Dubuque Christmas Market

The Christmas market on Main Street always arrived early in Dubuque. It didn’t sneak in. It simply appeared one morning, as if dropped there by a tired hand. By the 1860s, everyone expected it. By the 1890s, nobody could imagine December without it.

The Dubuque Herald tried to explain the thing every year. It usually gave up by the second paragraph. Crowds were too big, smells too mixed, vendors too hopeful. “Main Street bustles with the commerce of the season,” the paper wrote in one of its calmer years, leaving the rest to the reader.

 

The smell was the first sign. Pine wreaths stacked in carts. Wet horses cooling in the snow. Oysters that had traveled too far, too fast, and looked a little startled by the journey. The Herald said, “A mild aroma accompanies the oyster barrels.” Mild was one word for it.

George Wallace Jones Dubuque Iowa Miner Politician

George Wallace Jones was born in 1804, when the world was still figuring out what it wanted to be. He came to Dubuque when it was more mud than map. Men swung picks for lead and prayed they didn’t find bullets instead. The Sauk and Fox still owned the mines. Half the town dug for fortune, the other half dug graves. Jones tried both.He had an easy smile and a fast tongue, the kind that made people forget how dangerous he was. He could sell sand to a riverboat man and have him thank him for it. When the miners started coughing up their lungs, Jones bought their land. That’s how he got rich.

Politics was just another kind of digging. He went from miner to delegate to senator without breaking stride. Washington liked him for a while. He wore good clothes, told good stories, and didn’t scare the ladies. Then the country split in two, and Jones picked the wrong half.

He said it was about “states’ rights.” Maybe it was. Maybe it wasn’t. The war came. His friends wrote from the Confederacy, and he wrote back. The government called it treason and locked him up. He said it was a mistake. Maybe it was.

When he came home, Dubuque had grown up without him. The saloons were quieter, the streets cleaner. He was still loud and proud, walking around like he expected a parade. No one threw one. People nodded when he passed, then went back to their business.

Main Street Dubuque, Iowa Circa 1920s

Main Street, looking north from Eighth Street. Dubuque, Iowa. (cira 1920s, from a vintage postcard)

Who's Haunting the Hotel Julien in Dubuque Iowa

Hotel Julien (circa 1930)

There’s something strange going on at the Hotel Julien in Dubuque, Iowa. It doesn’t look haunted at first glance, but if you spend the night—look out—because you just might meet Public Enemy No. 1.

Locals say it’s haunted by the ghost of Al Capone. He rolled into town in the 1920s, and took over the entire eighth floor. His men spread out like killer bees, patrolling the hallways, their jackets bulging where guns hid.

Some say he owned the place, or had a stake in it. The hotel had been struggling for years. Then overnight, it was transformed into the finest joint in town. Suspicions, yes—but people understood, curiosity could buy you a case of lead poisoning.

Then, as quickly as he came, Al Capone disappeared—back to Chicago, and a fast-growing empire of booze, women, and bullets. But something stayed behind.

Rockdale Iowa Flood of 1876

Centennial parade in Dubuque, Iowa, July 4, 1876

It was America’s hundredth birthday — a loud, sweaty carnival of self-congratulation. Dubuque was drunk on patriotism and beef fat. Main Street looked like a fever dream of George Washington with arches everywhere, bunting flapping, men in hats shouting nonsense about liberty. “Hayden’s Battery preceded the car of 1776,” somebody wrote, as if that meant anything. Every man was a patriot, every woman a flag, and every kid sticky with pie and gunpowder.

 The Germania Band blared while Holman’s Cavalry clomped down the avenue, followed by grim men pretending this was still about freedom and not about eating their body weight in ribs. Fireworks cracked overhead, and somewhere a brass band struck up something heroic and off-key. It was all very grand, very human, very doomed.

 

Then, as it always does, nature got bored. The sky rolled its eyes and said, enough already. A few polite raindrops fell on the arms of drunks and dancers. Nothing serious, just a quiet warning from the gods. Nobody listened. They never do. They mounted up and rode home to Rockdale, two miles west — a one-saloon village tucked in a gorge, the place where lightning likes to linger.