A Peek At Davenport And Stevenson In 1837

Colonel George Davenport

(Here’s a fun look at Davenport and Stevenson (Rock Island) in 1837. Stevenson had 35 buildings, and Davenport had 15. The army had abandoned Fort Armstrong on Rock Island the previous year. It had seven houses. The article was published in The Miner’s Express (Dubuque, Upper Wisconsin Territory). July 15, 1837.)

The Editor of the Peoria Register, in giving an account of a journey which he and others made from the Upper Mississippi down to this place, thus speaks of the country on Rock River in the vicinity of Rock Island:

 

The country around Rock Island is indescribably beautiful, and is not excelled, if equaled, by any spot in the United States. To the beautiful in nature will soon be added all the attractions of art. The germ of two cities, within hail of each other, is expanding, and in a few years, they will rival in magnitude any upon the Upper Mississippi. They are Stevenson and Davenport, and to them will probably in time be added a third on Rock Island.

 

Stevenson was laid off in August 1835 by the county court (Rock Island) as the seat of justice. Five houses were erected that year. It now contains 35, of which 6 are stores and 2 are taverns. At the sale in ’35, choice river-lots brought 220 dollars, and those near the public or court-house square 150; at a sale in September ’36, the same river lots brought 500, and the court-house lots 350.—Now, (Dec. ’36) Choice river lots are held at 2000, 1500 having been offered and refused. Fifty houses, it is supposed, will go up next summer.

Mark Twain Comes to Davenport, Iowa. Not Everyone Is Impressed

 

Mark Twain came to Iowa in January 1869 with a lecture about his travels abroad. Iowa had a few things to say about him, too. Depending on which newspaper you read, he was a fine entertainer, a humbug, or a loose collection of arms and legs that occasionally leaned against a desk.

The editor of the Iowa City Republican wasn’t buying the act. As the Muscatine Journal reported, he complained, “It was impossible to know when he was talking in earnest and when in burlesque.” He wouldn’t give “two cents to see him again.” Twain’s habit of leaving people unsure whether he was serious worked better on some customers than others.

 

The next day, Twain gave the Clinton House a performance of its own. His room didn’t have a bell-pull, the cord a guest could use to summon service. Twain made up for the missing equipment by yelling at the top of his lungs. Whether the Iowa City editor would have paid two cents for that performance is unknown, but Twain seems to have cleared up any confusion about when he was talking in earnest.

 

In Davenport, his lecture at the Burris Opera House turned from hotel accommodations to the wider world. The subject was The Vandal Abroad, and the material included Columbus and an Egyptian mummy. One account explained: “He gave a ludicrous history of Columbus and the Egyptian Mummy, to which he was introduced at Rome and Genoa. He didn’t like the mummy, preferring a fresh corpse.”

St Ambrose College Advertisement 1907

Here's a great look at St. Ambrose College in Davenport in 1907. Check out the tuition . . . $200 for an entire year. 

And check out the inducements to attend ... Large building ... well shaded ... athletic feild ... full band and orchestra.

The school was celebrating its 27th year.

(Advertisement from The Davenport Democrat and Leader. August 19, 1907)

Neustadts Department Store Had A Short But Good Run In Davenport

(The Daily Times. April 22, 1913)

If you needed a suit in Davenport in 1913, Dave Neustadt wanted you to come to Second and Main.

His family’s new clothing store opened May 1 in the Putnam Building. It had the ground floor, the basement, and a corner that was hard to miss. You could shop for a suit, boys’ clothes, shoes, and the little things that finished an outfit.

 

R. M. Neustadt had begun the business with a one-room clothing shop in La Salle, Illinois. By the time the family came to Davenport, it also had a store in Decatur. Davenport made three.

 

The sons divided the work. Dave ran Davenport. His brother G. A. managed La Salle and handled advertising for the stores. Another brother, B. R., managed Decatur. R. M. remained the head of the family business.

 

For its opening, Neustadt invited people in for music and souvenirs. There were no sales that evening. You could look around, meet the people running the place, and come back to spend your money the next day.

 

Plenty of people apparently did. The Davenport store added departments, eventually taking space on the second floor. Dave and his wife became a familiar name around town, involved in civic and fraternal groups. He and his family lived on East Eleventh Street.

Pretty Baby Girls from The Passing Show of 1916 On Stage At The Burtis In Davenport

(The Davenport Democrat and Leader. May 6, 1917)

Davenport had some big city entertainment in 1917 when the Pretty Baby Girls from “The Passing Show of 1916” appeared on stage at the Burtis.

“More pretty girls, more beautiful and startling costumes, tuneful music, dancers, singers and comedians, are crowded into the entertainment, than has ever been presented by any previous attraction bearing the Winter Garden label,” read the story in the Davenport Democrat and Leader.  

“In the matter of feminine beauty and what is ‘Passing Show’ without feminine beauty?—there is a quality and variety to suit the most critical demander.”

The Davenport Aviation School An Early Chapter In iowa Aviation

 

(Davenport Democrat and leader. July 2, 1917)

The Davenport Aviation School opened with a war plane, a crowd, and big plans on July 4, 1917.

 

Nine weeks later, its manager was dead, its test pilot was lying badly injured in a Davenport hospital, and the school was finished.

 

By the end of September, workers were hauling the company’s airplane-building machinery out of Davenport and moving it to Bettendorf. Not long after that, the business disappeared.

 

It had come apart almost as quickly as it had come together.

 

But for a short time in 1917, Davenport wasn’t just trying to teach people how to fly. A group of local businessmen, mechanics, and aviators thought they could build airplanes there. They opened a factory, hired draftsmen and aircraft workers, designed their own machines, and flew them over the city.

 

They even talked about military airplanes as the United States was entering World War I.

 

The best known of those machines was King Boreas.

 

It was built in Davenport and advertised as a 90-mile-an-hour “Army Tractor.” Newspapers called it a war plane. The company said more airplanes were already under construction.

Davenport Actress Helen Keener

 

Helen Keener (pencil drawing after an early newspaper photo)

Helen Keener grew up in Davenport, Iowa, where she attended Lincoln School.

 

In 1921, at age 16, she won a national beauty contest sponsored by the Chicago Tribune.

 

Within a few years, she was in California, posing for publicity photographs. Trying to turn a beauty contest into a living. Hollywood had plenty of pretty girls. The trick was being one they remembered after the picture came down.

 

Keener did all right.

 

Her first feature was The Married Flapper in 1922, starring Marie Prevost and Kenneth Harlan. Keener played Muriel Vane. The title tells you all you need to know about what the studios were selling. Flappers were hot. So was youth. Pretty young women photographed well and cost little.

 

Keener fit the bill.

 

Early on, she worked under the name Barbara Worth. As Worth, she appeared in An Old Sweetheart of Mine in 1923. Other pictures followed, including The Brass Bottle and Tea—with a Kick!

Who Remembers Wacky Waters Water Park in Davenport?

 

Wacky Waters was the place where your parents handed you twenty bucks at 10 in the morning and basically said, “Good luck surviving.”

Then they disappeared for six hours.

The park opened in Davenport in 1984, off Interstate 80, and for Quad Cities’ kids it quickly became the greatest place on earth besides maybe Aladdin’s Castle at the mall.

Before Wacky Waters, summer mostly meant sweating in somebody’s backyard kiddie pool while mosquitoes carried off small pets.

Then suddenly there were water slides. Not normal water slides either. These things looked like they’d been designed by a man who hated chiropractors.

The Daredevil and Thunderbolt towers were gigantic. At least they felt gigantic when you were nine and wearing jelly sandals. You’d stand at the bottom staring up while another kid shot out the end like a human missile and skipped across the water face first.

Official American And British Accounts Of The Battle Of Credit Island

 

Major Zachary Taylor

I’ve included several accounts of the Battle of Credit Island on this site. The following accounts were written by—Major Zachary Taylor and Lieutenant Duncan Graham (British Army).

 

The info is reprinted from Mersey, William A.. “Credit Island, 1814-1914.” Journal of the Illinois State Historical Society. January 1915. P. 359-368.

 

American Expedition to Wipe Out Saukenuk

 

There was nothing to hinder Indian depredations in the Upper Mississippi Valley. St. Louis was the farthest northern and western point where an American Army was located. It was decided that the Indian Village at Rock River (The Sac near its mouth and the Fox on the west side of the Mississippi opposite the lower end of Rock Island) should be destroyed. Major Zachary Taylor, with a detachment of three hundred and thirty-four men in eight large fortified keel boats, left Cap Au Gris on the 23rd of August, and on the evening of September 5th, reached Rock River. On his arrival, Indians in large number made their appearance. After they had passed the mouth of Rock River, the wind began to blow a hurricane, and Taylor’s boats were blown toward the small island above Credit Island, where about four o’clock a landing was made.

Zachary Taylor’s Worst Day? The Chaotic Battle of Credit Island

 

Zachary Taylor

The upper Mississippi River was a dangerous place to be wearing an American uniform in the fall of 1814.

The British controlled Prairie du Chien. Sauk and Fox warriors controlled the area around the Rock River. American settlements farther south lived with constant rumors of raids, ambushes, and attacks. St. Louis was about as far north as American power reached. Beyond that, things got shaky fast.

So, the American Army hit back.

Major Zachary Taylor loaded 334 men into eight fortified keelboats and pushed north up the Mississippi in late August 1814. The mission was simple enough on paper: move toward Rock River, destroy the Sauk and Fox villages, burn corn supplies, and remind everybody who controlled the river.

The farther north Taylor went, the more warriors appeared along the shoreline. Canoes slipped back and forth across the river, and men watched from the trees.

Taylor noticed horses near the shore and smelled trouble, saying they were “doubtless placed” there to lure American troops into landing parties. He wasn’t wrong. The Sauk and Fox knew where boats could land, where sandbars sat hidden under the water, and where a man could disappear into the willows, never to be seen again.

Black Hawk Beer As The Medicine of Choice?

The Daily Times. April 15, 1914.

If you stood on Davenport’s west side a hundred years ago and caught a whiff of warm grain, smoke, and something vaguely cheerful in the air, congratulations—you were downwind of a brewery.

One of the big names was Black Hawk.

Black Hawk Brewery opened sometime around 1865, when America was finishing a civil war and apparently decided the next order of business was beer. Julius Lehrkind, a German-born brewer, was an early owner. That made sense. Germans all over the Midwest were quietly improving local life one lager at a time.

Davenport was the perfect town for brewing. It had river traffic, railroads, factories, and a healthy population of people who’d worked all day and didn’t need to be talked into a drink.

Like many old businesses, Black Hawk never sat still. Names changed. Ownership changed. Buildings were added whenever money appeared.

The Independent Brewing and Malting Co. plant near 1801 West 3rd Street was a serious operation. It had cellars, bottling works, rail connections, wagons moving in and out, and all the machinery necessary to dominate the local market.

They kept selling Black Hawk beer. Customers already liked the label; only a fool would toss it aside.

Buffalo Bill's Wild West Show Comes To Davenport July 9, 1913

The Daily Times. July 8, 1913.

Buffalo Bill brought his Wild West Show to Davenport on July 9, 1913, and gave the city a front-row seat to the Old West.

The show had played in Moline on July 8, then crossed the river for a July 9 stop in Davenport. The grounds were set up on Telegraph Road next to the baseball field, but the real action started downtown.

Thousands packed the streets for the parade. Kids climbed curbs. Men tipped hats. Women craned their necks for a better look. Leading the procession were Buffalo Bill and Pawnee Bill.

The parade had about everything you could imagine. Cowboys, cowgirls, ropers, riders, old stagecoaches, soldiers, and performers from all over the world. A cowboy band played on horseback. Mexican Rurales rode in formation. Elephants and camels lumbered along behind them.

Native American performers were a major draw. Iron Cloud led the procession. Reports said he had been twelve years old at the time of Custer’s defeat at Little Big Horn in 1876. Another man, Yellow Hand, was the son of a chief who fought there.

The Davenport Democrat and Leader called it “a pleasing blending of the Wild West.”

After the parade, everybody headed for the showgrounds. The afternoon performance kicked off at 1 p.m. The evening show opened at 8.

Neustadt's Deptatment Store Davenport Dave Neustadt

 

The Daily Times. July 11, 1913.

This was a new one on me. I'm guessing it was a department store that featured clothing and shoes, but I wasn't able to find much about it online. What I like best is the picture of the building and the owner, Dave Neustadt. The store was located on the corner of Second and Main Street in Davenport.

Denkman Lumber Yards Fire Davenport 1901

 

(Davenport Democrat. August 7, 1901)

The largest fire in Davenport’s history swept through the city’s riverfront district on July 26, 1901. Twenty acres of homes and businesses were swept away in the conflagration.

The Weyerhaeuser and Denkmann Lumber Yards were burned to the ground. Two hundred people lost their homes, and nearly one hundred eighty men at the lumber yard lost their jobs. 

“A strong wind fanned the flames, reported The Moline Dispatch. “They shot hundreds of feet into the air. Then, they jumped across streets and alleys and rushed forward with the force of a monster blast furnace.”

Everything from the foot of Federal Street to Oneida Street lay in ruins. The flames were so hot that the rails melted, and the ends flung themselves in the air like “snakeheads.” They stood up over a foot in some places. All that remained of the wooden sidewalks were ashes.

The telephone lines were out for nearly a week as the company raced to replace the burned poles and restring its wires. The trolley line replaced two blocks of tracks, most of the poles and wires that powered their lines, and railroad traffic was disrupted for weeks.

The bricks on East River Street were gone from their places, “as though they had popped out of their beds like so much corn.” Many more bricks were shattered, most likely from the cold water thrown on them. 

Antoine Le Claire The Fur Trader Who Became The Richest Man In Iowa

 

Antoine Le Claire started his life as an Indian trader and interpreter. After the Black Hawk War, Le Claire launched his second career as a town builder.

At first, he worked as a jack of all trades. Le Claire became the first justice of the peace in Iowa in 1833. The following year, he established a ferry service between Stephenson (present-day Rock Island) and Davenport. On April 19, 1836, Le Claire became the first postmaster of Davenport. Early accounts say he carried the mail in his coat pockets.

After the City of Davenport was laid out in 1836, a steamboat loaded with investors arrived at Davenport in time for the sale, but fewer lots were sold than expected. At best, fifty or sixty lots sold, and then, for lower prices than expected. The new city was off to a slow start and would continue at that pace for nearly a decade.

From all accounts, Le Claire cultivated his town much as a farmer would his fields, watering it and adding a touch of fertilizer when necessary. Everything written about Antoine Le Claire referred to his generous nature. “Mr. Le Claire is a wealthy man,” reported the Rock Island Weekly Argus, “and he knows what use to make of his wealth. Mr. Le Claire has always been the first on the list in every enterprise intended to benefit the town and state in which he lives.”

When the town was laid out, Le Claire set aside Lafayette Square for a courthouse. Several other lots were provided for parks and playgrounds. He donated land or money to build many churches in Davenport and gave an entire block on Main and West Fourth Streets for St. Anthony’s, the first church in Davenport.

Before He Became President Ronald Reagan Was A DJ At WOC In Davenport

Before the speeches, before Hollywood, before anyone ever called him “Mr. President,” Ronald Reagan was just a young guy trying to get a job during the Great Depression.

He didn’t have a master plan. No five-year vision. No idea he’d end up in the White House someday. He just had a friendly voice, a little confidence, and the willingness to walk into a radio station and say, “I think I can do this.”

Somehow, that worked.

He landed in Davenport at WOC radio, and like most first jobs, it wasn’t glamorous. Early radio wasn’t slick or polished. It was closer to organized chaos. Equipment was finicky. Scripts were loose. And if something went wrong, you were already on the air when you found out.

WOC had a reputation, though. The Palmer family ran it, and they enjoyed pushing things forward—new tech, new programming, and fresh voices. That also meant expectations were higher than you’d expect for a Midwestern station in the 1930s.

So, if you bombed, people noticed.

Black Hawk's Watch Tower Outing Resort Moline

(The Daily Times. June 24, 1905)

This advertisement for Black Hawk's Watch Tower amusement park in Moline, Illinois, was published in The Daily Times on June 24, 1905.

Free admission. Free movies. Free concerts. And a roller coaster to compete with the new one at Suburban Park in Davenport. I didn't see a price listed here, but from what I've seen elsewhere, rides were 25 cents and the lines were out of this world.

Roller Coaster at Suburban Island Davenport

(Davenport Democrat and Leader. April 9, 1905)

The Davenport Democrat and Leader printed this picture of the roller coaster that was to be erected at Suburban Park in April 1905. The roller coaster was purchased from the Ingersol Park Company in Pittsburg, Pennsylvania at a cost of $16,500.

The coaster was seventy feet high and ninety feet wide, and had a total length of nearly 300 feet. The paper said readers could view three cities from the top of the roller coaster. 

It was to be erected north and west of the pavillion and was expected to be in operation by June 1.

Balkan Princess At The Burtis Theater Davenport 1913

 

Colorized image, showing the cast of The Balkan Princess

The Balkan Princess was performed at the Burtis Opera House on March 30, 1913. The Daily Times descibed it as a "bubbling musical comedy." It was filled with sentiment and happiness and told the story of the romance between Princess Stephanie of Balavia and Grand Duke Sergius. 

Davenport Police Motorcycle Patrol 1914

Motorcycle police officers Edwin Blackhan and John Bryant

 In the spring of 1913, the Davenport Police Department tried something new.

 

Automobiles were multiplying, drivers were testing the limits of speed, and the old methods—foot patrols and horse officers—couldn’t always keep up. So the department bought a motorcycle.

 

The plan was simple. A motorcycle officer would remain near the station house. When an emergency call came in, he was dispatched, racing through city streets faster than any patrol wagon could manage.

 

The first motorcycle officer was Charles Boettcher. He set the pace for the new experiment, proving that two wheels and a powerful engine could change the way a city was policed. When Boettcher moved up to detective work, Olaf Dahlquist took his place.

 

By 1914, the motorcycle squad had become indispensable. The Davenport Democrat and Leader said the department would be “lost” without its motorcycle officers. Speeding automobiles—sometimes called “auto speed maniacs”—were becoming a menace. The department answered with a machine built to match them.

 

They chose a Flying Merkle, a powerful motorcycle capable of reaching 55 to 60 miles per hour. That speed made it more than a novelty. It made it a weapon against reckless driving. As the department put it, a “motorcycle cop is the only effectual solution of the auto speed maniac problem.” It took a high-powered car to escape a motorcycle man, and few drivers owned one.

 

In the spring of 1914, two officers carried the city’s motorcycle duties. Edwin Blackhan handled the daytime shift. John Bryant took the night watch.

 

What began as a simple experiment quickly proved its worth. Within a year, Davenport’s motorcycle patrol wasn’t just a curiosity. It was essential. And plans were in the works to add another cycle.