Goosetown began forming around the flour mills, brewery, and railroad tracks circa 1870. Settlers were largely German-Bohemian Catholics of peasant stock who farmed and worked in nearby industries. Inhabitants kept geese which were free to roam, thus the name "Goosetown." Two room houses were common. Cottage industries including gathering clam shells for buttons from the river, and handmaking Kl?ppel lace developed. Water was secured from a spring-house near the corner of 8th South and Front Streets. Indoor plumbing, sewer, curbs and gutters, and paved streets arrived in the 1930s. Fezz Fritsche's nationally known old-time Goosetown Band got it's start here in the 1940s. Today only a few of the early structures survive, but the close knit neighborhood lives on.
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