FORT DODGE, a city of Iowa, U.S.A., on the picturesque Des Moines river, 85m. N. by W. of Des Moines; the county seat of Webster county. It is on Federal highway 20, and is served by the Chicago Great Western, the Fort Dodge, Des Moines and Southern, the Illinois Central, and the Minneapolis and St. Louis railways. The population in 193o Federal censuY was 21,895. It has a large trade in grain, and is an important centre for the manufacture of gypsum and clay products, and various other articles. East of the city is a gypsum bed 5o sq.m. in area. Clay also abounds and coal is mined in the vicinity. The city has a commission form of government. Fort Dodge was settled late in the '4os. In 185o Fort Clarke was built to protect the settlers against the Indians, and in 185 i the name was changed, to honour Col. Henry Dodge (1782-1867). The fort was abandoned in 1853. In 1854 a town was laid out, and it was chartered as a city in 1869. In 1868 George Hall of Binghamton, N.Y., took a block of gypsum from the beds at Fort Dodge, carved it roughly in the shape of a human figure, and buried it near Cardiff, Onondaga county, New York, where it was "dis covered" by men digging a well in 1869. The "Cardiff giant" was exhibited in various parts of the country as a "petrified man" or a statue dating from prehistoric times, and was the subject of much discussion among scientists and scholars, until the hoax was exposed by Prof. Othniel C. Marsh of Yale, and the perpe trator confessed his part in it.