‘Small Creek’ rises

Iola City Council members agreed with a group of residents who said Iola’s Coon Creek should be renamed.

Council members eventually voted 5-0, in one of the more bizarre city meetings in recent memory, to return Coon Creek to its original moniker, Small Creek.

The history behind the creek’s name was brought to the Council’s attention in November by Iola teen Alllie Utley, who found old newspaper articles indicating the waterway was not named after raccoons, but instead was almost certainly a slur against the African American population.