by Alicia Rudnicki, Library Mix

Remember the classic children’s picture book The Little Engine that Could, which came to represent the American ideals of optimism and persistence?

In the book, a railroad train needs to get over a mountain, but all the big locomotives are too busy to help. So a little engine takes on the job and succeeds by tugging, chugging, and chanting “I think I can, I think I can.”

A can-do library and community
As current economic woes threaten the existence of free public libraries nationwide, an “I think I can” attitude is more necessary than ever to keep doors and collections open.

This is a story about a little library that has been saying “I think I can” since it first opened in 1871. Surrounded by corn fields and with a tiny population of about 1,300 residents, Appleton City—about an hour’s drive northwest of Springfield and originally known as Arlington—would seem to be an unlikely place to have maintained a public library for so long. But Appleton City’s library is the fourth oldest in the state.

In the late 1860s, things were looking up for the tiny community of Arlington, because the Tebo and Neosho Railroad was coming through and building a depot.

Saying 'yes' to change
Also, East Coast publisher W.H. Appleton, perhaps hoping to spread the fame and sales of  D. Appleton & Company, promised the community $300 to build a library and $500 in books if it would change its name to Appleton City.

The town said yes. So the two-room, white pine W.H. Appleton Library was born in 1871.

It’s unclear exactly which books the publisher donated, but perhaps the early residents of Appleton City had the opportunity to read first editions of Charles Darwin’s Voyage of the Beagle and Lewis Carroll’s Alice in Wonderland, both published by D. Appleton & Company.

In a 1970 publication celebrating the town’s centennial, local historian May Florence Robinson Flaherty wrote about the ups and downs of the library’s first 100 years.

Friends of the library
Appleton City’s experience probably parallels that of many American communities that struggled to make ends meet while trying to blossom culturally from the 1800s into the twentieth century.

It is a good example of the necessity of stable funding and support by “friends of the library” organizations. To keep a library going, you have to keep it growing.

Unfortunately, Flaherty wrote, Appleton City didn’t continue adding books to its collection, so residents were tired of the library by the mid-1920s. For about two years, the library closed in lieu of flashier attractions.

Flaherty noted that Appleton City’s annual fair was growing and the city “coveted the space where the library stood” for its Ferris wheel and merry-go-round. So in 1923, the city sold the building for $20 to a man who needed a house and agreed to move it.

Raising a ruckus for reading
Fortunately, Flaherty wrote, Mrs. Cora Chapin demonstrated the power of one by raising a ruckus. Remembering how much the library had meant to her in childhood and fearing it was gone forever, Chapin “began agitating for an organization” to create a replacement.

This was the birth of the Appleton City Library Association, which went on to organize fundraisers, beginning with a town musical.

Flaherty wrote that “almost all the young people in town took part; their mothers made costumes, the Boy Scouts made a stage and enclosed it and the seating area with greens; the men of the town hauled and set up seats. More than $130 was cleared at 25 cents admission.”

The library continued to be supported by “entertainments, bridge parties, rummage sales” and door-to-door fundraising, Flaherty said, until the city voted in 1945 to fund it through taxes.

Surviving by making do
Appleton City's library has never had a new facility since its first building. Over the years, it was housed in city hall and then in a room over the fire department. For more than 40 years now, its home has been a simple storefront in an 1885 building on the town’s main street.

While it contains plenty of current fiction, the library retains a charming 1950s atmosphere enhanced by shelves of old Nancy Drew and Hardy Boys mysteries as well as a well-worn set of Little House on the Prairie novels. (An interesting aside is that the last home in which Laura Ingalls Wilder lived is just down the road in the town of Mansfield.)

The city now owns the original library again, but hasn’t yet decided how to use it. It stands in a small park next to the renovated railroad depot, which is used as a meeting facility.

Heart of the community
Although charming, Appleton City needs lots of main street restoration and development to attract more residents and businesses. In particular, there is no organized gathering place for teens, and there is only one restaurant.

Consequently, the current library is the heart of the community.

Dorothy Pierce, treasurer of the Appleton City Library Association, said, “The library’s just kind of important to this town. We don’t have too much going for us, but lots of people read.”

The online, worldwide directory of library catalogs called Lib-Web-Cats estimates there are 25,000 books in the library’s collection and an annual circulation of about 7,600 volumes. That equals about six books a year per resident, which is admirable.

Similar to a growing number of public libraries, Appleton City's library has chosen to charge modest user fees rather than decrease its already limited hours of service even more. For example, this summer, children paid $15 each to participate in the library’s summer reading program.

Re-imagining library and community
Pierce recently explained that the library was shut down for two and one-half worrisome weeks last February to complete a structural safety inspection. Luckily, she noted, it ended well,  but not before the entire fourth grade class of the local elementary wrote a letter to the Appleton City Journal to support keeping the library open.

“We need our library so we can escape into a world of books,” the students wrote. “The library helps everyone build an imagination. People depend on the library for research, history, and computers.”

As if echoing the 1920s founders of the library’s booster association, the students showed a “We think we can” attitude by suggesting fundraisers to acquire a larger facility.

Meanwhile, Appleton City’s revitalization committee continues to pursue its "vision project" for improving the city. It is, in part, following through on recommendations made by a group of Drury University architecture students that worked on a "Rediscover Appleton City" planning project with the community last fall.

Pierce said the community recently gained a $15,000 federal grant for signage and is also planning a barbecue fundraiser.

The photo gallery of Appleton City scenes near the beginning of this article is presented courtesy of the student team from Drury's Hammons School of Architecture in Springfield.

If it hadn’t been for Drury, I would have never discovered the little library that could and that continues to do what libraries should do—improve people's lives. I think Appleton City and its library can revitalize; I think they can.