Dubuque, Iowa

 After hiking four miles yesterday, we both had a good night's rest and woke up ready to explore Dubuque.  Dubuque is about an hour's drive south of here.  It was another beautiful day...sunshine and 70's.  

We have noticed so many very large farm houses.  We have no idea how old the houses are but there must have been many children raised in them.

The road to and from Dubuque was curvy and hilly as it wound through the many fields of corn and beans.

I don't think this is your typical water tower.

We followed our GPS into our first stop in Dubuque.  GPS took us through beautiful rural areas and neighborhoods of homes.  It was definitely the back way to "Mines of Spain" where we stopped to see where the founder of Dubuque was buried.

The Indian Tribe Meskwaki (their story is in Monday's blog) lived on banks of the Mississippi River before Dubuque was established.  They were fur traders with French fur traders.  The Indians also worked lead mines in the area.  Julien Dubuque was the first European to settle on what is now Iowa soil in 1788.  He received a land grant from Spain to be named as "Mines of Spain."  He continued mining lead on the land.  Lead mining slowed down after the Civil War.

This is the grave of Potosa the daughter of the  chief of the Meskwaki tribe and the wife of Dubuque.  He and Dubuque were good friends.

  

When Dubuque died the tribe buried him with tribal honors beneath a log mausoleum at the site where the current monument now stands.  The site provides a scenic view of the Mines of Spain, the City of Dubuque, the Mississippi River Valley, and Illinois.

The monument under which Dubuque is buried.

Views from the monument.

View of Dubuque from the monument.

View of Illinois across the Mississippi.

We stopped at an interpretative center for the Mines of Spain and took this picture of a wikiup.  This was what the Meskwaki Indians used for homes instead of a teepee.

Our next stop was this Shot Tower.  It was constructed in 1856 to produce lead shot.  Lead was melted at the base of the tower, hoisted to the top, poured through screens of different gauges, tumbling smoothly round as it fell into the water vats below.  The shot was then sorted and packed.  When completed, the tower could produce between 6-8 tons daily.  It is 120 feet tall.

It is located in a commercial area of the Port of Dubuque.  Even with the GPS directions, we passed the street it is located on and had to cross the river into Wisconsin before we could turn around and try it again.  The area was so industrialized that we thought we should not even be driving there but the GPS was correct.

Next stop was the Fenelon Place Elevator.  Dubuque has an interesting downtown area.  There are lots of old buildings and houses.

Dubuque Courthouse.

Old clocktower. 

Some of the original brick street is still visible under the new coating.

Dubuque, like many other towns has murals painted on the sides of buildings.  This one is of Julien Dubuque

The Fenelon Place Elevator.  JK. Graves built the original elevator in 1882 because he lived at the top of the bluff but worked on the bottom.  In 1882 Dubuque was an hour an a half town - at noon everything shut down for an hour and a half when everyone went to dinner.  Mr. Graves had to spend half an hour driving his horse and buggy round the bluff to get to the top and another half an hour to return downtown, even though his bank was only two and half blocks away.  He liked to take half an hour for dinner and then a half and hour nap.  That added up to two hours!  He was a world traveler and had seen incline railways in Europe and decided that a cable car would solve his problem and it did.

His gardener would let him down in the morning, bring him up at noon, down after dinner and nap and back up after work.  Soon other asked for a ride.  The original car Mr. Graves rode has been replaced several times and the original hemp pull ropes replaced with metal cable.  It was a fun ride.

After you enter the car, you pull a bell on a rope which lets the operator at the top know that you are ready to ascend.  The operator also takes the fee for riding which for us was $8.00 round trip.  We thought it was worth it for the experience and view from the top.

Picture above and below were taken from the top of the elevator.

This is the turn style that has been used since a fee of five cents was charged to ride the elevator in the late 1890's  People began to rely on it to get from the top to bottom for shopping, business, school, and church.

After riding the elevator, we drove back to our campsite arriving home around 2:00.  We ate a late lunch and spent the rest of the afternoon reading and relaxing.  It was nice to sit outside under the trees in the shade.  Around 6:00 we took a walk around the campground.  When we had Sandy we used to that every evening but haven't done it since.  This is a very nice campground.  The roads are all concrete and the sites are well-spaced.  It is well-maintained.  We really like it and would camp here again if we ever came this way to camp.

We loaded the car on the dolly so we don't have to do it tomorrow morning.  We are only 100 miles from Mississippi Palisades State Park in Illinois so we won't leave here until noon.  We have enjoyed exploring Iowa.  It has some very interesting history.