Murphy Calendar Company

[Abby Brown] Keeping track of the days on a calendar is something that humans have been doing for thousands and thousands of years. But did you know that Iowa is the birthplace of the art calendar industry?

(Map marking Montgomery County in southwest Iowa.)

Calendars like this changed the way we look at keeping track of dentist appointments and birthdays.

(A painting of a group of Native Americans on horses looking out over the plains of the west is printed above a calendar dated January 1942.)

The most common way to pencil in a time to go out to dinner with friends used to be on a paper calendar.

Once technology made keeping track of appointments digital, the practice of having a calendar hanging in your kitchen or at your desk declined. These days, most people are reminded of their appointments with a buzz on their phone.

At the Montgomery County History Center, there's a whole display dedicated to the Murphy Calendar Company.

They started creating beautiful calendars here in Red Oak in the late 1800s — something that quickly became a worldwide sensation.

While calendars had been an important tool for keeping track of time for a very long time, adding art or photos, as well as advertising to paper calendars, was something people hadn't really seen before. It was unique.

Iowans Thomas Murphy and Edmund Osborn came up with the concept of art calendars in 1890. When Murphy and Osborn's partnership dissolved just a few years later, the business eventually became the Thomas D. Murphy Company, with a large factory here in town.

Printing technologies were growing and changing rapidly at the time. It wasn't as easy and affordable as it is today to simply take a picture and get it printed.

Murphy made images from famous paintings or from photographs using a unique technique involving a copper plate. It was so revolutionary that people came from all over to see how it worked.

Some of the equipment he used is on display here at the History Center. It's fun to try to imagine the specific jobs each of these printing tools did back in those days.

(An open mouthed wrench.)

(A small handled ink roller.)

(A large handled paint-like brush with a thick bristled end.)

The Murphy Calendar Company no longer exists, but the building where the calendars were made is still here. It's empty, but it is on the National Register of Historic Places. It's pretty cool that calendar history was made right inside those brick walls.

Red Oak, Iowa, may be a small town of 5,000 to 6,000 people, but the calendar company that existed here for 100 years made a big impact on our time tracking techniques.

Every county in Iowa has made its mark on history. Here in Montgomery County, that mark is noted with a famous style of calendar.

Funding for FIND Iowa has been provided by The Coons Foundation, Pella and the Gilchrist Foundation.