Stoneage Ramblings

By John R. Stone

Recently we took a few days and went down to Iowa to drive the Iowa segment of the Great River Road, the national scenic highway along the Mississippi River.

The river road doesn’t always follow the river closely, sometimes it is miles away actually, but then it pulls you back to the big river and the small, historic towns that are along the shore.

We actually started near Marquette just south of Effigy Mounds National Monument. That is an ancient native burial ground. It is interesting not only because it has mounds but that many mounds are shaped like bears or birds. In one spot are what are called the “marching bears,” 10 bear shaped mounds in a row.       

The mounds are thought to go back before the birth of Christ. They are all along the bluffs overlooking the river.

Heading out of Marquette one ends up on a ridge that rises several hundred feet above the river but is also above the farmland to the west. It moves away from the river but as one winds along the ridge the road goes through small settlements. It’s a windy road and worth the drive.

One small town was Bellevue that sits right on the rover’s edge. Most of the buildings on the main drag that parallels the river are 1880s brick buildings.

Little further down the road was Clinton which was the first big industry we saw but not the last for sure. ADM has a huge facility there, it seemed to be maybe a half mile long right on the river bank.

It makes sense, Iowa is corn country so processing a crop so a product can be shipped by river or by train is very practical. And when you think that when some of these businesses were founded we didn’t have a freeway system, the big freight avenues were the river or rail.

Another was LeClaire which has a couple of claims to fame. One is that it is the birthplace of Buffalo Bill Cody. Part of the local museum commemorates that. We’ve been to the Buffalo Bill Museum in Cody, Wyoming and this one does a good job of telling the Cody story and also other things. A river tug that survived 77 years on the river is there, too.

Another stop was the American Pickers store in LeClaire. American Pickers is the popular PBS television show featuring antique hunter Mike Frost. The store is actually fairly small, it is two buildings that look like brick garages from the outside. Maybe the total footage was half the size of Tom’s Market in Glenwood. There are some antiques for sale, some of Mike’s personal collection to view and a whole lot of American Pickers souvenir merchandise including towels, aprons, playing cards, postcards, stickers and more.

When one gets down to the quad cities the river turns west. One drives through Bettendorf and Davenport on the Iowa side while Moline and Rock Island sit on the Illinois side. This whole area is a major industrial center making such diverse things as aluminum sheeting and John Deere farm equipment.

We continued on following the river down to Keokuk, which is as far south as one can go without leaving Iowa.

We learned a couple of things on this trip. There is a map of the Great River Road put out by the government. It highlights things to see. There are also road signs that, for the most part, do a good job of keeping one on the road when turns come, highways used change or when you are going through a city.

But we also learned that having an Iowa highway map is very helpful. Sometimes it is hard to read the River Road map so by matching the two it is much easier to stay on the right path.

We traveled at the end of October. It was nice because there were no crowds and yet many museums were open. The Mississippi River Museum in Dubuque is a dandy and is a must see.

Have a happy and joyful Thanksgiving.