Time Machine: Iowa’s biggest frying pan

What if you needed a frying pan that could handle a really big breakfast?

There’s one in Brandon that can hold 88 times as much as a 10-inch frying pan. That’s 44 dozen eggs or 176 pounds of half-pound pork chops or 88 pounds of bacon or 220 pounds of 8-ounce hamburgers.

The 1,020-pound iron skillet has never cooked any of that, though. Instead, it stands near the Brandon Community Center that the Buchanan County city’s once semi-annual and now annual Cowboy Breakfast helped to build. The breakfast inspired construction of the skillet.

When the pan was completed and put in place in May 2004, near the future site of the community center, it was thought to be the biggest frying pan in the world. But after doing some research, then-Mayor Ron Boyer said he found one in Washington state that was larger.

“As far as I know, it’s the second-largest frying pan in the United States,” he said.

It is, however, the largest frying pan in Iowa.

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Railroad wins and disappointments

The huge skillet is a testament to the small-town ingenuity and fortitude that has been part of Brandon since it was platted in 1854 and incorporated as a town in 1906. Even though the small town had only about 300 people in the early 1900s, it still was able to attract an interurban rail line.

The arrival of the Cedar Valley Line in 1913 was a big deal. After all, town promoters had tried five times, starting with an effort to lure the Burlington, Cedar Rapids & Northern Railway (later the Rock Island). That line was rerouted south of the Cedar River.

A brief effort to bring in a narrow gauge fizzled. It was followed by an 1885 effort to bring a Northwestern railroad through town. Jefferson Township voters said no.

A 1907 plan for an interurban from Cedar Rapids through Urbana, Brandon, Shady Grove and Jubilee to Waterloo raised hopes again, only to have the plan abandoned. But shortly after that, there was hope for a line from Canada, through the Mississippi Valley all the way to Galveston, Texas. That one included Brandon in its stops across the state. It was revealed as a hoax.

When promoter L.S. Cass, who had completed an interurban railroad from Waterloo to La Porte City, offered to build an electric railroad through Urbana and Brandon if citizens of the two towns could raise a total of $150,000, they did so in a record-breaking three weeks. Cass promised to build their electric railway within a year.

In August 1913, Brandon residents saw a steam construction train on the Waterloo, Cedar Falls & Northern tracks in their town as well as a train pulling a carload of cattle to Chicago. At the end of August, the first interurban trolley car rolled into Brandon.

When Brandon approached its centennial in 1954, Main Street was resurfaced and new curbs and gutters were installed in time for the town’s two-day celebration, July 9 and 10.

The next year, the WCF&N interurban railroads began to disappear.

Cowboy Breakfast

With the loss of its school in the 1960s, Brandon looked for another claim to fame.

The Cowboy Breakfast, inaugurated in June 2000, was a step in that direction. Slated to be held twice a year -- once in spring and once in fall -- the breakfast was cooked outdoors in cast iron skillets .

The menu included scrambled eggs, pancakes, fried potatoes, sausage, biscuits, sausage gravy, bacon and cowboy coffee. Funds raised from the breakfast were applied to a new community center.

The breakfast-inspired frying pan was created in 2004. Denton Castings Co., an iron shop set up in the community’s old school building, made miniature skillets to sell in Brandon’s convenience store.

The new community center was completed in 2007 and dedicated Aug. 3 and 4. After that September’s Cowboy breakfast, the event switched to an annual event that continues to this day. This year’s event is scheduled for Sept. 15.

Comments: D.fannonlangton@gmail.com

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