The Storm Of The Century And The Towns That Disappeared

 

The outbreak started with twin tornadoes outside of Lisbon and Mount Vernon

June 3, 1860, was hot and sticky. Nothing unusual for an Iowa Sunday. Then the sky turned wrong.

 

The storm came out of nowhere. No warning. No time to think. Just a low, growing roar—like a freight train.

 

By the time it was over, over 150 people were dead. About a hundred in Iowa. Fifty more across the river in Illinois. The storm carved a 150-mile path from Cedar Rapids to Sterling in less than two hours. Entire towns—Camanche and Albany—were wiped out in minutes.

When Hobos Roamed Small Town Iowa

 

"Scoopshovel" Scotty McDougall & Boxcar Betty, Hobo King & Queen

Iowa used to have a steady flow of uninvited guests, and nobody considered it a problem.

 

They arrived by freight train, usually without a ticket and with a pretty casual attitude about schedules. They stepped off somewhere near town, stretched, and drifted in like they belonged.

 

People called them hobos. It wasn’t an insult. Just a job description without the job.

 

You didn’t have to go looking for them. They were just… around. Sitting near the tracks. Walking the gravel roads. Cutting across a field. They had a way of moving that didn’t match the rest of town—slower, but not lazy. Like they weren’t in a hurry because they didn’t have anywhere to be.

 

You’d see one now and then, rounding the corner or on your front step.

Early Iowa Breweries

 

An early Iowa brewery, circa 1850-1860

Here’s a snapshot of Iowa’s early brewing days, pulled from One Hundred Years of Brewing (1901).

Davenport got in early. Mathias Frahm opened the first brewery around 1848 or 1849. After that, things picked up fast. The Pacific Brewery went up in 1853. The Severance Ale Brewery followed. The Eagle Brewery showed up in 1858. Around the same time, the Arsenal Brewery opened its doors. For a while, it felt like everybody in town was brewing something.

After the Civil War, it kept growing. Julius Lehrkind built the Blackhawk Brewery, lost it to a fire, then turned around and built another one.

By the 1890s, things shifted. Bigger operations took over. Smaller breweries faded out. The Zoller Brothers built a new Black Hawk Brewery in 1892, and a lot of the earlier names quietly disappeared.

Who Remembers Riverboat Days On The Clinton Riverfront

 

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.

Morrill Marston Commandant of Fort Armstrong 1819-1821

Fort Armstrong at Rock Island

Morrill Marston served as commandant at Fort Armstrong from August 1819 to June 1821. After leaving Fort Armstrong, Marston became the commandant of Fort Edwards. His primary duty was to stop boats going up the river and search them for whiskey to ensure it did not get to the Indians.

After leaving the army when Fort Edwards was abandoned in 1824, he began farming near the fort. Unfortunately, Marston drowned in a drunken fit in 1831.

Fortunately for us, he penned a series of letters on the Sac and Fox customs to Reverend Jedidiah Morse in 1820. In addition, Marston said he talked with four of the principal chiefs of the two nations.

They called the land around Fort Armstrong Sen-i-se-po Ke-be-sau-lee or Rock River Peninsula. Government agents had been trying to get the tribes to relocate for some time but had no luck. A Fox chief told him they would not leave because their chiefs and friends were buried there.

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. 

Fat Men's Baseball Club Waterloo Iowa 1909

 

Frank C. Kee of Waterloo, Iowa, traveled the United States in 1909 and 1910, putting together the fat men’s baseball club. When he finished, the team had a combined weight of 4,487 pounds (about twice the weight of a Clydesdale horse). 

Although the team members were big, the Des Moines Register told its readers, there was nothing funny about the way they played baseball. “Their lining up at the lunch counter when out on the road,” said the paper, “is the immediate signal for the proprietor to send out for additional supplies.” 

 “Baby” Bliss, the first baseman, weighed in at 650 pounds and was thought to be the heaviest man in the world. E. Holm, the pitcher, weighed 350 pounds. J. A. Brownwell, the second baseman, weighed 400 pounds; outfielder Harry Vorwold weighed 325 pounds; shortstop Ed J. Sheean weighed 390 pounds, and W. B. Hinds, the third baseman, tipped the scale at 400 pounds. And strange as it may seem, Oliver Kimball, the umpire, was a teensy guy who stood 4 feet tall and weighed 138 pounds.