area of Kenyon Ace Hardware. By 1893, the village had two hotels, a foundry and machine shop, a large brick school building, a tannery, two banks, a flouring mill and a weekly newspaper. A second railroad, the Chicago Milwaukee, came along in 1903. The small village continued to prosper until 1908 when the “April Fool’s Day Fire”
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