WEBSTER, a new county of Iowa, comprising the late counties of Risley and Yell. It lies a little N. and W. of the central part of the state, and is 48 miles long, and 24 wide, with an area of 1150 square miles. It is drained by the Des Moines river, and the Ligard and Boone branches of the same stream. The centre of the county is about 145 miles N. W. from Iowa city. The population is unknown, the county having been formed since the census of 1850. (Baldwin's New and Complete Gazetteer of the United States..., 1854)
WEBSTER COUNTY Was included in the neutral ground established by treaty with the Sac and Fox Indians, and the Sioux Indians. Owing to the murderous warfare kept up between those Indians, the U. S. Government interfered, and brought about a treaty between them, which resulted in their ceding to the United States a strip of land forty miles wide, reaching from a point on the Mississippi, near the mouth of Paint Creek, above Prairie du Chien, to the river of the Sioux, (Des Moines); the Sac and Fox Indians ceding twenty miles wide on the south, and the Sioux twenty miles on the north–each party pledging themselves not to enter on this neutral ground to hunt or for any purpose whatever. That part of Webster County west of the DesMoines River, continued to belong to the Sioux Indians, until the treaty of 1851, which extinguished the Indian titles within the limits of the State of Iowa.
Webster County is bounded on the east by Hamilton County, on the west by Calhoun and Pocahontas Counties on the north by Humboldt, and on the south by Boone and Greene Counties; being in length from east to west 24 miles, and from north to south 30 miles. The county originally was 24 miles square, but township No. 90 has since been added to it on the north. The population of the county is about 4,000.
The face of the territory embraced in the limits of Webster County, is very much the same as that of the northern tiers of counties generally, beautiful in the extreme. It is what may be termed moderately undulating, except on the margin of the rivers and streams where there are frequent ranges of bluffs or hills of considerable magnitude, intersected with ravines. The county is remarkably well watered by beautiful rivers and creeks, the margins of which are skirted with woodland and groves throughout the county. There is an admirable distribution of prairie and woodland to suit the wants and convenience of the husbandman. (Hair's Iowa State Gazetteer..., 1865)