One of the first colleges established west of the Mississippi River is marking a milestone that reflects its roots in Davenport.

Grinnell College is celebrating the 150th anniversary of its move from Davenport, where it was founded in 1846 as Iowa College, to the town of Grinnell, Iowa. Throughout the fall semester, the college, located in Poweshiek County, about 115 miles west of Davenport off Interstate 80, is observing the occasion with a series of campus and community events.

The college owes its beginnings in Davenport, where the school's original building still stands, to a band of Eastern ministers. They were attracted to the city by the beauty of its Mississippi River valley location, but relations between the college and the rough river town were not always the best during the 19th century.

One early college leader described Davenport as "very uncongenial" to the institution. Losing its campus twice to road construction projects, the college finally relocated to Grinnell, prompting a Davenport newspaper to state, "We can't say that we regret their departure from Davenport."

Despite the conflict, Catherine Rod, Grinnell College's special collections librarian and archivist, said the school's tenure in Davenport was important for the budding institution.

"It was in Davenport that the college developed its core values," she said. While the city and the college may have clashed, she added, the situation likely helped the school shape its commitment to social justice, which has been a theme throughout its history.

The Grinnell College story begins in 1846 when 11 young Congregational ministers from Massachusetts came to Iowa to establish a college.

Known as the Iowa Band, these earnest young clerics with social reform backgrounds hoped to show their strong religious values by starting churches and colleges in the newly settled Iowa territory. (Iowa gained statehood Dec. 28, 1846.)

Although they were captivated by the beauty of Davenport's Mississippi River location, the clerics had some doubts about being accepted by the rugged frontier town. In fact, William Salter, a member of the Iowa Band, expressed such concern in a letter he wrote to his future wife in the summer of 1846.

"May God bless our efforts to serve one of the finest locations on the whole Mississippi," he wrote. "This season of the year you can't say anything else of this region than that it is charming. But society in Davenport is very uncongenial to a literary institution of the character we wish to establish. And the people are very unwilling to assist in putting up a suitable building. We have settled upon Davenport as the location though with some conditions which, it is expected, will be met."

On June 10, 1846, the Iowa Band voted to open what it called Iowa College in Davenport. Citizens raised $1,362 and city founder Antoine LeClaire gave the college 13 lots for its campus. Classes began Nov. 1, 1848, with two college preparatory students and one instructor in a small building at what is now 517 W. 7th St.

The building was described as a "one-story brick structure with a small plain cupola and a single chimney projecting from its roof" and "six columns on the front elevation."

The original building, expanded over the years, survives today as a private residence

By 1850, the institution had six college students, 70 preparatory students and two instructors. The college operated at the 7th Street site from 1848 until 1855 when it was forced to move because of the construction of a road through the campus. For its new building, the college acquired 10 acres at what is today the 1100 block of Harrison Street, the site of Central High School.

There was built a three-story structure in the Italianate style, with a chapel, classroom, library, recitation rooms and dormitory space for 12 students. A large cupola housed the college bell.

By the time the new building was completed in 1855, Iowa College had 10 college students, 89 preparatory students and four instructors.

In 1858, when the northerly extension of Main Street threatened to divide the campus, the college's trustees decided to cease operations in Davenport. They moved it to Grinnell, Iowa, which had been founded in 1854 by Josiah Bushnell Grinnell, a Congregational minister. In relocating to Grinnell in 1859, the school merged with fledgling Grinnell University and took the name Grinnell College in 1909.

The college was hardly missed by the Davenport Morning News. In its Oct. 2, 1858, edition, the newspaper wrote:

"We can't say that we regret their departure from Davenport. The free schools of the city afford the means of obtaining a good practical education, and we are of the opinion that, after further progress in the arts and science, will easily be made by those who really desire knowledge, without undergoing a four-year process in humbugging at a one-horse college, for the sake of getting a disregarded commission in the army of letters, written in a tongue which nine-tenths of the holders cannot read in three weeks after they get them."

Of the college's move to Grinnell, Joseph Wall, a longtime history professor at the college, wrote: "What a blessed relief it was in 1859 to have the college safely removed to a community where the trustees and the new faculty they would employ would be accepted as part of the prevailing majority, not as cranks on the lunatic fringe."