Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Lycurgus, Iowa


 * The following discussion is an archived debate of the proposed deletion of the article below. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page (such as the article's talk page or in a deletion review).  No further edits should be made to this page.

The result was keep.  JGHowes   talk  01:40, 5 June 2021 (UTC)

Lycurgus, Iowa

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Another post office, now the location of a closed church. This page claims that there had been a store and hotel very early on, but it's hardly a source we can use, and at any rate it states that these businesses failed quickly. Mangoe (talk) 17:51, 21 May 2021 (UTC)
 * Note: This discussion has been included in the list of Iowa-related deletion discussions.  Spiderone (Talk to Spider) 20:16, 21 May 2021 (UTC)
 * Note: This discussion has been included in the list of Geography-related deletion discussions.  Spiderone (Talk to Spider) 20:16, 21 May 2021 (UTC)


 * Hancock's Past and Present confirms the church, independent school district, and the post-office, but doesn't actually mention what, if any, settlement there was or give in-depth information about any of them except for a slight amount about the 1913 demolition of the church. Fitch's 1910 Past and present of Fayette County happens to mention that someone was "a native of Lycurgus", but again doesn't actually tell us the basic piece of information that is missing.  Hair's 1865 Iowa State Gazetteer says post-office.  The 1916 Lippincott's says "post-hamlet", which from other research seems to be one step down from "post-village".  So it's in lists of school districts and post-offices, and we know the name of its church and that it is one step down from a village.  I haven't found any in-depth history on the level of, say,  . Uncle G (talk) 01:56, 23 May 2021 (UTC)
 * Weak Delete per WP:GEOLAND, at least for now until more information can be found. Royal Autumn Crest (talk) 17:29, 25 May 2021 (UTC)
 * Keep: I've added some, it clear was and is a recognize small rural community.--Milowent • hasspoken  18:40, 27 May 2021 (UTC)
 * comment This is the kind of maybe-a-place that makes me uncomfortable about the standards behind WP:GEOLAND. "Unincorporated community" is still a euphemism: for places that are do not have definite boundaries but which anyone driving through would recognize as towns or cities, we use (or should use) those words. When we come upon something like this, where there is only an isolated church now and where there were short-lived businesses which may not have been nearby, and a post office which lived in whatever place was convenient enough, it's an act of a certain degree of research to assemble this into a town. I've skipped over a number of these Iowa places where you can see, from the air, that there is some concentration of dwellings and businesses, generally with side streets and the like. But when we come to something like this where I can't find any evidence of such a concentration, and nobody comes right out and says it was there, I'm really hard-pressed to agree that it is a former settlement— and it plainly is not a present one. Mangoe (talk) 04:01, 28 May 2021 (UTC)
 * Places like this one in the midwestern United States essentially became "communities" because settlers moved in, in the mid 1800s, in large farming lots, and frankly, they needed to have names for places. A church, a post office, a school, a general store with the post office, these became a place name to apply to the community around that area.  In U.S. midwest counties that are just a mass of flat of open land, the people 10 miles NE of the county seat had a kinship apart from those 10 miles SE of the county seat.  Often, the establishment of a post office established an identity for the community.   Thus, one can find tons of references in obituaries to people being born in Lycurgus, or married in Lycurgus, or growing up in Lycurgus.  Does this make it a community worthy of Wikipedia recognition?  I think so. If the US postal service had invented Rural Free Delivery earlier, it may be an open question as to whether many of these place names would have ever been created.  But we live in a time where the living patterns of the midwest US have drastically changed.  Populations have decreased, the larger towns have more of the share of the population, farms have consolidated, schools have consolidated.  The way of life in, say, 1900 in these areas is simply gone, forever.--Milowent • hasspoken  13:45, 28 May 2021 (UTC)

 Relisted to generate a more thorough discussion and clearer consensus.

Please add new comments below this notice. Thanks, Missvain (talk) 22:29, 28 May 2021 (UTC)
 * Keep per Milowent's excellent research and additions to the article. There's no doubt this was more than a post office, as St. Mary's Church became known as the Lycurgus Church; Rand McNally considered it a community in 1903, and there was a school that operated until the 1960s. Sources noted the community at the time, and notability is not temporary. Firsfron of Ronchester  09:01, 29 May 2021 (UTC)
 * Keep per Milowent's comments above. I wish we could get more county historical societies in Iowa to engage/assist with Wikipedia articles in the respective county.  They often have materials that would be helpful that are not necessarily online.  RickH86 (talk) 11:35, 4 June 2021 (UTC)


 * The above discussion is preserved as an archive of the debate. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page (such as the article's talk page or in a deletion review). No further edits should be made to this page.