Stationmaster Julia Laughlin: Iowa Time Machine December 3, 1917

Iowa Time Machine ⏰: On December 3, 1917, Julia Laughlin was appointed stationmaster of the Ames train depot. Laughlin’s appointment as stationmaster, remembered as the first female stationmaster in the country, turned a local railroad job into a small revolution in gender roles.

The early twentieth century saw railroads at the height of their importance, with depots serving as the nerve centers of countless American communities. In Ames, trains carried students, faculty, farm goods, and mail in and out of town, making the depot a crossroads of rural and urban life. When the United States entered World War I, labor shortages opened new opportunities for women in offices, factories, and transportation, even as most of these jobs were still considered temporary.

Laughlin, a widow whose husband had spent three decades as a conductor on the C&NW line, already possessed an intimate understanding of railroad operations after twenty years of traveling with him. The war brought that experience out of the private sphere and into the public eye. Taking charge of the Ames depot meant overseeing ticketing, freight, telegraph communications, and the delicate task of keeping trains and people moving on time. Newspapers and company notices described her role as unprecedented, and later accounts would describe her as the only female station master in the country during her tenure from 1917 into the early 1920s.

Day after day, she handled soldiers on leave, student crowds, and anxious families watching as troop trains rolled through, all while managing the logistical challenges of wartime traffic. In doing so, she demonstrated that the authority of a stationmaster depended on competence rather than gender. #Iowa #OTD #History #Trains #WomensHistory