COOPER, Iowa, September 6, 2007 – There is new construction going on in this town of 30 people. That by itself is good news in a town this small. But even better is that the building will also have a patio with machines offering cold drinks and snacks for users of the Raccoon River Valley Trail and others who come to the community.

Linda and Rod Eighmy, who live in Jefferson but have deep family roots in Cooper, are now finishing the building, which is the size of a large double-garage. Their primary purpose for it is storage.

“But when we were in Cooper and starting to work on this, we had so many people stopping in off the trail, asking if they could get a cold drink or food, that we decided we will put in two or three machines for them,” Linda said. “I doubt it will be a big money-maker, but it’ll be a nice service for people coming to town.”

She said “it’ll probably be next spring before we get the machines installed and operating.”

They will be placed on a patio to be constructed on the east side of the building, and it will also have “a couple of tables and chairs and a canopy kind of roof over it.”

Will the new snack center have a name?

“Yes, we’re pretty sure we’re going to name it ‘Garrity’s Garage’,” she said.

Her grandparents, Delos and Madeline Garrity, and parents, Eugene and Beverly Garrity, ran a mechanic shop by that same name in Cooper for years.

To make room for the new Garrity’s Garage, the Eighmys tore down an old building “that was about to fall down,” Linda said. “It’d been a pool hall at one time, and it’d been a gas station, and I’m just not sure what else it might have been through the years. I know it’s been in our family for a long, long time.”

The building is on the same block in which Cooper’s early business district operated, but nearly all the commercial buildings burned down in a disastrous fire in November, 1921.  Most were never rebuilt. However, in 2003, Larry Dean Monthei built a nice new welding and machine shop on that same block, and it does a booming business, especially with the area’s farmers.

Railroad service to the town was discontinued in the middle 1980s. By 1997, an extension of the Raccoon River Valley Trail was built on the former railroad right-of-way, south from Jefferson through Cooper to connect to the existing RRVT in Herndon and Yale. The trail comes right through the center of Cooper.

A grain elevator had stood alongside the railroad tracks and, while the main building was torn down, the weigh station and scales were kept. That building, now known on the trail as the Cooper Way Station, is operated as a public restroom by the Greene County Conservation Board. In 2006, a shelterhouse was added to that building, funded by the Greene County Community Foundation and the forerunner organization to today’s Raccoon River Valley Trail Association.

“I’m just thrilled that the Eighmys saw a need and opportunity, and are stepping up to participate in the growth of the trail,” said Carla Offenburger, president of the RRVT Association. “One of the things that our association stands for is encouraging people to start new businesses and services along the trail. The more of them we have, the more of an attraction the trail will be.”

Article Published: 09-06-2007