“Keokuk was easily recognizable. I lived there in 1857, an extraordinary year there in real-estate matters. The “boom” was something wonderful. Every-body bought, every-body sold-except widows and preachers; they always hold on; and when the tide ebbs, they get left. Any thing in the semblance of a town lot, no matter how situated, was salable, and at a figure which would
still have been high if the ground had been sodded with greenbacks.”

Mark Twain, Life on the Mississippi

As I mentioned, we have the wonderful words of Samuel Clemens, who was born to the southwest of here in Florida, Missouri, to paint a picture of many of the river towns we’ll be looking at.

As we proceed up the hill from the dam, which flooded the canal once proposed by Robert E. Lee, we see some of the oldest houses in Keokuk.

Some of these houses very well might date back to the time of the Civil War, but I doubt that I spotted any that dated to the time of Lee and Twain. I did kick myself, however, as the house of Twain’s relative, his aunt, I believe is still standing and only a couple of blocks from where we were walking.

No doubt many of these houses were owned by merchants and steamboat captains, and wives and children could probably spot their family members returning from long trips up and down the Mississippi. In the words of Twain, “Once a day a cheap, gaudy packet arrived upward from
St. Louis, and another downward from Keokuk [to Hannibal],” so Keokuk’s wharf must have been busy.

Keokuk was founded in 1832, named after a Sauk/Thâkîwaki chief. There was originally a fur trading post founded by John Jacob Astor at the location, which was certainly destined to become a city due to its location at the confluence of the Mississippi and Des Moines rivers.

The houses show the influence of Chicago, as eventually the draw of riverboats were replaced by the railroad dominated by the Windy City’s economic interests.