For decades, rural towns in America have struggled to survive. Imogene has, too. The ranching community from the 1860\u2019s soon turned to the railroad boon. \u201cThe daughter of one of the railroad engineers had the name of Imogene and that\u2019s where it got started,\u201d said 70-year-old Joe Cheney, who was baptized in the church.<\/p>\nFive years ago, Imogene city leaders discussed whether the town should cease from being a town anymore, meaning no local government. Imogene needed inspiration.<\/p>\n
\u201cWith the church and rich heritage and the nearby Wabash Trail, proud people of Imogene, I was never worried about it,\u201d said Becca Castle who helped start the Sons & Daughters of Imogene, a community betterment organization.<\/em><\/p>\n
You have to click the link or search images of this church; due to copyright uncertainty I did not reproduce the pictures. The interior is spectacular.<\/body><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
This was a heartwarming article: How an Iowa Church Helped Save Its Small Town. For decades, rural towns in America have struggled to survive. Imogene has, too. The ranching community from the 1860\u2019s soon turned to the railroad boon. \u201cThe daughter of one of the railroad engineers had the name of Imogene and that\u2019s where […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[414,415,413,412],"class_list":["post-833","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-inspirational-stories","tag-imogene","tag-iowa","tag-st-patrick","tag-st-patricks-church"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/theundergroundchurch.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/833","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/theundergroundchurch.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/theundergroundchurch.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/theundergroundchurch.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/theundergroundchurch.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=833"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"http:\/\/theundergroundchurch.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/833\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":840,"href":"http:\/\/theundergroundchurch.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/833\/revisions\/840"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/theundergroundchurch.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=833"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/theundergroundchurch.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=833"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/theundergroundchurch.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=833"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}