What was a major-league town takes stock in itself

by Art Cullen, Iowa Capital Dispatch
November 7, 2025

First impression of Keokuk: beautiful and blighted, drained away with the currents of time at the confluence of the Mississippi and Des Moines rivers on Iowa’s southeastern tip.

You could forsake it were it not for the stubborn and resilient people who have laid claim to the place since 1837.

It was a major-league city with major-league ambitions. It was the Gate City to the river trade. It was a milling and foundry town. In 1875, the Keokuk Westerns played in the National League, compiling a 1-12 record and hanging up their cleats by June, never to play the Chicago White Stockings again.

The town boasted industrialists like J.C. Hubinger, a miller who had a huge mansion and amusement park overlooking the river and died poor in a boarding house. Now you could buy a manse along the river for $300,000. Forty percent of the historic brick buildings downtown are vacant.

In 1960, just before the fathers of industry were selling out to corporations, the population was 16,000. It dropped in the last census to under 10,000.

Keokuk has taken its lumps, like so many other working-class towns: Fort Madison, Ottumwa, Fort Dodge, Clinton. Keokuk got a rap. It rubs the wrong way.

“We know we have a chip on our shoulder,” said Teamsters union business agent Drake Custer at the Keokuk Labor Temple. “We also know what we are capable of.”

We spent four days in Keokuk shooting video for a series of documentaries about the real issues eating at rural Iowa. We will have episodes on water, cancer, agriculture and rural consolidation.

Keokuk helps you appreciate what Iowa is up against. We are letting the state decay while the politicians fly over. Keokuk is ready for anyone who will lend a hand.

City Councilman Mike Greenwald said the town realizes that if it wants to get things done, they have to do it themselves.

Downtown vacancies were 60% five years ago. The Main Street Alliance has invested over $1 million. (You could own two buildings three stories high on the main drag for just $55,000.) It’s getting better. The old railroad depot is restored to glory with private fundraising. New field turf was laid down for football and soccer, and the high school grandstands are next.

Mayor Kathy Mahoney believes Main Street will fill up again.

Maybe. It was built for a town twice its size, and before Amazon and Walmart.

“We have top-dollar employers, we just can’t get the workers,” said Roslyn Garcia, who moved home to Keokuk from Austin, Texas, with her husband Jonathan. She served a four-year term on the city council during which the broken-down road leading to Iowa’s only national cemetery was finally rebuilt.

There is justifiable optimism that Keokuk and Fort Madison may have bottomed out, but you cannot know when the calls are made in a faraway corporate boardroom. The Case-IH plant at Burlington upstream is threatened. These towns are forced to constantly pull themselves up with little outside help. Des Moines might as well be on the moon.

The county flipped from blue to red, from Obama to Trump. Anyone who wants to understand should listen.

Keokuk officials did listen when Custer and his union brethren launched the Iowa Dignity Project. The group surveyed 400 residents to identify the major issues and held town halls in 2022. Abortion and transgender issues did not make the cut. Streets remain the top complaint. Health care is right up there, since the hospital closed three years ago because of low reimbursement rates. Wages. Child care. Public transportation. The report card was redlined with Fs.

The people were heard.

The city lobbied for help to fix the embarrassment of a road leading to the National Cemetery, planted during the Civil War for soldiers who died in the local hospitals. Finally, the city got a federal earmark in the infrastructure bill through Rep. Mariannette Miller-Meeks after her opponent, Democrat Christina Bohannon, enjoined the crusade. Eight blocks cost $3.2 million — money that the city just doesn’t have.

When the people stood up, the politicians had to listen.

“If everybody does their part, we can do great things,” Garcia said.

The city got EPA brownfields grants to clean up the site of an abandoned carbide factory. A group is raising money for a library park. The town rehabbed the opera house into a performing arts center. It raised funds for riverfront amenities. Boosters acknowledge that local donors are getting tapped out. But there is an attitude that things can change.

A construction company bought the vacant mall and intends to bring back the movie theatre. Cheap property is at the ready. Electric rates are high because the hydroelectric dam sends the juice downriver to feed St. Louis. People are nervous about discussions on the board of supervisors about losing the courthouse — Lee County is Iowa’s only county with two courthouses, the other being in rival/twin Fort Madison. The radio station is back on the air thanks to new local owners after going silent for awhile.

People cling to a place. Fort Dodge is coming around after 40 years of hard work when the meatpackers shut down. Dubuque is back on its feet following a pummeling in the 1980s. Storm Lake grows because of immigrants. So could Keokuk. Each of these places need strategic investments from state and federal government, not simply more tax cuts. Everyone talks about housing needs yet a huge Plaza Hotel in downtown Fort Dodge has been home to pigeons for decades.

“We have river, road and rail. We have to forge a new path,” Garcia said.

Iowa Capital Dispatch is part of States Newsroom, a nonprofit news network supported by grants and a coalition of donors as a 501c(3) public charity. Iowa Capital Dispatch maintains editorial independence. Contact Editor Kathie Obradovich for questions: info@iowacapitaldispatch.com.