Iowa Nearly Destroyed America's First Cross-country Highway

(Denison Review. May 19, 1915)

The first time America built a road across the country, Iowa nearly swallowed it whole.

Cars got buried in mud. Bridges collapsed. Drivers slept beside the road. Men with horses and shovels fought rain, dust, heat, and freezing weather to carve a highway through the middle of Iowa. Some never made it home.

Today, you can fly across Iowa on Interstate 80 without thinking twice. Air conditioning blasting. Cruise control on. Coffee in the cupholder.

The Lincoln Highway opened in 1913. The idea sounded ridiculous at the time — one road running across the country from New York to California. Most Americans had never traveled farther than the next town over. Many Iowa farmers still trusted horses more than automobiles.

When the highway opened, people started talking about driving across the country.

What Every Iowa School Lunch Tasted Like

 

The lunch ladies always knew your name.

The trays were beige.

The milk was ice cold.

Everything smelled faintly like bleach, mashed potatoes, and cafeteria pizza.

If you grew up in Iowa anytime from the 1960s through the 1990s, school lunch wasn’t just food. It was part of childhood. Some meals were incredible. Some were borderline punishments. Most of them tasted exactly the same no matter what town you lived in.

The weird part?

Almost all of us miss it now.

Fur Traders And Their Posts In The Iowa Country After 1824

 

Sac and Fox hunters trapping beaver along an Iowa stream

By the 1820s, the fur trade was everywhere in the Iowa country. Rivers turned into highways. Canoes, keelboats, and trading boats traveled up and down the Mississippi carrying furs, lead, whiskey, blankets, traps, and trade goods.

Money drove everything. Beaver pelts. Otter skins. Deer hides. Muskrat. Lead from the Dubuque mines. Traders hauled it south to St. Louis where fortunes could be made fast. Some men got rich. Plenty more went broke trying.

George Davenport became one of the biggest traders on the Upper Mississippi. He built posts across eastern Iowa and traveled from village to village, buying furs from Native hunters. Russell Farnham worked the same country for John Jacob Astor’s American Fur Company. By the mid-1820s, Astor’s company took over many of its smaller competitors.

The Sac, Fox, Sioux, Winnebago, and Ioway were the key players in the Iowa country. Hunting grounds mattered. So did old rivalries. When tribes went to war, traders lost money. Camps emptied. Hunting parties disappeared. Rumors could wreck an entire season.

Fur Trade in Iowa, 1818 to 1824 - George Davenport, Russell Farnham, American Fur Company

 

George Davenport

In the early 1800s, the fur trade exploded across the Iowa country. Rivers became highways. Canoes, keelboats, and trading boats moved along the Mississippi.

 

Furs meant money. Beaver. Otter. Muskrat. Deer hides. Lead from the Dubuque mines. Everything got packed onto boats and shipped south to St. Louis.

 

George Davenport was one of the biggest traders in the region. He built trading posts across eastern Iowa and traveled from camp to camp, buying furs from Native hunters. Sometimes on horseback. Sometimes by canoe. Sometimes on foot. It just depended on the season.

 

Russell Farnham worked the region for John Jacob Astor’s American Fur Company. Astor’s company was growing fast by the 1820s. Bigger than almost everyone else. The company pushed into the Upper Mississippi Valley and slowly crushed smaller traders.

 

The Sac, Fox, Sioux, Winnebago, and Ioway tribes were all part of the trade. Hunting grounds mattered. Trade routes mattered. Wars between tribes could wreck business fast.

 

Government officials tried to control trade with licenses and laws, but it didn’t work very well. Whiskey smuggling was everywhere. Traders ignored the rules when money was involved.

Building And Abandonment of Fort Madison

 

Fort Madison (from an old print)

Fort Madison was doomed before the first log hit the ground.

 

The Americans came in 1808. Boats sliding up the Mississippi. Soldiers carrying axes, muskets, and orders from Washington. Build a fort. Hold the frontier. Control the river.

 

The problem was that the fort sat deep inside Sac and Fox territory. American officers called it a trading post. Black Hawk and his followers saw an invasion.

 

The tension never let up. Warriors watched from the trees. Soldiers watched from the walls. Every sound made men reach for their muskets.

 

Then the attacks came.

 

Gunfire from the hills. Fire arrows across the night sky. Burning chunks of wood roasted the rooftops inside the fort. Soldiers filled their muskets with water, using them like syringes to douse the flames.

 

Realizing there was no way to save the fort, the soldiers planned their escape.

 

They dug a trench from the fort to the river. Then crawled through the dirt as the fort burned. At the river, they climbed into boats and disappeared into the darkness.

 

By morning, Fort Madison was gone.

 

The passage below was published in the Iowa Journal of History and Politics in April 1914, as part of “Forts in the Iowa Country” by Jacob van der Zee.

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.