Tom's Tales: Along the River

It is one of the greatest rivers in the world, traveling over 2,320 miles from its source at Lake Itasca in Minnesota to the Gulf of Mexico at New Orleans. It is referred to the Mighty Mississippi and that nickname is due to its hard working nature with dams and levees that keep goods flowing up and downstream. Its tributaries are also hard working, one example being the Wisconsin River. The Wisconsin River meets the Mississippi at Prairie du Chien, WI, most notably at Wyalusing State Park which offers grand vistas, from the top of its wooded bluffs, of both rivers. This is the story of a overnight trip to Iowa on a small section along the river (about 57 river miles, from Effigy Mounds to Dubuque).

Dubuque, IA National Mississippi Museum and Aquarium

Rivers have helped form the United States more than any other nation on earth. Two features account for this. First, is the United States has more navigable waters than any other country, and a good part of that is due to orientation of our rivers--our nation's physical geography. While the Mississippi flows north to south, many of its tributaries are generally perpendicular, although many with an angle north. The simple breadth of the Mississippi watershed from western New York to eastern Montana shows how critical water pathways were to the second reason-- travel and development. Canals in the east often connected rivers. Much of the nation's first cities in the interior were on waterways, as it was the easiest form of travel for the early part of the life of the country. For example, Prairie du Chien can be dated back to as far as 17 June 1673 when Marquette and Joliet came down the Wisconsin River and entered the Mississippi, essentially setting the stage for it to be a trading post. Madison, WI, by contrast was founded in 1836. Water travel was an easy method of transportation and hence many cities built up along the shores. (The problem is there are so many backwaters on the river you really need to know what channel you are in.) Even Dubuque IA was first permanently occupied by a European in 1785. Bands of Native Americans lived and worked along the river establishing part time communities as they roamed sourcing food.

Tug boat used by a sand and gravel company to
push barges. Oct 20. A family and hired hands lived on the boat
National Mississippi River Museum and Aquarium

The Effigy Mound National monument, about five or six miles north of Marquette, IA, is a testament to Native American heritage in this important location. Water, trees, game, and minerals (lead) provided the required sustenance for food and housing. Sadly, as many effigy mounds that are preserved, it is thought many more have been lost. The mound construction at the Effigy Mound National Monument was accomplished by about twenty culturally related Indian tribes with mounds dating back 1400 to 750 years ago. The most prevalent shape is conical, but there are also good numbers of animal shapes, some over 400 feet in length. We did a hike to the top of a bluff overlooking the Mississippi to see several burial mounds. The mounds are thought by many archaeologists to have been choice hunting and gathering territory, although evidence is sparse making this mostly conjecture. Some mounds, however, are closer to river level, the Sny-Cagill mound group being one example. The Mississippi, due to both changes in precipitation and man-made alterations, sees an increase in water threatening some of the lower elevation mounds.

Effigy Mounds Oct 21
Effigy Mounds National Monument

Towns along the river, are subject to flooding too. Regardless, some have developed an almost mythical quality, enhanced by writers, such as Mark Twain. While much has been written about the Great River, even more has occurred on its waters and along its shores. The lore of the towns is told in its remaining infrastructure. Dubuque has massive old red brick buildings in its downtown, not far from the river, with beautiful old brick warehouses nearby. It is a testament to better economic times now past. A few old buildings have been repurposed, some into the National Mississippi River Museum and Aquarium. From old boats, to river aquatic life, from old machines that made the engines to ocean life, it is a great place to visit and learn. Each building has a story to tell of what came before and what has since occurred. Sprawl and big boxes often negatively affect such downtowns and it is rare to find some still thriving.

View of the Mississippi River, looking upstream Oct 21

As we passed through McGregor, IA to the Effigy Mound National Monument, my mind swept into a time to about 140 years ago when my great grandfather Martin Hovel would make the trip from Manly, IA to McGregor with a wagon full of wheat he and his wife had harvested. I suppose the wheat made a journey to a processing mill. Unlike Spillville, IA which had a few processing mills at the time, Manly has a rather level topography and thus lacks the streams to produce a good mill, and likely informed his travel of over 116 miles (present day quickest route; his journey at say 5 mph is a 24 hour journey, which required a week of travel). He may have been sending his wheat to a distant city by boat for sale. Yet, McGregor's downtown faced the river, with one side somewhat empty or a few old manufacturing or warehouses, and the other side still populated with the old downtown appearance of two or three story buildings up to the street edge with offices, shops and eateries. We don't do development in such compact forms anymore. While this method of development is infrequent today, there is an irony in how people tend to like the experience found in a traditional downtown, where meaning and walkability reigns over dispersion in an auto-centric development. Commercials for politicians or adverts for towns do not focus on the strip mall or the big boxes, but on a historic downtown.

Inn we stayed at, Guttenberg, IA
It is on the National Register of Historic Places.
One would have thought they could have tried a siding color
to match the limestone for the upper addition

The compact nature of many towns along the river was formed by both transportation (ie walking) and geography. Guttenberg, IA, where we spent the night, is a nice old small town of 1800 persons. Yet, it is fairly narrow, but it is long as it stretches in the flatter land between the river and the bluff which rises to its west, likely flat land that was formed by flooding of the river over many centuries. Like McGregor, it has a nice downtown. We stayed at an old button factory, which stamped buttons out of mollusks harvested from the river. The variety they punched and created was quite amazing. The building, was constructed out of locally quarried sandstone. A few other downtown buildings are out of sandstone, most, however, are out of red brick. The picturesque nature of the small towns is a testament to an age when development type mattered to meet the needs of individuals and families in a compact, walkable nature. Guttenberg's age is told in the buildings along the river. A small dingy restaurant, called the Fish Shack is appropriately named. Access is by creaking wood, unlevel stairs down to the river edge where the old fish shanty sits right on the bank with water right outside. I can imagine this as an old stopping point or a small fish market where fish were brought in and sold in the wooden structure that made up the shack. While we did not eat there, the food is highly ranked. There were four places to eat within two blocks north of where we stayed.

View from Effigy Mounds National Monument

Guttenberg appears almost nondescript as you travel on Hwy 52 along its western edge, where it sees today's cultural influences by having a marina and even a Kwik Star. They have a small brewery at the edge of downtown, in a site with a new constructed building, showing that the craft beer craze is even in IA. A couple blocks east of the brewery is the river, and this area forms Guttenberg's downtown, and its older section with an old Catholic Church, rectory, school and parish hall. Yet, there is evidence along 52 of an older city, such as a small restaurant in a white wood frame building, Rausch's cafe. The cafe, as my wife said, takes one back to a Norman Rockwell age. Its small counter was populated by elderly and a few middle aged persons. If you wanted coffee you served yourself. If you wanted the restrooms you had to walk outside to the backside of the building and hope it was unlocked. The grill and cooking station was visible from the counter. Rausch's claim to fame, which is memorialized on a bronze colored plaque on one of their chairs which I could see a table over from where we sat, was having played host to President Obama in August 2016. Small town America is present in Guttenberg, which I am sure is why Obama ate there. How better to indicate yourself as a man of the people than a small town in Iowa?

Above: View of downtown Guttenberg, looking to river,
the downtown also stretches north and south on a couple streets
Below: lunch counter at Rausch's Diner (courtesy of Toni) Oct 21
A real life Norman Rockwell type of scene

As we travelled the ridgetop of parts of Hwy 52 to Guttenberg, we both found an understated beauty in the rural landscape. Farmland of corn or harvested corn stalks contrasted with the green alfalfa in the contour cropping which draped down the hillsides, while the color of the hard wood trees provided an accent. All fit together in an Iowa version of an American quilt. As with Winneshiek County, there was little in the way of exurban sprawl as one finds in Dane County, or Waukesha County. This part of Iowa, like Winneshiek is part of the driftless area, better known in Wisconsin than in eastern Iowa. Bypassed by the Pleistocene glacier, it provides deep valleys where streams have cut away the limestone and sandstone bedrock layers.

North of Dubuque on Hwy 52, Oct 20

The unique physical geography creates a stunning visual backdrop to the river. The bluffs and ridges stand as a backdrop to the cultural geography of farms, small villages, and transportation structure to a time long past in a whirlwind America we find today. The physical geography also shaped and formed the cultural geography. The hamlets, small villages and cities have a skyline dominated by a church spire or two, perhaps joined by a grain elevator. Most communities we find today now lack a Rausch's cafe, with those being replaced by a Culver's or other fast food joint. As we outsourced production overseas, so to has the nation moved its retail to indistinct big boxes at the periphery of a city dominated not just by massive parking lots, but also by a Menard's green, a Walmart blue, or a Kohl's brown. Some of these retail manifestations now face their own difficulties as monster Amazon warehouses spread in strategic locations across the nation as online shopping dominates. It is heartening to know that we can find an America many of us baby boomers grew up within these small hamlets, villages and small cities of areas like rural Iowa. A nostalgia envelopes, reported by writers such as Mark Twain, but still present today as we visited sites and scenes along the river.