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.
