Buxton Wonders: Iowa Time Machine May 14, 1903

Iowa Time Machine ⏰: On May 14, 1903, the Oskaloosa Herald first mentioned the Buxton Wonders. The Wonders, a coal-town company team featuring predominantly Black players, pulled perhaps the greatest upset in Iowa sports history when they beat the Chicago Union Giants in 1909.

Buxton, Iowa, a predominantly Black company town founded by the Consolidation Coal Company in 1900, remained a productive coal mining town until at least 1919. During many of those years, the company and town hosted a baseball team called Buxton Wonders, which toured much of Iowa and the surrounding states.

In 1909, the Buxton Wonders only won one game during the entire season. However, the win came over the vaunted Chicago Union Giants. The Wonders were one of few teams to beat the Chicago Union Giants that year. They went on to finish the season with a 46-10 record, including three close losses to a Chicago Cubs team that went 104-249-2 in the same season.

When the coal ran out, so did the people of Buxton. By the 1930s, the town largely dissipated and eventually fell to the status of a southern Iowa ghost town. With the city went the Wonders, disappearing from the diamonds of Midwestern towns, only to exist as a memory of days gone by. #IowaOTD #IowaHistoryDaily #IowaHistoryCalendar