The town series, 1880–2020

EVERY DECENNIAL COUNT, DATED TO ITS INSTRUMENT

The town's first returned count is 1880's, three years after incorporation, and the series runs unbroken to 2020. 1880: 754 — and 1890: 885 — carried here on the Story of Walkerton section's citation of the published decennial tables; this section's volume-by-volume verification of those two cells is an owed item, stated in the register article with the instruments attempted and the settling volumes named. II, pt. 14, Tables 6 and 7); 1950: 2,102; 1970: 2,006; 1980: 2,051; 1990: 2,061 — the last three from the 1990 census's comparative table for the state (CPH-2-16, Table 5); 1960: 2,044, carried on the Story of Walkerton section's citation under the same owed verification as 1880 and 1890; and from the redistricting files parsed cell-level: 2000: 2,274; 2010: 2,144; 2020: 2,096. The shape of the series is three facts. First, the stillness: from 1900 to 1920 the town moved within a band of thirty-four people (1,003 to 1,037) across three censuses — a railroad town at its built size, neither growing nor shrinking. Second, the hinge at 1950, taken up in its own article. Third, the plateau: from 1950 to 2020 the town never left the band between 2,006 and 2,274, and never again counted below two thousand. One conflict inside the record is printed where it stands: Howard's Lincoln Township section gives a 1900 township population "including Walkerton 885" — but 885 is the town's 1890 count carried into a 1900 sentence; his towns entry prints the 1900 town figure as 1,037, agreeing with the bulletin, and the series governs the year. A contemporary estimate also stands outside the series, as the Story of Walkerton section prints it: Nicoles' 1,500 for 1907, a local informant's claim that the 1910 count of 1,003 does not support — the record of how the town felt about itself, not of how many it held.