Tranquility is a camp-follower of war. There are places, though, where it takes a little longer to arrive. This is one of them. These few miles along the Mississippi River have been a point of contention at least as far back as the Revolutionary War. Here, soldiers torched the homes of Indians, river pilots battled treacherous rapids, steamboat owners fought railroad magnates for shipping supremacy, farmers struggled to plow the prairie. Civil War soldiers, on both sides of the conflict, simply died.
If the Quad Cities are placid now, it’s because they’ve earned their rest — and the right to offer a peaceful weekend to visitors.
This aggregate of border towns — Rock Island and Moline in Illinois, Davenport and Bettendorf in Iowa — straddles the Mississippi where it welcomes the waters of the Rock River. It’s the kind of place where your hardest decision will be whether to have another slice of honey-puff pancakes at Fulton’s Landing Guest House; your longest wait will be in the line of easy-going families ready to climb into the cab of a combine at the John Deere Pavilion; and the most you’ll pay for gas is $1.02, unless you’re too complacent to shop around.
Away from the riverbank, years of growth have brought shopping malls, a couple of zoos and several small museums, but the oldest and the newest draws are along the river, and there’s no better guide to them than the Mississippi itself.
The deck of the Celebration Belle is a lazy way to make acquaintance with features along, and points beyond, either bank. The boat is new, launched just this summer, and eases into the river’s main channel as if the water had always been this calm. But before the Army Corps of Engineers began building locks and dams, this part of the Mississippi, the 15 miles of it between LeClaire and Davenport, snarled and churned its way down a bed called the Rock Island Rapids.
LeClaire, Iowa, up river from where you board the Belle in Moline and not on today’s 1 1/2-hour cruise, should have been one of the Quads. Captains once would stop at LeClaire until they could hire a rapids pilot, just to steer their boats through this dangerous section. Many of these men built homes that still stand. They’re occupied, but you can try a curbside driving tour.
Take U.S. Highway 67 north from Interstate Highway 80, and that will put you into LeClaire, upon Cody Road and on course to the Buffalo Bill Museum, a mom-and-pop affair at the Mississippi’s edge. There’s precious little of native son William F. Cody in here. At least at the Cody Homestead, farther away, you can tour the two-story 1847 limestone farmhouse he lived in as a boy. The house has kept its original walnut floors, but the place is air-conditioned now.
Back in LeClaire, what the Buffalo Bill Museum does have is a relic of bygone river days, the beached hulk of the Lone Star, last of the wood-hulled paddlewheelers. It sits, paint peeling, planks curling, smelling of the rusting iron and green vines that are overtaking it, mere feet from the river it once proudly charted. The surrounding barbed-wire fence has done a poor job of thwarting the twin vandals of time and weather.
Farther down the Iowa shore, time and loving hands have been kinder to The Abbey. What is now a AAA four-diamond Bettendorf hotel listed on the National Register of Historic Places was originally a monastery. These sand-colored walls, crowned with crosses, angels and a shining dome, encompass a chapel that’s popular for weddings.
Next to the Village of East Davenport — that’s a weathered neighborhood of boutiques and cafes in Davenport proper — low bluffs face the Mississippi in Lindsey Park. From its tree-shaded benches, you can catch the breeze and views of the river.
Another vantage point is at Fulton’s Landing, a Davenport B&B, now on the National Register of Historic Places. It was built on high ground overlooking the Mississippi by the brother of steamboat inventor Robert Fulton. The 1871 stone mansion has a second-story porch, and the wooden railing is fitted with a big, brass telescope. Look through it, across the river — about 1/4 mile wide at this point — and you can make out details on the Col. George Davenport House Historic Site, over there on Arsenal Island.
Poor Col. Davenport. The home he built here in 1833 attracted river bandits, seven of them, who tortured and killed him becauste they thought he had a stash of gold. The house has been restored and now needs two air-conditioning units to cool those who come for tours. And there’s a helipad close by. Pictures of the restoration are among the displays in the Rock Island Arsenal Museum.
This museum on Arsenal Island is small, with the dry smell of antiques in a attic. Primarily, it is a tribute to modern weaponry; it’s a government arsenal, after all. Among a blur of serial numbers and ID tags, here’s a flintlock musket, four rifles used by Sioux and Cheyenne at Little Bighorn, the “family tree” of the M-9 pistol, a Gatling .433 caliber machine gun from the 1870s.
Then there’s the prison map that shows the location of buildings during the Civil War — here the Prison Barracks, there the Rebel Hospital. More than 12,000 Confederate prisoners were held on this island, three miles long and 3/4 mile wide. Perhaps 2,000 of them died here, of pneumonia or smallpox or something else. Many of their guards died too.
If you drive the island’s main road, Rodman Avenue, it will take you past the national cemetery, the separate Confederate cemetery and a sign that marks the original Union Army grave site. More than 50 Union soldiers who served at the prison camp “were originally buried at this site but were later reinterred in the national cemetery on Arsenal Island,” the marker says. Among the relocated graves were those of five Iowa Volunteer Graybeards, one Wisconsin Volunteer, 12 Illinois Volunteers. Today, the edge of a golf green, its embroidered flag hanging limp, or else tugging in the breeze, nudges the spot. And a bicycle path called the Arsenal Trail circles the island.
By car, you can drive past the replica watch tower of old Ft. Armstrong at the island’s far western edge, or visit Lock & Dam No. 15, at the Government Bridge, and watch the locks work if you’ve time enough and a barge is passing through. The first bridge to span the Mississippi, a railroad bridge, once stood near the locks. It lasted all of 14 days until, on May 6, 1856, the steamer Effie Afton collided with its draw span. The resulting fire consumed the bridge, sank the steamer and ignited a courtroom battle between the railroads and steamboats for economic supremacy.
They couldn’t have known way back then that some boats today make money without going anywhere. There are three of them here: President Riverboat Casino in Davenport and Lady Luck Casino in Bettendorf cruise only for two hours on weekday mornings; the rest of the time they do business while moored to the dock. Jumer’s Casino in Rock Island operates several one-hour cruises a day throughout the week, weather permitting.
Jumer’s is docked at the end of 18th Street, in a four- to six-block neighborhood of downtown Rock Island called The District, a thin congregation of brew pubs, restaurants and outdoor concerts that draws enough patronage to create parking problems.
You can’t see The District from the deck of the Celebration Belle. Arsenal Island is in the way, and the Belle travels only so far downstream, about as far as the locks, before turning back to Moline.
Moline was a mill town once. But in 1837, blacksmith John Deere invented the self-scouring plow, revolutionary because farmers no longer had to stop every few feet to remove the Heartland’s sticky soil. Eleven years later, Deere moved his business here, and Moline became a John Deere town.
Anyone who doubts that hasn’t seen the people crowding the 1997 John Deere Pavilion or those prowling through its gift shop next door. Here, on the banks of the Mississippi, in a glass-walled showroom that smells of new tires, you can climb into the cab of an enormous grain combine indoors or inspect the blade of brand new road grader outdoors. And you can tell the farm equipment from the road machinery because they are painted different colors: green for lawn and agriculture, yellow for construction.
Deere moved here for the rivers, for the water power and transportation they provided. He may not have known that moving here was already an ancient practice, one at least 12,000 years old. One of the largest Indian settlements in North America, Saukenuk, once prospered on the high bluffs above the Rock River.
The heavily wooded area is now protected as Black Hawk State Historic Site in Rock Island. It had no such protection in 1780, when American troops punished the settlement for aiding the British. This was the Revolutionary War; they burnt it to the ground. Later, tribal chiefs would cede these lands to the U.S. government. But there were those among the Sauk nation who did not recognize the treaty. The warrior Black Hawk led 1,500 troops in a “revolutionary war” of his own that eventually ended in defeat.
The land he fought for, at least the 208-acre bit of it that now bears his name, is laced with 4 miles of hiking trails that disappear under bowers of oak branches. In places, the tangle of vegetation is so thick that not a breath of breeze comes through. There’s a Bavarian-style lodge — you may hear it referred to as the Watch Tower — that’s popular for wedding receptions.
One room of the lodge houses the Hauberg Indian Museum. Its few but well-tended artifacts acknowledge the people who once lived here. Outside, and above it all, a statue of Black Hawk stands watch. He guards, at last, a tract of earth where children quickly find the playground and families picnic.
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Toni Stroud’s e-mail address is tstroud@tribune.com
THE BOTTOM LINE
Weekend expenses for one:
Fulton’s Landing
Guest House (2 nights) ……… $168
Meals ……………………… $57
Maps ……………………….. $5
Admissions …………………. $15
Film ………………………. $12
Gas ……………………….. $21
Total …………………….. $278
IF YOU GO
GETTING THERE
Two interstate routes lead from Chicago to the Quad Cities.
The northerly one, Interstate Highway 290 to Interstate Highway 88, comes near Ronald Reagan’s boyhood home at Dixon and the John Deere home at Grand Detour, a few miles north of the highway.
It took me a little over 3 1/2 hours and 180 miles to make the southern route: Interstate Highway 55 to Interstate Highway 80, which passes the Victorian hamlet of Geneseo. U.S. Highway 6, seldom more than one cornfield away from I-80, provides a parallel alternative for drivers weary of dodging 18-wheelers on the interstate. Just outside the Quads, I picked up I-75 into Moline.
LODGING
Fulton’s Landing Guest House, 1206 E. River Drive, Davenport, Iowa. Five bedrooms, $60-$125, are decorated with floral wallpaper and antiques. Proprietors Pat and Bill Schmidt serve a full breakfast. (319-322-4069)
The Abbey, 1401 Central Ave., Bettendorf, Iowa. Breakfast comes with the price of each of its 19 guest rooms. $75-$125. (319-355-0291)
DINING
Christie’s, a one-story bungalow in the “Village of East Davenport,” 2207 E. 12th St., Davenport. Tender and richly sauced, the pair of tenderloin medallions served as Tournedos a la Diane ($19) arrived with fresh steamed vegetables and baked potato. The hefty Caesar salad was included in the entree price. A glass of merlot ($5), crisp white tablecloths, glowing oil lamps and attentive service combined to elevate this dinner to the status of “an evening.” You’ll need reservations. (319-323-2822)
The Faithful Pilot, 117 N. Cody Road (U.S. Highway 67), Le Claire, Iowa. The phyllo cups filled with vegetables and garlic mashed potatoes ($12) would have made an interesting Sunday lunch, paired with the mesclun salad ($5). I didn’t have the patience to find out; the party at the next table was generating a decibel level not in keeping with the restaurant’s intimate front dining room. I left in search of more peaceful surroundings. Perhaps you’ll have a quieter experience. (319-289-4156)
Blue Cat Brew Pub, in The District, 113 18th St., Rock Island, Ill. You have to like a place that recently held a “beer dinner” to instruct you, for example, that the Wigged Pig Wheat is what one ought to be drinking with one’s grilled prawns, wild greens and mango chutney. The everyday menu is less educational. I had the meatball sandwich ($5.75) and iced tea ($1).
Planted Earth Cafe, at John Deere Pavilion, 1300 River Drive, Moline, Ill. A lunch of meatloaf came as a taste surprise, spiked with hot spices and blended with spinach. It came with garlic mashed potatoes and salad. Meal, iced tea and tax came to $10.02.
ATTRACTIONS
Celebration Belle, 2501 River Drive, Moline. Sightseeing cruise: Adult, $9; child, $6. Specialty cruises also. (800-297-0034)
John Deere Pavilion, 1300 River Drive, Moline. Daily, with reduced hours on weekends. Free. (309-765-1000)
Buffalo Bill Cody Homestead, Scott County, Iowa. From I-80: U.S. 67 north 10 miles, County Highway F33 east 6 miles. Adults $2. (319-225-2981)
Rock Island Arsenal Museum, on Arsenal Island. Daily 10 a.m.-4 p.m. except major holidays. (309-782-5021)
INFORMATION
Quad Cities Convention and Visitors Bureau: 800-747-7800.
