Clinton Iowa Riverboat Days Celebration

 

Riverboat Days crowd in the 1960s

Riverboat Days was one of those things you didn’t really think about… until it was gone.

If you lived anywhere near Clinton, you just knew. Late June, sliding into the Fourth, you were going down to the river. Didn’t matter if you planned it. You ended up there anyway.

It started in 1961. Didn’t look like much at first. Small-town festival stuff. A queen, a parade, some events, people figuring it out as they went.

In 1963, Gertrude—(maybe Georgene. The papers weren't sure.) Krogman—got crowned queen. A few years later, in 1966, Gertrude Lego took her turn. Same names popping up, same families, same faces. It still felt local.

But even then, they were swinging bigger than they probably should’ve.

That same 1963 festival had Phyllis Diller cracking jokes. Chicago White Sox players showed up. You had skydivers dropping in, water ski shows out on the river, soapbox derby races, fireworks at night, a carnival, and more food than anyone needed.

By the mid-60s, you could already see the cracks. In 1965, the guy running it admitted button sales weren’t where they needed to be. Said it might lose money again. Never a good sign.

Water acrobatics were a big part of the activities during Riverboat Days

That part never really changed. Still, people showed up.

By 1970, about 10,000 people packed the riverfront on the Fourth. For Clinton, that’s a crowd. That’s shoulder to shoulder, running into people you didn’t expect to see.

The festival settled into its rhythm after that. Three, maybe four days. For a short time it got up to six days. Right around the Fourth. Just long enough that you could go down two or three times and still find something you missed.

Everything hugged the river. Water on one side. Noise and lights on the other. Clinton is tied to that river whether or not it wants to be. Riverboat Days just made a show of it.

Daytime felt like organized chaos with kids bouncing from ride to ride. Parents trying to keep track of them and giving up halfway through. Lines for food that didn’t move fast, but nobody cared. You were already there. Might as well wait.

You smelled it before you saw it. Grease, sugar, something on a stick. Corn dogs. Funnel cakes. Cotton candy. Mini donuts. Homemade cookies and brownies at the bakery sale.

Then the sun went down, and the entire vibe changed. That’s when it woke up.Because the real draw wasn’t the rides. Or even the fireworks.

It was the music.

They weren’t messing around with just local bands. Riverboat Days brought in names people recognized. In the early days it was all country performers, but over time they rocked it.

Riverboat Days badges from 1963, 1964, and 1981

In the early ’70s, you had Jeannie C. Riley on stage. Tickets ran two bucks, maybe four if you wanted a better seat. Donna Fargo came through in ’73. Lynn Anderson played in ’74 over at the high school gym.

The badge prices crept up like they always do. A dollar in ’66. Dollar twenty-five by ’74. Two bucks by ’79. Later, it was twenty or thirty bucks for a fun card. Doesn’t sound like much now, but people noticed.

By the late ’70s, they started mixing in more acts. The Kendalls in ’78. Del Reeves and the Good Time Charlies in ’79. Lorrie Morgan before she was a name. A ten-hour battle of the bands for local groups. Ten hours. That tells you something right there. They were trying to keep everybody involved.

Then the bigger names started rolling in.

REO Speedwagon. More than once. Foreigner. Ted Nugent. Blue Öyster Cult. Kansas. Loverboy. Cheap Trick. The Doobie Brothers.

If you liked classic rock, you didn’t have to leave town.

Then country music took over more and more. Charlie Daniels. Diamond Rio. Sawyer Brown. Phil Vassar. Dierks Bentley. Jason Aldean. Garth Brooks passed through too, back when he was still climbing.

You still hear people say it. “Yeah, I saw him at Riverboat Days.” I still remember that show. He went on stage with Lorrie Morgan. Everyone was hot and sweaty, but no one complained. It was part of the show.

Concerts were usually down at Riverview Park. Lawn chairs everywhere. Blankets. People inching closer to the stage as it got darker and louder.

You couldn’t take five steps without hitting someone you knew. Half the time you forgot who you came with.

That was the whole point.

Country music star Reba McEntire performed at Riverboat Days in 1985

They kept adding weird stuff, too. Whatever might pull a few more people in.

In ’82, they had Vice President George Bush as grand marshal of the parade. Same year, they brought in a mud-wrestling group—the Chicago Knockers. Slime covered girls in teensy weensy bikinis. Seven thousand people showed up for that. And yes, the girls came back over and over again. They had amateur mud-wrestling matches some years, too. That was always fun for everyone.

By 1985, they were thinking big. Huge. Talking about 100,000 people over the weekend.

That year alone had the Nitty Gritty Dirt Band, Reba McEntire, The Lettermen, Billy “Crash” Craddock, Helen Cornelius. Tickets were still cheap. A buck, maybe two-fifty.

Into the ’90s, it just kept rolling. The Marshall Tucker Band in ’93. Nitty Gritty Dirt Band back again. Bobby Vee. The Shirelles. The Ricochettes.

’94 was packed with oldies. Gary Puckett and the Union Gap. John Kay and Steppenwolf. Jefferson Starship. Peter Noone (of Herman's Hermits fame). Eddie Rabbitt. In ‘95, you had ELO, Survivor, Patti Loveless, and a Beatles tribute band.

Something for everybody. That was always the idea.

Bungee jumping came to Riverboat Days in the early 1990s. People lined up at $55 a jump.

In the early ’90s, they set up this big steel rig for bungee jumping. Just dropped it right into the middle of everything. You’d be walking along and see someone flying up in the air over the crowd.

In ’92, they charged fifty-five bucks a jump. People paid it. Lines didn’t stop. That tells you how big it was. A not so cheap adrenaline rush you could talk about for years.

For a long stretch, Riverboat Days felt like it was never going away. People came from all over. Eastern Iowa. Western Illinois. Hotels filled up. Bars made their money for the month in a weekend.

If you moved out of Clinton, that was when you came back.

Then everything fell apart.

Same old story. Costs going up. Bands getting more expensive. More festivals popping up within driving distance. More choices.

People started complaining about the prices. You’d hear it standing in line.

“Not worth it this year.”

“Let’s just go one night.”

The crowds didn’t disappear. They just got thinner. By the 2000s, you could feel it.

They still had decent acts. Three Dog Night came back in 2004. The Doobie Brothers played. Lonestar too. 2005 leaned hard into country—Charlie Daniels, Diamond Rio, and Dierks Bentley.

But people were noticing the difference.

One woman said it flat out. It used to be fun when she was a kid. Another said it used to be packed. Not anymore.

2007 still had name bands. Cheap Trick. Kansas. Jason Aldean. In 2009, Survivor and Loverboy headlined.

It didn’t matter. Attendance remained low. Organizers started talking about changing things. Scaling back. Trying something new.

In 2010, it was smaller. You could see it right away. In 2011, it was even more stripped down. Just fireworks and a parade. That was about it.

They said the same thing every time. Ticket sales were down. Budgets were tight. Not enough volunteers.

One of the board guys admitted that they didn’t have the money to do it right anymore. Maybe someday they could bring it back.

Maybe.

The last Riverboat Days was 2012. Then it just… stopped.

After that, they tried other things. Smaller festivals. New ideas. Nothing stuck the same way. Because Riverboat Days wasn’t just one thing. It was all of it at once.

The noise. The crowd. Music drifting across the river at night. Running into people you hadn’t seen in years. Hanging around longer than you meant to because you didn’t feel like leaving.

For a few days, the whole town lit up.

Now it’s just stories.

“Remember when…”

That’s how it always starts.

Then it’s concerts. Fireworks. The crane. Who you saw. Who you ran into. How packed it used to get.

That’s how you know it mattered. Not because it lasted fifty years. But because people still talk about it.

If you’ve ever said, “I remember that place”… this blog is for you.

 

I dig up the stories, the lost stores, the old Iowa you don’t see anymore. No clickbait. No junk. Just real nostalgia.

 

If you enjoy it, consider tossing a few bucks in the donation slot. It helps keep this thing going.

 

 Buy me a Big Gulp / Support Retro Iowa